External and infrastructure costs of freight transport Paris-Amsterdam corridor. Part 1. Overview of cost, taxes and levies

The Paris-Amsterdam transport corridor is of major importance for the EU economy. The share of inland waterway transport (IWT) on this corridor will increase significantly by the development of the Seine Scheldt link, TEN-T project 30. Within this context six parties representing the EU and three countries (France, Belgium and the Netherlands) and the three inland modes of transport (road, IWT and rail) have commissioned a project on the potential of internalisation of external costs. The study was conducted by an international consortium. The study started with an in-depth assessment of external and infrastructure costs. This was concluded in Deliverable 1 of this study. On this basis five internalisation scenarios were developed and assessed by a traffic model which was developed and run by Stratec and Setec. In addition complementing assessments were made to cover changes in the transport market that can be expected but that cannot be covered by the traffic model. The results of these assessments are in the report at hand, Deliverable 2 of this study. This study is unique as it is the first in-depth analysis of the impacts of internalisation of external cost scenarios on a specific strategic and congested international freight corridor in the EU. It has been conducted at an international and multimodal level. Therefore the results are of high interest for the study area but also for freight transport policy in Europe in general.