In search of sustainable road infrastructure planning: How can we build on historical policy shifts?

Road infrastructure planning is undergoing major changes. Infrastructure development is increasingly considered in relation to environmental degradation, climatic impacts and societal trends. Reinforced by the notion of sustainable development, infrastructure planning is increasingly focused on the realization of integrated planning goals. In planning practice, however, the transport infrastructure policy silo is strongly sectoral in nature, which can result in efforts fragmented along sectoral lines to realize integrated goals. As a result, a gap can be found between the formulation and implementation of these goals. Meanwhile, historical shifts in infrastructure policy and planning reveal that earlier planning approaches have been adopted in response to these issues. A project-oriented planning approach seems to have developed in response to the implementation gap, while an integrated planning approach is focused on solving fragmentation. In this article we aim to explore and conceptualize these policy shifts in transport policy and planning and investigate what lessons can be drawn from these approaches to dealing with these issues in today’s road infrastructure planning. We find that the current programme-oriented planning approach is focused on combining the strengths of both historical approaches. It aims at putting the focus on an integrated planning approach, while contextualizing projects in a project-oriented planning approach. As such, the emerging programmatic planning approach provides an interesting avenue for further research