A Demonstration Policy Evaluation of the Dutch Second Transport Structure Plan (SVV)

In 1990, the Netherlands published a Government Decision known as the Tweede Structuurschema Verkeer en Vervoer (SVV), or Second Transport Structure Plan, which was a statement of the country's long-term traffic and transport policy. It describes the problems that have been brought about by the ever increasing mobility of its population (e.g., decreasing accessibility of economic centers; worsening pollution and road safety), some goals and targets that the Dutch government would like to achieve to improve the situation, and a wide range of actions to be taken to achieve those targets. The project reported on here is a first step in carrying out a full-scale policy evaluation of the SVV. Its purpose was to develop a methodology that might explain which SVV actions (which we call tactics) caused what effects (which we call impacts), and to demonstrate that methodology on a subset of the SVV. Although few SVV tactics have been implemented so far, it was expected that the methodology developed in the project would be useful for a more complete evaluation of the SVV at a later. Therefore, the project had three primary objectives: (1) To design a policy evaluation methodology; (2) To demonstrate the methodology on a subset of the SVV tactics; and (3) To document the methodology so that it can be applied more broadly at some future time.