Addressing transport policy challenges through policy-packaging

Policy packaging is not a new concept and hardly anyone would dispute the merit of strategically considering and deploying several policy measures in combination to address transport policy issues. Yet the concept of policy packaging remains largely vague, and how to 'package' policies is not really considered or suggested. Policy packaging in most cases remains just a term. The Optimal Policies for Transport in Combination (OPTIC) project aimed to start advancing state-of-the-art in the design of policy packages. The project objective was to turn policy packaging into a well-established approach to policy making, with solid theoretical and methodological foundations that can also be practically applied in the field. This editorial to the special issue on Policy Packaging serves to first define and explain the main principles of policy packaging and the goals it strives to achieve: increasing effectiveness, implementability and thus efficiency. It then describes the main contribution of each of the papers in the special issue to research and practice of policy packaging and it outlines some avenues for further research. The paper concludes by setting a few criteria to distinguish a policy package from a 'list' of policies and by arguing that only through case studies and application in practice that state-of-the-art policy packaging can be really advanced.