Strategic environmental assessment in municipal transport development planning

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) places new demands on plans and programs in the transport sector as well. Especially at the municipal level, transport is one of the largest causes of negative environmental effects. Although no clear SEA obligation can be derived for the municipal transport development plan (VEP), many factors speak in favor of carrying out such an assessment here as well, because transport aspects are part of an SEA at the latest in the environmental assessment of urban land use planning. Synergies can be exploited through the sensible integration of transport and urban development planning and the individual planning steps can be expediently coordinated. Furthermore, synergy effects in connection with further municipal or regional planning can come to bear, e.g. clean air plans or noise protection planning. At this point, SEA can make an important contribution to integrating questions of environmental and spatial compatibility, energy and resource efficiency, and sustainability into transport planning to a greater extent than before. Furthermore, efficiency gains can be expected through a sensible dovetailing of planning or environmental assessments.The aim of this dissertation paper is to formulate recommendations for action on how SEA can be embedded in the planning process of the VEP. For this purpose, it is necessary to formulate the requirements that SEA places on transport development planning (VEPlanning) and to present the current state of municipal VEPlanning.

This dissertation is based on partial results of the research and development project 73.0327 "Strategic Environmental Assessment in Municipal Transport Development Planning", which was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs (BMVBS) under the supervision of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR) and co-authored by the author. The project was carried out in cooperation with Bosch & Partner GmbH. Chapters 3, as well as 4.2 and 4.3, which were largely prepared by the research partners Bosch & Partner GmbH, are presented in a highly abbreviated form within the scope of this dissertation.The present work includes an extensive literature review. The requirements of SEA are reviewed as well as the current transport planning practice on the municipal level is presented. In addition, the status of SEA in transportation planning at the different levels is reviewed. On the other hand, the focus of the work is on the survey in a total of 13 municipal planning areas. In this context, the. previous experiences with environmental assessments as well as the prevailing data situation in the municipalities will be highlighted in particular. In addition, three of these planning areas were selected as case study cities for in-depth studies. At the end of the paper, recommendations for action are formulated on how to integrate SEA into the VEPlanning process.

This Abstract was translated from German with deepL and could be faulty.