Overview
The compatibility between economic growth and the development of a more sustainable transport system requires great investment efforts by public authorities.
Capacity for efficient decision taking depends on the level of knowledge about the transport demand, as well as its precision on associated socio-economic benefits and costs to different possible performances (cost-benefit analysis, CBA).
Time savings are one of the best benefits derived from investments in transport infrastructures, both in passenger transport scope and in goods transport scope. Although it is the main benefit of the majority of investments in transport infrastructures, the researchers have not been able to reach consensus, neither about the magnitude nor about the nature of the travel and transit time values which should be used in the evaluation of projects.
The main aim of this project was to obtain estimations of the value of the savings of travel times and the reductions of risks of accidents in order to evaluate in a proper way the costs and benefits derived from investments in transport.
The analysis covers passenger transport as well as goods transport, and all those methodological aspects which have to be followed in transport demand studies as well as in their application to the evaluation of projects.
Several empiric applications illustrate this, which will be useful as reference studies for future actions carried out by the Ministry of Transport.
This project is divided in 2 sub-projects. Sub-project 1 is devoted to passenger transport and sub-project 2 is for goods transport.
The working team if formed by an expert group which belong to institutions which have showed enough competence in studies which covers several areas in economics and transport engineering.
Funding
Results
The results of the project are:
- Estimations of the value of passenger travel time (by transport mode, reason of the travel, for different socio-economic groups, …)
- Estimation of the willingness to pay for reducing the risk of accidents
- Estimation of other dispositions to pay for improving quality of service
- Estimation of the value of the travel time in case of goods transport (by type of goods)
- Development of guidelines to allow to incorporate the former figures to the social evaluation of investment projects.