Following a reformation of the Swedish national transport planning system in 2013, Strategic Choice of Measures (SCM) was introduced by the Swedish Transport Administration as a new preparatory study prior to formal decisions on measures to solve transport related problems. SCM is a dialogue based informal planning process carried out at the early stages of the national transport planning process, with the aim to identify solutions in close cooperation between key actors and stakeholders, based on a multimodal approach and the so called four step principle. According to the four step principle, solutions to transport related problems should be developed and assessed stepwise, where measures that influence the demand for transport and choice of transport mode (step 1) and make use of existing infrastructure more efficiently (step 2) are considered before minor reconstruction (step 3) and the construction of new infrastructure (step 4). As a new planning step, SCM has been fully established on the national transport planning scene, and around 1000 SCM’s have been conducted over the last five years.

This study is initiated and commissioned by the Swedish Transport Administration with the purpose to investigate values, or benefits, created through SCM. Two questions have guided the inquiry:

• What types of benefits does SCM create?
• How is the creation of benefits through SCM related to different underlying conditions?

The study is conducted within a theoretical framework of three different types of planning – communicative, strategic and classic rational planning – and the conceptual distinction between wicked and tame problems. As a theoretical framework for analysis it is recognized that the three types of planning are associated with different aims and relate differently to wicked and tame problems. While a communicative planning process is concerned with a consensual understanding of the wickedness of problems, a strategic planning process is action oriented and concerned with taming wicked problems to make them manageable, and a classic rational planning process involves the search for optimal solutions to given ends, treating problems as tame. SCM is seen as a hybrid of the three types of planning and therefore potentially associated with different kinds of benefits. The empirical section of the inquiry consists of two parts. The main part is five case studies of ongoing and completed SCM processes. This qualitative section has been supplemented with a quantitative overview of the aggregated mass of completed SCM’s since 2013.

The study concludes that the hybrid idea of SCM, as described in steering and guiding documents is more nuanced in practice. The extent and presence of the three planning types differ from case to case. Some of the cases display signs of a communicative process to develop a shared understanding of the problems at stake among a diverse set of actors. All cases provide clear examples of strategic framing and taming processes through focusing on selected issues and the interests of interdependent key actors. The optimization ideal of the classic rational planning approach is reflected in ambitions to find the best possible solutions, but the results of the processes appear to be derived from consensus among key actors on the suitability of certain courses of action rather than objectively decided criteria for comparison of efficiency and benefits of alternative solutions.

Throughout these processes we find that the values and benefits from an SCM process could best be described in terms of a strategic planning process, with an emphasis on coordination, performance, and action – often concerned with measures that have been considered previously but not in the kind of shared planning contexts illuminated by the SCM process. It is therefore as a strategic planning method we see the clearest benefits with SCM. We also find that SCM has the potential to be more fully used as a communicative planning method to develop more multifaceted understandings of transport related problems in specific situations, at certain windows of opportunities if the STA has such an ambition.