Award-winning dissertation: Overview of costs and economic effects of urban transport

This work was supervised by Prof. Carsten Sommer. Due to the Corona pandemic, the award was not presented until this year, during the DVWG's Annual Meeting 2021 on August 12 in Berlin.

The dissertation by Assadollah Saighani closes an important gap in knowledge at the municipal level: Saighani presents a procedure that he applies exemplarily to the three cities of Kassel, Bremen and Kiel. On the basis of economic and engineering approaches, Saighani has determined the expenses, revenues and the main monetary external effects of municipal transport and, for the first time, allocated them to the five modes of transport - walking, cycling, local public transport, cars and trucks - according to their cause.

The starting point of the dissertation is that current traffic patterns are not sustainable and have negative effects on health, the environment and the climate. Contrary to the principles of a market economy, transport users do not bear the full costs of their behavior.

Therefore, knowledge about the costs of the different modes of transport is of high importance for sustainable transport and infrastructure planning. However, the amount of urban transport expenditures and revenues associated with the provision and use of urban transport services is currently unknown, as is their distribution among the five transport modes. In addition to the direct financial effects, urban transport also causes external effects that are not borne by the transport users themselves, but by third parties or future generations, such as accident costs or air pollution costs.

Saighani's method provides for the first time a complete and cross-modal overview of all costs and economic effects of urban transport in Germany. It thus creates transparency with regard to the financing of transport and transport infrastructure and forms an essential basis for sustainable urban and transport planning.

The Carl Pierath Prize has been awarded every two years since 1983 for outstanding engineering work (dissertations and research assignments) in the overall field of transportation. The focus in the evaluation of the submitted work is on scientific achievements that involve a high degree of innovation, make a significant contribution to the further development of transportation in theory and practice, and are guided by the principles of sustainability in transportation development.

Contact:

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Carsten Sommer
University of Kassel
Department of Transportation Planning and Systems
Mönchebergstraße 7
D-34125 Kassel
Tel.: +49 561 804-3381
Fax: +49 561 804-7382
E-mail: c.sommer@uni-kassel.de
Internet: http://www.uni-kassel.de/go/vpvs