From trench war to dialogue: An action-research study of the assessment of barrier effects in a transport infrastructure project

Transport infrastructure such as railways and motorways create barriers in local street networks, thereby reducing social contacts between people and limiting their access to shops and services. To address these barriers, a fact-based assessment of their effects is required. However, in current planning practice barrier effects are usually assessed through general descriptions and rough estimations. This paper presents an action research based case study of what a newly developed set of barrier effect analyses contributed to the collaboration between the Swedish Transport Administration and the municipal council in a high-speed railway project. Interviews with participants (n = 22) showed that these analyses created a common language and offered concrete support, which increased trust between stakeholders and made it possible to reach a consensus about a planning alternative. Using the analyses entails interaction between practitioners and analysts throughout the work process, as the analyses and the impact assessments they provide support for are closely related. Among other findings, the importance of the street network emerged as the main variable in the analyses. There is a need to acknowledge this role and to create methods for adapting it to different planning alternatives of the infrastructure. Further, there is a need for more case studies on the collaborative processes of barrier effect assessments, as these are important for enabling the transition to more ecologically and socially sustainable transport systems.