Chapter 6 - Costs–Benefits of Light Rail Revised

Abstract

In this chapter, the importance of reliability is further discussed. The main case is the Uithof line light rail project in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The impact of service unreliability is demonstrated: passengers are affected by longer waiting times and the distribution of travel times. A framework is presented to calculate these effects and to express them in monetary values. In the Netherlands and many other countries, service reliability is not explicitly incorporated in cost–benefit analyses (or societal cost–benefit analyses), although improved service reliability is often one of the main contributions of public transportation projects. In the Utrecht case, the replacement of a bus service by a new tramway made it clear that our framework is valuable and can be applied into practice. By calculating the benefits of improved service reliability of the proposed tramway, which were about 2/3 of all benefits, the cost–benefit ratio was positive, which convinced the Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and Environment to support the project with €110 million. Although a positive (societal) cost–benefit analysis is considered to be a primary condition for many projects, such an outcome does not automatically mean that a community will accept the plan, as the case from Aachen (Germany) proved. This project was cancelled despite its high score of 1.5, which is considerably above the threshold score of 1.