Planning Sustainable Transport

Chapter 14

Controlling costs

Accounting for intangibles

Sustainability does not, and cannot, have a commercial value. At the meta-scale a price cannot be placed upon the risk of damaging the planet’s future; at the individual scale, personal health and future well-being cannot be bought and sold at a market value. It follows that the commercial mechanisms of market forces and profitability alone will be unable to deliver the desired objectives. This is far from unique: the word ‘war’ seems to be used politically to mark out those areas of policy in which market and price mechanisms are muted or even absent. The ‘wars’ on terrorism, on drugs, on communism, on crime are extremely expensive but do not attract stern questions about their value for ...