Monitoring Environmental Performance of Transport Policies in Spain

As a basic part of its National Transport Plan (PEIT 2020), the Spanish Ministry of Transport is developing a monitoring system (SISTIA) with an aim at assessing the actual impacts of transport policies in achieving the objectives of the transport plan, and to revise these policies as necessary. The development of SISTIA has been made through the identification of the appropriate indicators (including as an essential part availability of reliable data), the establishment of expected trends and targets for those indicators, and the identification of key policies, which could influence those trends. In spite of the difficulties to collect and process the data necessary to develop the indicators, the experience has proved very useful to (1)focus the attention of decision makers on the key aspects of the transport policy, which can influence the environmental performance of the sector in the long run; (2) communicate to the public about the key challenges facing the transport sector, and the strategy to be followed by the Ministry of Transport and (3) improve co-operation with other regional and local governments.