Revision of the Guidelines for Strategic Assessment of Transport Infrastructure 2022

The aim of the project is to revise the existing Austrian Guidelines for Strategic Assessements in the Transport Sector (SP-V). The SP-V guidelines serve as a guide for initiators of transport investments for the implementation and preparation of the necessary documents for an SP-V. Although the current guideline from 2018 has received positive feedback internationally, in practice there is still a need for an improved integral consideration of environmental goals, especially those of climate protection, which is strongly linked to transport. In its current form, the guidelines already offer numerous starting points for the foresighted consideration and avoidance or minimisation of environmental impacts. Due to the very brief presentation of individual steps, such as the consideration of system alternatives, it would make sense to strengthen individual chapters in order to enable a transparent consideration of all relevant perspectives and a balanced evaluation of the planning alternatives. In this way, environmental objectives, possible changes in protected goods and measures to counteract these changes can be included in the strategic assessment, taking into account all relevant information and on the basis of a broad discussion of these with the actors within the framework of scoping. The revision of the guideline therefore also aims at a strengthened balancing of different perspectives and interests, in particular a strengthening of the role of the BMK as a neutral and all-party supervisory authority and a strengthening of the role of the stakeholders, in particular the environmental agencies, in result-critical procedural steps, especially in scoping, in the selection of the alternatives to be examined, as well as in the selection of the criteria for the evaluation of the alternatives.