Evaluation Of Transport Projects Research Articles

Estimating multinomial logit models with endogenous variables: Control function versus two adapted approaches

It is shown that the control function (CF) method’s estimates of the modal constants in a multinomial logit model (MNL) with endogenous explanatory variables are biased. This has not previously been reported in the literature, and has consequences in demand analysis, transportation policy design and project evaluation. Two adaptations of existing approaches are proposed as alternatives to CF for deriving estimators of parameters in MNL models with endogenous explanatory variables that evidence good consistency properties. The first approach is based on moment conditions while the second one combines parameters obtained in two consecutive estimation stages. Both approaches employ instrumental variables. These two adapted approaches are implemented using simulated data from a transport mode choice problem. The results are compared with those obtained using the classic control-function method, typically used by practitioners for estimating transport demand models with endogenous variables and making quantitative evaluations of transport policies and projects. All three approaches generate similar estimates for the parameters of the explanatory variables, but the two proposed adaptations produce considerably more accurate estimates of the modal constants. This greater accuracy has potentially significant consequences for multinomial logit models’ predictive ability and estimates of marginal effects, elasticities and the social benefits of projects based on consumer surplus calculations.

Improving transportation project evaluation by recognizing the role of spatial scale and context in measuring non-user economic benefits

The usefulness of transportation project evaluation depends on the completeness of its benefit measures. Since transportation networks are intrinsically spatial, transportation improvement projects have spatial access and location characteristics that can lead to a variety of non-user economic benefits. Recent research has enabled us to better understand how spatial context and spatial heterogeneity play further roles in generating efficiency gains for non-users, in the form of productivity, income, and cost savings for both private and public sectors of the economy. This paper draws upon that body of research to expand our understanding of the means by which transportation projects can generate economic efficiency gains, and approaches needed to measure them. It covers topics beyond those captured by current definitions of “wider economic benefits,” including additional sources of scale economies associated with freight distribution and connectivity, and further public and private sector economic gains enabled by environmental and social inclusion improvement. It points to ways that non-user economic benefits can be more comprehensively defined and better measured by recognizing their spatial scale, context, and threshold effects. It also identifies ways that current benefit measurement methods introduce unintended bias into transportation investment decision-making through omission and mismeasurement. The result is a case for a refresh of thinking about how we classify and recognize non-user economic benefits in transportation evaluation, and how we apply transportation planning and economic models to support their measurement.

Valuing Transit Service Quality Improvements

This article investigates the value transit travelers place on qualitative factors, such as comfort and convenience, and practical ways to incorporate these factors into transport planning and project evaluation. Conventional evaluation practices generally assign the same time value regardless of travel conditions, and so undervalue comfort and convenience impacts. More comprehensive analysis of transit service quality tends to expand the range of potential transit improvement options, and justify more investments in transit service quality improvements. This article examines the value passengers place on transit service quality, summarizes research on travel time valuation, explores how transit service quality factors affect travel time values and transit ridership, and discusses implications of this analysis.

Application of Geographic Information Systems in Impact Evaluation and Geospatial Portfolio Analysis of Transport Projects

New technologies and global datasets enable transport projects to be assessed more effectively and efficiently. Geospatial data are available retrospectively and remotely, which is particularly useful for evaluators working in countries with constraints on their access to data, including those caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Another advantage is that data quality is the same and comparable across countries. This paper reports the results of geospatial portfolio analysis and economic impact analysis with geospatial data. It generated several interesting findings. For example, the contribution of projects carried out by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) became visible, as about 290 million people live along the road alignments of ADB projects and are therefore potential beneficiaries. Their presence and greater economic activity are indicated by increases in the radiance of nighttime light. The data also demonstrated which countries need to make additional efforts to reduce CO2 emissions from the project areas. Two levels of impact analysis using nighttime light were carried out, which measured local benefits of economic growth. The first assessed a national highway project in Armenia. The contribution of the project to economic growth was more than 2.5% per year. The second found that 33 transportation projects had made an average annual contribution to economic growth of 5%. The authors compared the impact assessed by nighttime light with conventional economic analysis using economic internal rates of return, measuring benefits enjoyed by road users and administrators, and observed a positive correlation between the two.

Examining the socioeconomic outcomes of transport interventions in the Global South

This paper addresses a recurrent distributive issue of transport interventions and aims to develop a framework of an impact evaluation of transport projects particularly tailored to the Brazilian context. The methodology draws upon the literature to employ a quasi-experimental approach performed by means of a difference in difference matching (DIDM) technique.This technique is then applied to a case study in Northeast Brazil, in which the social impacts of a large transport project are analysed. Whilst many transport infrastructure projects have been advertised as key investments to promote regional economic growth, the results show that positive socioeconomic effects arising from these investments may not be captured by the least advantage groups of society. Findings subscribe to the view that transport infrastructure investments broadly contribute to the reduction of multidimensional poverty. This conclusion is particularly illustrated in this case study by the greater positive impacts in eleven socioeconomic indicators of the municipalities on the region of this transport project.

Sustainability in the evaluation of bus rapid transportation projects considering both managers and passengers perspectives: A triple-level efficiency evaluation approach

The significant positive and negatives effects of transportation systems (TSs) on the sustainability of cities and human life draw much attention from both researchers and managers. Constructing bus rapid transit (BRT) networks, or adding new lines to the existing ones, is one of the cheapest and easiest solutions to improve the performance of the urban transportation network (UTN). Often, large number of candidate projects (BRT lines) renders the execution of all these projects impossible due to technical and financial limitations. Hence, evaluating the candidate projects and developing the best plan for constructing a BRT network is an important issue requiring a complex decision-making process. In this study, a multi-period triple-level sustainable BRT network design model has been proposed using data envelopment analysis, game theory, Malmquist Index (MI) and considering all sustainability dimensions including environment, economic and society. Both managers’ and passengers’ perspectives have been considered in the modeling. A procedure based on a genetic algorithm (GA) has been developed to solve the presented triple-level model. Finally, the model has been applied to a real-world case study of evaluating and selecting the BRT projects in the city of Isfahan, and the results have been analyzed.

Consumer’s Surplus: An Equity Measure of High Speed Rail Investments

An economic analysis identifies, measures, and compares the costs and benefits of alternative interventions, with the objective of supporting decisions concerning the best use of limited resources. The cost benefit analysis (CBA) has played a significant role within the entire decision-making process, and is the principal assessment methodology. In recent years, equity issues in relation to transportation planning have become a hot topic at an international level. In this paper, the objective was to integrate equity within the evaluation of transport projects, specifically high speed rail projects. Here, consumer surplus is conceived as a monetized measure of both direct and indirect benefits for all zones, and for all socioeconomic categories served and not served by HSR, respectively. The added value of this paper is in rethinking these two shares in the computation of the total net present value as equity measures of the project itself. Specifically, the distribution of the HSR benefits among the different groups or zones in a given study area can be computed, and a comparison of the values for each zone of the study area and for each category makes it possible to assess the effects of equity between zones/categories.

Measuring the Regional Economic Impact of Transportation Access Improvements in the Context of a Large Metropolitan Region

Transportation planners are increasingly recognizing the importance of access in enabling employment growth and better paying job opportunities for residents. Although regional economic impact analysis is often an important element of transportation investment evaluation by state departments of transportation, it can be particularly challenging for metropolitan area planners because existing economic modeling methods do not fully account for the multifaceted roles that transportation links play in affecting access within large, polycentric metropolitan areas. This article examines these issues and presents information from a study of the Chicago region, to evaluate statistical relationships of employment cluster size and wage levels to zonal differences in business-to-business connectivity and population connectivity. It presents elasticities of employment and wage impact associated with various access measures for different sectors of the economy. These findings point to the importance of transportation planners considering the impacts on connectivity to both population markets and employment centers when evaluating the potential economic implications of proposed transportation system improvements in large, polycentric metropolitan areas. The article then lays out directions for future research and practice to improve transportation project evaluation and planning.

Day-to-Day Dynamic Multivehicle Assignment: Deterministic Process Models

In the near future, transportation systems modelers and planners will likely be challenged by more complex scenarios. This is due to the different types of vehicles that include different (i) powertrains (conventional, hybrid, electric, etc.), (ii) ownerships (privately-owned vs. shared vehicles), and (iii) levels of automation (from human-driven to fully autonomous). All these different vehicle types compete for the same arcs and jointly participate to congestion. Thus, existing methods for travel demand assignment to a transportation network, the main tools for transportation systems analysis to support transportation project assessment and evaluation, need to be extended to cope with mixed traffic. In this paper, deterministic process models for day-to-day dynamic multivehicle assignment are presented, including fixed-point models for equilibrium assignment as a special case. Vehicle types may be distinguished with respect to several parameters, such as flow equivalence coefficient, occupancy factor, cost equivalence coefficient, and behavioral parameters. Results of an application to a toy network are also discussed showing that advanced vehicles (AVs) may or may not have a positive effect of equilibrium stability.

Economic evaluation of transportation projects based on different financing methods: at the framework of financial computable general equilibrium model

Purpose- The purpose of this study is to develop a first fully functional Turkish Financial Computable General Equilibrium (FCGE) model that analyzes the economic impacts of infrastructure investment projects under different financing options. We examine three alterantive financing methods, i.e., public financing with tax revenues and government bonds, public financing with region specific tax policy and private financing. Methodology- The study employs Financial Computable General Equilibrium (FCGE) model. The FCGE model integrates the real economy with the financial one, and traces the flows of financial and real resources among economic agents at the same time. Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models typically are comparative static equilibrium models of interregional trade and location based in microeconomics, using utility and production functions with substitution between inputs. The transport system enters the spatial economy through the costs of transport services. Transport sub models are applied to feed CGE models with cost changes in the transport sector as a result of policy measures. Our model is composed of a multi-regional financial CGE model and a transport network model. Turkish Multi Regional Computable General Equilibrium model constitutes of 11 regions. The model includes ten producers, one regional household, one national (or central) government and the rest of the world. Findings- The model is designed to analyze the economic effects of fiscal policies such as the transportation investment expenditures and alternative financing approaches on economic growth and welfare. It is possible to estimate growth and distributional effects of each project based on the financing method once the information on the investment expenditures, the construction location and the changes in the accessibility generated by the project are injected into the FCGE model. As a first attempt, we builded a Financial Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Turkey that FCGE models need, containing the details of financial institutions and transaction of agents’ assets and liabilities. The model specifies the behaviours of ten different sectors, one household, a central government, and the rest of the world. The model is designed to analyze the impacts of highway development with different financing strategies. We examine three alterantive financing methods: it can (a) public financing with tax revenues and government bonds, (b) public financing with region specific tax policy or (c) private financing. Conclusion- The main contribution of this research is to develop a first fully functional FCGE model to analyze the economic impacts of the infrastructure investment projects and their financing options on growth and welfare in Turkish economy. We develop a first fully functional Turkish Financial Computable General Equilibrium (FCGE) model that analyzes the economic impacts of infrastructure investment projects under different financing options. There are a number of ways to finance highway infrastructure investment: fuel taxes, user fees, trust funds etc. This Financial CGE model is expected to assess the consistency of highway investment programs under different financing options, so the government can make a decision on an approval for the project based according to their benefits and costs on national level.

Workshop 7 report: Assessing the wider benefits of public transport projects

Workshop 7 concluded that the terminology, ‘wider benefits’, tends to reinforce a narrow impact assessment-based approach to transport policy and project evaluation. Participants argued that a preferred approach is to concentrate on identifying (triple bottom line) societal goals and identifying initiatives to achieve those goals, in which case ‘wider benefits’ become core rather than add-ons. This shifts the planning/policy cycle focus to the starting point: need identification and initiative definition, as distinct from narrowly based impact assessment of initiatives conceived elsewhere. Against this background, Workshop papers examined a range of economic and social goals whose achievement can be enhanced, or set back, by transport initiatives, considering issues such as land use transport integration, land value uplift, customer amenity benefits, new technologies, social justice and mobility-related social exclusion, together with ways to identify those at risk of such exclusion and engage them in initiative identification and assessment. Recommendations for policy and research are outlined, together with discussion suggestions for Thredbo 17.

ANALYSIS OF APPROACHES TO ASSESSING THE ECONOMIC COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE TIME PARAMETERS OF URBAN TRANSPORT SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING

The directions of economic assessment of the costs associated with the time of transport movements of the urban population have been described. It has been shown, that solving the problem of improving the reliability of urban transport leads to saving passengers` time and the possibility of using the resulting savings in a more productive way, therefore, the calculation of the cost estimate of the change in travel time can be taken into account when choosing to implement a particular transport project, to assess the costs and results of public investment or regulatory impacts. A model of economic efficiency evaluation of transport projects, based on accounting of reduction in average travel time of urban population and improving the reliability of transport correspondences of urban transport has been proposed.

Comparing values of travel time obtained from workplace and short-term decisions

The value of travel time is an important element in cost-benefit analysis of transportation projects, by encapsulating the willingness to pay of the population for improvements in the transport system. Those values are typically obtained from mobility behavior data from revealed or stated preference surveys. Although short-term decisions are typically used for this purpose, a growing number of authors is arguing that long-term decisions might provide more meaningful values for the evaluation of transportation projects, as those decisions have a longer-lasting effect on the experienced travel times. This paper uses data which contains both short- and long-term experiments to investigate the impact of different time horizons on the valuation of time. Using a joint model including all short term, together with workplace choice situations, the differences in the valuation of time coming from different kinds of experiments are investigated. The results reveal difficulties to isolate the willingness to pay from other aspects of monetary compensation, such as income as a status or career progression symbol. The results confirm that the chosen time horizon has a significant effect on the valuation of travel time and cost. The richer data, compared to previous attempts at such an estimation, does reveal, however, potential pitfalls in the underlying theory, namely that there is a perfect substitution between travel costs and income. In particular, focusing on salary neutral situations instead of situations with salary gains changes the direction of the effect of long term decisions. Recommendations are derived for forthcoming studies.

Analytical framework for ex‐post evaluation of transport projects: Lessons learnt on retrospective CBA

AbstractThis study deals with the ex‐post evaluation of ten major transport projects which were co‐financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund in the period 2000–2013 and located across nine EU Member States. The original contribution of this study is represented by the combination of the traditional ex‐post Cost–Benefit approach with a qualitative analysis. Specifically, a retrospective Cost–Benefit analysis is used to quantify the benefits and costs of the projects, then interviews to relevant stakeholders were carried out. Ex‐post CBA, when appropriately implemented and integrated with qualitative evidence, represents a powerful tool for supporting decision‐making processes and for policy lessons.

Planning transport for social inclusion: An accessibility-activity participation approach

Social equity is increasingly becoming an important objective in transport planning and project evaluation. This paper provides a framework and an empirical investigation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) examining the links between public transit accessibility and the risks of social exclusion, simply understood as the suppressed ability to conduct daily activities at normal levels. Specifically, we use a large-sample travel survey to present a new transport-geography concept termed participation deserts, neighbourhood-level clusters of lower than expected activity participation. We then use multivariate models to estimate where, and for whom, improvements in transit accessibility will effectively increase activity participation and reduce risks of transport-related social exclusion. Our results show that neighbourhoods with high concentrations of low-income and zero-car households located outside of major transit corridors are the most sensitive to having improvements in accessibility increase daily activity participation rates. We contend that transit investments providing better connections to these neighbourhoods would have the greatest benefit in terms of alleviating existing inequalities and reducing the risks of social exclusion. The ability for transport investments to liberate suppressed activity participation is not currently being predicted or valued in existing transport evaluation methodologies, but there is great potential in doing so in order to capture the social equity benefits associated with increasing transit accessibility.

Distribution Characteristics of the Transportation Network in China at the County Level

Evaluation of the rationality of transportation network distribution and its impact on social and economic development have great significance for building an efficient and comprehensive transportation system, which is also an important research topic in economic geography and regional economics. Because evaluation indicators to express the characteristics of transportation network distribution at the macro scale are lacking, this paper selects three indicators-highway network density, transportation network proximity, and location dominance related to the central city-to form the basis of an integrated transportation network distribution index for characterizing China's transportation network distribution using geographical information system technology in 2015. The research shows that transportation network distribution is low in most Chinese counties, and that there are obvious differences in distribution between counties in the east and west in addition to identifying multiple dense areas of transport layout distribution. Transportation network distribution is intrinsically coupled with social economic development: the more complete are transportation network facilities, the greater the population density, and the higher the level of economic development. The results highlight the need to focus on strengthening population concentration and economic development in areas with good transportation network distribution. The study can guide the optimization of transportation network structures and provide a macro decision-making reference for planning and evaluation of major transportation projects in China.

Decade-Long Changes in Disparity and Distribution of Transit Opportunity in Shenzhen China: A Transportation Equity Perspective

Efficiency and equity have always been the two points of focus of transport projects. Compared with efficiency, equity is easily overlooked in the evaluation of transport projects. Many studies emphasize that defining and operationalizing costs and benefits and the distributive principle are critical parts in the assessment of transportation equity. However, the scope and time frame of the assessment target are also critical. In this paper, we took China’s fastest urbanizing city, Shenzhen, as a case study to assess transport equity by comparing accessibility among groups. First, the public transport system was divided into bus and subway, and the residents were divided into two groups: urban village and nonurban village. Second, we adopted an enhanced potential opportunity model to measure residents’ bus and subway accessibility and summarized them as transit opportunity. Third, we used the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition and kernel density estimation method to explore the fair distribution of transit opportunity among groups and districts from 2011 to 2020. Decade-long changes in disparity and distribution of transit opportunity gave us a clear picture. On the one hand, the development of Shenzhen public transport system had a positive effect. All populations are benefiting, and their accessibility is increasing. On the other hand, it also had a negative effect to exacerbate inequality between populations. For the absolute value of the opportunity, Shenzhen’s urban village populations do have fewer transportation opportunities than nonurban villages, and this gap between them will be wider more and more. The public transport system is more inclined to improve the population with high initial opportunity and make them higher. The results illustrated the importance of examining transportation equity over an extended period and could provide information on urban development strategies.

Trip chaining propensity and tour mode choice of out-of-home workers: evidence from a mid-sized Canadian city

Suburban development patterns, flexible work hours, and increasing participation in out-of-home activities are making the travel patterns of individuals more complex, and complex trip chaining could be a major barrier to the shift from drive-alone to public transport. This study introduces a cohort-based approach to analyse trip tour behaviors, in order to better understand and model their relationships to socio-demographics, trip attributes, and land use patterns. Specifically, it employs worker population cohorts with homogenous activity patterns to explore differences and similarities in tour frequency, trip chaining, and tour mode choices, all of which are required for travel demand modeling. The paper shows how modeling of these important tour variables may be improved, for integration into an activity-based modeling framework. Using data from the Space–Time Activity Research (STAR) survey for Halifax, Canada, five clusters of workers were identified from their activity travel patterns. These were labeled as extended workers, 8 to 4 workers, shorter work-day workers, 7 to 3 workers, and 9 to 5 workers. The number of home-based tours per day for all clusters were modeled using a Poisson regression model. Trip chaining was then modeled using an Ordered Probit model, and tour mode choice was modeled using a Multinomial logit (MNL) model. Statistical analysis showed that socio-demographic characteristics and tour attributes are significant predictors of travel behavior, consistent with existing literature. Urban form characteristics also have a significant influence on non-workers’ travel behavior and tour complexity. The findings of this study will assist in the future evaluation of transportation projects, and in land-use policymaking.

Environmental sustainable decision making– The need and obstacles for integration of LCA into decision analysis

Decision analysis is often used to help decision makers choose among alternatives, based on the expected utility associated to each alternative as function of its consequences and potential impacts. Environmental impacts are not always among the prioritized concerns of traditional decision making. This has fostered the development of several environmental problems and is nowadays a reason of concern. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can assess an extensive range of environmental impacts associated with a product or service system and support a life cycle perspective on the alternative products or service systems, revealing potential problem shifting between life cycle stages. Through the integration with traditional risk based decision analysis, LCA may thus facilitate a better informed decision process. In this study we explore how environmental impacts are taken into account in different fields of interest for decision makers to identify the need, potential and obstacles for integrating LCA into conventional approaches to decision problems. Three application areas are used as examples: transportation planning, flood management, and food production and consumption. The analysis of these cases shows that environmental impacts are considered only to a limited extent in traditional evaluation of transport and food projects. They are rarely, if at all, addressed in flood risk management. Hence, in each of the three cases studied, there is a clear need for the inclusion of a better and systematic assessment of environmental impacts. Some LCA studies have been conducted in all three research areas, mainly on infrastructures and production systems. The three cases show the potential of integrating LCA into existing decision analysis by providing the environmental profiles of the alternatives. However, due to different goals and scopes of LCA and other decision analysis approaches, there is a general lack of consistency in study system scoping in terms of considered elements and boundaries, in uncertainty treatment, and in applied metrics. In the present paper, we discuss the obstacles arising when trying to integrate LCA with conventional evaluation tools and we propose a research agenda to eventually make such integration feasible and consistent.

Trip chaining and tour mode choice of non-workers grouped by daily activity patterns

Transportation planners are increasingly looking to reduce drive-alone travel. However, the existence of complex tours could be a major barrier to the shift from drive-alone to public transport. This is particularly problematical for the non-worker segment of the population (most of whom are women and/or older adults). To better understand how socio-demographics, trip attributes, and land use pattern shape tour complexity and mode choices for individuals, this paper introduces a cluster-based approach to model tour complexity, trip chaining, and tour mode choice. Based on daily activity patterns and time-use, five non-worker clusters were identified from the Space-Time Activity Research (STAR) data for Halifax, Canada. Number of tours per day for all clusters was modeled using a Poisson regression model. Trip chaining was then modeled using an Ordered Probit model. Finally, tour mode choice was modeled using a Multinomial Logit (MNL) model. This framework utilizes home-based travel tours, the sequence of trips that begin and end at home, as the basic unit of analysis. Results show that socio-demographic characteristics and tour attributes are strong explanatory factors of travel behavior, consistent with existing literature. Also, urban form characteristics have significant influence on non-workers' travel behaviour and tour complexity. This paper also offers a typology of travel tours to account for different non-work travel purposes. The findings of this study will improve the future evaluation of transportation projects and land-use policymaking.