Costes secundarios y su relevancia para la política de transportes

This paper discusses Secondary Costs, which is a term coined to include External Costs, Impacts on Land Uses and Social Costs. Such secondary costs are exemplified as transport impacts which are not taken into account according to the current state-of-practice, even though they entail important economic consequences. Should we choose to keep ignoring such costs during the project evaluation phase, we will be contributing to negative unintended consequences. Hence the need for rigorous analytical schemes which properly evaluate the real contribution and impact of transportation investments. We are therefore advocating for the inclusion of such secondary costs into the project evaluation processes, as a mechanism to improve the quality of the decisions made in the transport field.