External Costs of Transport and Land Equalisation
The reduction and/or internalization of the environmental, spatial and social costs caused by the transport sector are policy objectives which have been commonly assumed over the last decades (e.g. Directive 1999/62/EC, Directive 2006/38/EC). Within a market approach and according to the “polluter pays” principle, internalization is a way toward a comprehensive payment actually born by the transport users; in this “classic” vision, this is obtained by means of some additional/side pricing imposed to citizens/enterprises generating road traffic with private vehicles (e.g. road pricing: tolls, vignette, access fees; park pricing, vehicle/fuel taxation). However, incompleteness in the extent of the application of direct pricing and a missing or only partial link with modal policies, spatial planning and infrastructural decisions lead to failures of the internalization policies in terms of their ability to reach improvements of the sustainability of the transport systems over the time.
To foster the planning and investment approach to transport internalization (i.e. reallocation of public resources in the context of spatial planning, infrastructural decisions and modal policies) it is felt necessary to let available to Regions and Cities a knowledge base created from real experiences and a set of methodological and analytical tools to guide and support plans and policies definition.
Besides transport pricing policies, planning and investment decisions based on global transport costs are addressed as a “preventive” and more strategic approach to internalization, improving equity and sustainability of the transport systems.
Therefore, the ECOTALE project aims at integrating the traditional approach based on the “economic" (or market-based) internalization of external costs (i.e. pricing measures) by introducing  criteria and policies for a wider internalization approach considering land use and environmental planning as well.
By means of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches, ECOTALE promotes the exchange, sharing and transfer of policy experience, knowledge and good practices in the field of the internalization of external cost of transport and in the field of planning and investment decisions based on global transport cost, with regard to all the policy development phases from understanding the problem, to implementing and improving the solution.
ECOTALE will permit to develop and make available practical Guidelines, reflecting a spreaded and innovative perspective for transport costs internalization, with special focus on the relations between global transport costs and land use planning. Beside the formulation of policy recommendations, special efforts will be devoted to the adaptation of the proposed methodolgies and procedures to the various national/regional regulatory contexts, within an overall implementation-oriented approach.