The ASTRA model for strategic assessment of transport policies

ASTRA is a system dynamics model for the strategic assessment of policy scenarios at the European level. Over recent years, ASTRA has been extensively used in many European research projects, sometimes in linkage with other strategic tools, to provide simulations of scenarios concerning energy scarcity, high oil prices, technological investments in the transport sector and application of measures included in European transport policy. ASTRA is built in Vensim^® and consists of nine interlinked modules. With respect to a traditional transport model, ASTRA is less detailed in geographical terms, but simulates the linkages between transport demand, the economy, the vehicle fleet and environmental effects, thus allowing an integrated multidimensional assessment of alternative scenarios.