A brief reply to Ernest Albuquerque

Abstract

Mr Albuquerque challenges my article in Policy Quarterly (Volume 9, Issue 3, 2013) on three main grounds. Firstly, he uses the well-known limitations of standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in transport project appraisals as the basis for claiming that the ‘strategic fit’ and ‘effectiveness’ criteria adopted by the NZTA lead to a better estimation of the total economic impact of the proposed activity than using the ‘efficiency’ criterion alone. He implies that these criteria attempt to capture the impact of large transport schemes on long-term land use development and on induced traffic effects. However, he does not substantiate this claim, and it is unclear how use of these criteria could achieve that goal.