Public Transport: Economic Investment Appraisal

This report has been prepared in response to a brief from Queensland Transport (Integrated Transport Planning Division). The main objective of the work is to produce a summary of available evidence on how to capture economic impacts of public transport projects within the context of multi-modal transport evaluation. \ud \ud The assessment of Public Transport (PT) is essentially the trading-off of conflicting objectives, laden with technical, socio-economic, environmental and political value judgements. This may apply to PT initiatives related individual projects, as well as strategies, policies and plans either at the local, corridor or regional levels. \ud \ud When undertaking an economic assessment of PT initiatives it would appear sensible to follow the same economic principles which underpin all other transport economic evaluations, namely the welfare economic theory and practice used in cost-benefit analysis work. \ud \ud The perceived rigour in the evaluation of road network based passenger and freight related transport projects stems from:\ud \ud • the use of well established transport modelling techniques to estimate impacts \ud • the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) when carrying out evaluations.\ud \ud The same level of rigour can be applied to PT initiatives given the availability of the same techniques and the applicability of the same underlying principles.\ud \ud The same approach can be adopted whether the PT initiatives relate to individual capital projects or to a set of policies or strategies. The difference between the economic evaluation of road projects and that of PT initiatives has to do with the degree of difficulty in quantification of impacts