Economic evaluation of road investment proposals: valuing travel time savings for freight.

Faster more reliable freight movements make up a substantial proportion of the economic benefits generatedby road and transport investment. However techniques for assessing and valuing the freight component ofthis economic benefit have been rather limited in Australia and until recently have been ignored. As a result, benefits generated by improvements from road investment and traffic management are understated andexpenditure decisions biased towards passenger movements. Freight transit times are of critical importance to freight service users, and as a result have a large potential impact on the benefits from transport investments. This concept is mode independent, and relies only on the perceptions and economic drivers of the shippers and receivers.This study has identified a need for valuing the time spent in transit for individual items or loads of freight,which is omitted by most evaluations and economic assessments of transport proposals and policies inAustralia.Austroads commissioned ARRB TR who engaged FDF as sub-consultant to examine freight travel time savings in detail. The study comprised two Stages, as follows:Stage 1: A pilot study using a Stated Preference (SP) survey of freight shippers, conducted in Melbournein May 1998, with 43 respondents, and 129 completed responses (Austroads Project N.BS.9702, Task 5).Stage 2: A survey, using similar techniques to the Stage 1 pilot survey of freight shippers in the automotivecomponents manufacturing industry, conducted in Melbourne in late 2000, with 107 respondents,and 320 completed responses (Austroads Project BS.E.N.536 (was N.BS.9806)).This project was limited rather than universal in scope. The values derived in this study provide a first basis for quantifying previously unmeasured benefits in themovements of freight in Australia. Significantly larger samples will be required to obtain more precise values for freight travel time. Estimates obtained indicate that metropolitan freight travel time is more highly valued than that applying to inter-capital freight movements. However, these estimates do not allow the valuation of freight travel time to be distinguished between inter and intra-city full truck load movements