The Trans-European Transport Network - A closer look at Policy Failure and the effects of Path Dependence

Abstract: There is a trans-European transport network policy on the supranational level that aims to connect Europe with efficient, sustainable, safe and economically viable cross-national transport infrastructure. Because of this, one could expect EU funding to focus on rail infrastructure, as it has proven to be a low polluting, cost effective and an efficient mode of cross-national transport. However, as of today, and since the policy's adoption in 1996, there has been a disproportionate amount of funding focusing on road infrastructure, which has been shown to be highly polluting, expensive, and relatively inefficient for cross-national transport. This discrepancy is explored through the theoretical perspective of policy failure and path dependence and approached through a mixed methods methodology. My findings show that the Trans-European transport network, or the TEN-T policy, should be considered as a partial policy failure, since it has not completed the projects it set out to construct, and that one reason for the lacklustre development of the European rail network could be the Union’s path dependence on road infrastructure.