logo

Crucial factors in successful policy packaging

Deliverable 4: Clearly defined objectives, the strong commitment of major proponents and wide stakeholder consultation are three examples of factors important during the design and implementation phase in ensuring the success of transport policy packages.

London congestion charging schemne is one of the policy packages selectet for analysis.
Photo: Transport for London

Out of 34 policy packages, four national and four EU transport-related packages were identified as potential best-practice examples.

These eight packages were systematically analysed as a means of identifying the factors that led to them being considered best-practice cases.

While none of them could be considered best practice in every aspect, each on its own has one or more important feature which should be considered during the design and implementation phase.

The four national policy packages are the London and Stockholm congestion-charging schemes, the distance-related heavy vehicle fee introduced in Switzerland and the Danish government’s Transport and Environment Scheme.

The EU level packages are: a directive on the interoperability of conventional and high-speed railways; an action plan on urban mobility and another on the deployment of an Intelligent Transport System in Europe; and a directive on the promotion of clean and energy-efficient road transport vehicles.

Aspects of the policy-making process examined for each of the case studies cover: the objectives and goals of a package, the primary measures and causal assumptions, inter-measure interaction, the design process, technical and financial considerations, as well as obstacles and unintended effects.

While the directive on the promotion of clean and energy-efficient road transport vehicles is considered to be the overall best-practice example based on the analysis, all the other policy packages exhibit features which make them best practice in one or more of the dimensions used in the analysis.

In ensuring the success of policy packages, the following factors were found to be particularly important during the design and implementation phase:

• Clearly defined objectives
• Strong commitment of major proponents
• Wide stakeholder consultation
• Relevancy of package acknowledged by stakeholder
• Acknowledgement of the complexity of the issue involved and thus long time horizon
• A trial run before a referendum (if feasible)
• Positive referendum result
• Successful technical implementation
• Clear and transparent documentation of impact assessment and regular review
• Advantage taken of windows of opportunity
• Step-by-step decision-making process
• The target achieved
• Respect for the principle of subsidiarity
• Acknowledgement of the objectives of other policy domains
• Secure funding in place

These findings will contribute to the work in the final two work packages, which deal with obstacles to policy adoption and implementation as well as the synthesis of best practice in policy packages with policy recommendation on packaging.

Deliverable 4:
Best Practice in Policy Package Design

Address: Institute of Transport Economics, Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo   -  Telephone: +47 22 57 38 00, Telefax: +47 22 60 92 00
                                                           Web editor: Nils Fearnley, naf@toi.no