Economic Evaluation Of Transport Projects

This book is a guide to the economic evaluation of transport policies and investment projects through cost-benefit analysis (CBA). It covers the CBA of transportation projects and policies, and introduces the fundamental concepts of CBA before considering their application in real-world settings. A distinct focus of the book is on the practical applications of CBA. It includes real-world examples of CBA, such as high-speed rail investment and the subsidization of air transport, which illustrate the importance of using a rigorous analytical framework to evaluate transport projects and policies. The primary objective of this book is to present a basic model for the evaluation of transport projects and policies, with explicit assumptions and practical evaluation rules derived from it. The rules and measurement criteria derived from this model are applied to the examples mentioned above. Overall, this book is an excellent resource for students, practitioners, and policymakers involved in transport economics and evaluation, as it provides a comprehensive understanding of the principles and applications of CBA in the transport sector.

This title was first published in 2003. The European Union is constantly struggling to find effective ways to plan major transport infrastructure developments at a European level. This is a critical factor in the emerging debates surrounding the absorption of the accession states into the EU, but it is essential for these states that their economic competitiveness is supported by appropriate and effective transport infrastructure. It is therefore crucial to find innovative approaches to the infrastructure itself, how it is financed and the ways in which proper evaluation procedures are implemented to select which policies, programmes and projects should be supported. This informative volume brings together leading international specialists in economic evaluation applied within the transport sector. Their contributions encompass all the main levels at which transport planning is typically conceptualized - strategic/regional policy, programme and project planning. It therefore examines how coherent economic evaluation practice can be developed and applied not only across different physical scales, but also across national borders.

This timely book puts transport cost benefit analysis in a wider, institutional perspective, relating it in particular to decision making. The book will be of interest to practitioners, consultants and academics who are active in the evaluation of transport projects. Erik T. Verhoef, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands This is an important piece of work on project evaluation. An attractive feature is the balanced treatment of theory and application. The book provides very useful information on efforts of national governments in various countries to increase the quality of project evaluation studies by formulating guidelines for project evaluation. One of the strong points of the book is that it does not only address technical aspects of project evaluation tools, but also the institutional structures within which decisions are taken. Piet Rietveld, Vrije Universiteit and Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands This book revisits traditional evaluation methods, such as cost benefit analysis, to try and find a balance between the ever-increasing demand for transport, the search for sustainable mobility and green transport solutions, and the limited financial resources that governments are able to invest in transport infrastructure projects. In this respect, the effects of transport policy need to be measured and evaluated based on multiple criteria and the need to take into consideration a larger group of stakeholders and investors in transport projects. The book illustrates, methodologically and empirically, why and how the institutional and multi-actor environment impacts upon the analysis, evaluation and decision-making of transport projects in Europe. Including contributions from scholars with considerable expertise in the field, this book will be of great interest to consultants, policymakers and researchers.

An introduction to the application of cost-benefit analysis to transportation investments in developing countries.

The economic evaluation of a project in any sector entails the measurement and comparison of cost and benefit streams expected from alternative investments. This paper presents an exposition of the social surplus method of measuring benefits. The exposition is intended to shed light on the nature of benefits to be expected from road transport projects, both with and without various types of market imperfections, and in particular, to show how these benefits relate to changes in the supply and demand of transported commodities. Thus one purpose of the paper is purely expository; to record the economic mechanics behind the social surplus method of benefit evaluation as applied to road projects. In the following chapters, the paper presents a method of measuring benefits which takes traffic responses into account, discusses the factors underlying their relative importance, relates the benefits to associated changes in the production and consumption of the transported commodity, and interprets the impact of market imperfections on benefit measurement.

Throughout the world, the use of some kind of a formal transportation project evaluation procedure is a requirement. Yet, by and large, these are partial; in fact, much weight is often placed on the initial -pre-engineering -phases of the planning process, when vital information, such as accurate costs and demand projections, is largely missing. Moreover, many of these procedures neglect to consider key issues such as project’s risks, capital costs financing, latent demand, market imperfections, labor force availability and various incompatibilities between trip rates, travel times and activity location. As a result, projects, which are judged as viable under such deficient evaluation schemes, may have had a significantly different projection of capital costs and demand should a well-founded, thorough, and efficient evaluation process be used. Against this background, this book’s main objective is to construct a comprehensive and methodical economic, planning and decision-making framework for the evaluation of proposed transportation infrastructure investment projects. Such a framework is founded on four key principles. It is based on well-established economic, transportation and policy-analysis theoretical principles; it is comprehensive enough to encompass all relevant evaluation issues; it is applicable to a wide range of transportation investment projects; and it is amenable to empirical application including a sensitivity analysis and alternative scenarios regarding urban, regional and national developments.