Developing Norway's National Transport Plan into a more strategic and improved policy tool

This report discusses challenges in how Norway’s National Transport Plan (NTP) comes about, and how this affects the final results. Features of the NTP process, governance structure, objective structure, unit of analysis, and political processes, have weakened the NTP’s role as strategic policy tool. Current NTP processes seem to be skewed towards business-as-usual, whilst the transition to a low-emission society and other overarching societal objectives require more transformative change. In particular, the start of each NTP cycle seems to have strong implications for results that can be expected. Some challenges discussed in the report could be addressed through measures that ensure more comprehensiveness, analyses that are more independent of transport mode, broader representation, changes in governance structure, and more focus on transport in and around cities, which are home to the largest challenges in today’s transport system. Not least, NTP-processes should become more goal-oriented and shift from today’s “predict-and-provide” approaches, to “decide-and-provide”.