Cost–benefit analysis ( CBA ), sometimes also called benefit–cost analysis , is a systematic approach to estimating the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives. It is used to determine options which provide the best approach to achieving benefits while preserving savings in, for example, transactions, activities, and functional business requirements. A CBA may be used to compare completed or potential courses of action, and to estimate or evaluate the value against the cost of a decision, project, or policy. It is commonly used to evaluate business or policy decisions (particularly public policy ), commercial transactions, and project investments. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission must conduct cost-benefit analyses before instituting regulations or deregulations.
100-610: The Big Move is the regional transportation plan (RTP) published by Metrolinx for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) in Ontario, Canada. It makes specific recommendations for transit projects, resulting from seven " green papers " and two " white papers " released for public discussion. A draft RTP was released alongside draft investment strategy in September 2008. After a series of stakeholder consultations and public meetings,
200-447: A National Historic Site that was built and opened in 1927, the station had been showing its age: peeling paint, cracked and damaged floors, leaky roofs, and crowded and inefficient passenger concourse spaces that were designed in the 1970s. The current work being undertaken includes excavation work to dramatically expand the existing GO and Via Rail concourses and create a floor dedicated to retail space, establishing new connections to
300-419: A utilitarian perspective. Assuming an accurate CBA, changing the status quo by implementing the alternative with the lowest cost–benefit ratio can improve Pareto efficiency . Although CBA can offer an informed estimate of the best alternative, a perfect appraisal of all present and future costs and benefits is difficult; perfection, in economic efficiency and social welfare, is not guaranteed. The value of
400-546: A 1963 government publication, Traffic in Towns . The contemporary Smeed Report on congestion pricing was initially promoted to manage demand but was deemed politically unacceptable. In more recent times, the approach has been caricatured as "predict and provide" to predict future transport demand and provide the network for it, usually by building more roads . The publication of Planning Policy Guidance 13 in 1994 (revised in 2001), followed by A New Deal for Transport in 1998 and
500-522: A Harmonized Sales Tax increase, and more on a gas tax increase. In March 2014, Wynne rejected the proposal to raise taxes to fund the RTP outright, in the lead-up to the 2014 Ontario general election . A formal Investment Strategy has not been implemented to date, and the Ontario government has opted to raise funds for transportation project through its green bond program and the partial sale of Hydro One . Transportation planning Transportation planning
600-405: A common basis in terms of their net present value , regardless of whether they are incurred at different times. Other related techniques include cost–utility analysis , risk–benefit analysis , economic impact analysis , fiscal impact analysis, and social return on investment (SROI) analysis. Cost–benefit analysis is often used by organizations to appraise the desirability of a given policy. It
700-678: A common temporal footing, using time value of money calculations. This is often done by converting the future expected streams of costs ( C {\displaystyle C} ) and benefits ( B {\displaystyle B} ) into a present value amount with a discount rate ( r {\displaystyle r} ) and the net present value defined as: NPV = ∑ t = 0 ∞ B t − C t ( 1 + r ) t {\displaystyle {\text{NPV}}=\sum _{t=0}^{\infty }{B_{t}-C_{t} \over {(1+r)^{t}}}} The selection of
800-462: A cost–benefit analysis depends on the accuracy of the individual cost and benefit estimates. Comparative studies indicate that such estimates are often flawed, preventing improvements in Pareto and Kaldor–Hicks efficiency . Interest groups may attempt to include (or exclude) significant costs in an analysis to influence its outcome. The concept of CBA dates back to an 1848 article by Jules Dupuit , and
900-417: A discount rate for this calculation is subjective. A smaller rate values the current generation and future generations equally. Larger rates (a market rate of return, for example) reflects human present bias or hyperbolic discounting : valuing money which they will receive in the near future more than money they will receive in the distant future. Empirical studies suggest that people discount future benefits in
1000-402: A financial value to the life. However, non-monetary metrics have limited usefulness for evaluating policies with substantially different outcomes. Other benefits may also accrue from a policy, and metrics such as cost per life saved may lead to a substantially different ranking of alternatives than CBA.In some cases, in addition to changing the benefit indicator, the cost-benefit analysis strategy
1100-425: A higher weight. One reason for this is that for high income people, one monetary unit is worth less relative to low income people, so they are more willing to give up one unit in order to make a change that is favourable for them. This means that there is no symmetry in agents, i.e. some people benefit more from the same absolute monetary benefit. Any welfare change, no matter positive or negative, affects people with
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#17328560418441200-421: A logical and technical process that uses the analysis of quantitative data to decide how to best invest resources in new and existing transport infrastructure. Since World War II, this attitude in planning has resulted in the widespread use of travel modelling as a key component of regional transport planning. The models' rise in popularity can also be attributed to a rapid increase in the number of automobiles on
1300-470: A lower income stronger than people with a higher income, even if the exact monetary impacts are identical. This is more than just a challenge to the distribution of benefits in CBA, it is a critique of the ability of CBA to accurately measure benefits as, according to this critique, using unweighted absolute willingness to pay overstates the costs and benefits to the wealthy, and understates those costs and benefits to
1400-718: A more equitable manner. The complete streets movement entails many of the CSS principles as well as pedestrian, bicycle and older adult movements to improve transportation in the United States. These recent pushes for changes to the profession of transportation planning has led to the development of a professional certification program by the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the Professional Transportation Planner in 2007. In response an advanced form of certification -
1500-479: A multidisciplinary approach, especially due to the rising importance of environmentalism . For example, the use of behavioural psychology to persuade drivers to abandon their automobiles and use public transport instead. The role of the transport planner is shifting from technical analysis to promoting sustainability through integrated transport policies . For example, in Hanoi , the increasing number of motorcycles
1600-419: A number of drawbacks and limitations. A number of critical arguments have been put forward in response. That include concerns about measuring the distribution of costs and benefits, discounting the costs and benefits to future generations, and accounting for the diminishing marginal utility of income. in addition, relying solely on cost-benefit analysis may lead to neglecting the multifaceted value factors of
1700-460: A policy is inexact at best. Surveys (stated preferences) or market behavior ( revealed preferences ) are often used to estimate compensation associated with a policy. Stated preferences are a direct way of assessing willingness to pay for an environmental feature, for example. Survey respondents often misreport their true preferences, however, and market behavior does not provide information about important non-market welfare impacts. Revealed preference
1800-670: A project. CBA has been criticized in some disciplines as it relies on the Kaldor-Hicks criterion which does not take into account distributional issues. This means, that positive net-benefits are decisive, independent of who benefits and who loses when a certain policy or project is put into place. Phaneuf and Requate phrased it as follows "CBA today relies on the Kaldor-Hicks criteria to make statements about efficiency without addressing issues of income distribution. This has allowed economists to stay silent on issues of equity, while focusing on
1900-434: A regional boundary, making transit unattractive. Investment in transit has been relatively stagnant, causing roads, highways and transit vehicles to be crowded and pushed to the limit. In the face of climate change , increasing energy costs, increasing urbanization, and an aging population, the RTP exists to alleviate these problems. The Big Move conducted modelling to forecast what the impact of its implementation would be in
2000-615: A regional fare card, in 2007. Presto was later made an operating division of Metrolinx. Presto is available on GO Transit, the Union Pearson Express, and eight municipal transit agencies in the GTHA (Brampton, Burlington, Durham Region, Hamilton, Mississauga, Oakville, TTC and York Region). Fares are often cheaper than standard cash fare, and most municipal transit agencies will reduce their fare to between $ 0.50 and $ 0.75 for transferring to GO Transit. There are 10 unique fare structures across
2100-499: A seamlessly integrated regional rapid transit network consisting of 62 different rapid transit projects. These projects form two long-term templates with 15 and 25-year horizons. These templates outline broad projects; specific details about technology, alignment, stations and service levels for each project are subsequently determined though a cost–benefit analysis , or an environmental assessment process. Having high-order transit connectivity to Toronto Pearson International Airport
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#17328560418442200-414: A theoretical foundation on the societal worth or benefit of a project. The cost of the project proved much simpler to calculate. Simply taking the sum of the materials and labor, in addition to the maintenance afterward, would give one the cost. Now, the costs and benefits of the project could be accurately analyzed, and an informed decision could be made. The Corps of Engineers initiated the use of CBA in
2300-618: A variety of software tools, including HERS, BCA.Net, StatBenCost, Cal-BC, and TREDIS . Guides are available from the Federal Highway Administration , Federal Aviation Administration , Minnesota Department of Transportation , California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and the Transportation Research Board 's Transportation Economics Committee. In health economics , CBA may be an inadequate measure because willingness-to-pay methods of determining
2400-405: A way similar to these calculations. The choice makes a large difference in assessing interventions with long-term effects. An example is the equity premium puzzle , which suggests that long-term returns on equities may be higher than they should be after controlling for risk and uncertainty. If so, market rates of return should not be used to determine the discount rate because they would undervalue
2500-473: Is Canada's busiest passenger facility and "the heart of the GTHA's transportation system", handling 240,000 people daily, or 65 million annually. However, it was forecast in 2011 that passenger traffic was expected to quadruple in the following 25 years as a result of improvements that are called for in the Big Move plan, and Union Station would be at or over capacity without dramatic modifications. Furthermore, being
2600-482: Is a direct correspondence between the form of a maximum entropy distribution and the exponential family . Examples of commonly used continuous maximum entropy distributions in simulations include: The increased use of CBA in the US regulatory process is often associated with President Ronald Reagan 's administration. Although CBA in US policy-making dates back several decades, Reagan's Executive Order 12291 mandated its use in
2700-450: Is a major transit station and the immediate surrounding area, where different forms of transportation come together, serving as the origin, destination or transfer point for a significant amount of trips. The Big Move calls for "a system of connected mobility hubs” that allow seamless access to and transfers within the regional transit system. The mobility hubs also support higher density development. Metrolinx has profiled 51 mobility hubs in
2800-421: Is an analysis of the expected balance of benefits and costs, including an account of any alternatives and the status quo . CBA helps predict whether the benefits of a policy outweigh its costs (and by how much), relative to other alternatives. This allows the ranking of alternative policies in terms of a cost–benefit ratio. Generally, accurate cost–benefit analysis identifies choices which increase welfare from
2900-568: Is an indirect approach to individual willingness to pay. People make market choices of items with different environmental characteristics, for example, revealing the value placed on environmental factors. The value of human life is controversial when assessing road-safety measures or life-saving medicines. Controversy can sometimes be avoided by using the related technique of cost–utility analysis, in which benefits are expressed in non-monetary units such as quality-adjusted life years . Road safety can be measured in cost per life saved, without assigning
3000-478: Is closely interrelated to the public nature of government works projects. As a result, transportation planners play both a technical and a coordinating role. Politicians often have vastly differing perspectives, goals and policy desires. Transportation planners help by providing information to decision makers, such as politicians, in a manner that produces beneficial outcomes. This role is similar to transportation engineers, who are often equally influenced by politics in
3100-718: Is directly abandoned as a measure. In the 1980s, to ensure workers' safety, the US Supreme Court made an important decision to abandon the consideration of return on investment and instead seek the lowest cost-benefit to meet specific standards. Another metric is valuing the environment, which in the 21st century is typically assessed by valuing ecosystem services to humans (such as air and water quality and pollution ). Monetary values may also be assigned to other intangible effects such as business reputation, market penetration, or long-term enterprise strategy alignment. CBA generally attempts to put all relevant costs and benefits on
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3200-449: Is governed by OMB Circular A-4 . CBA attempts to measure the positive or negative consequences of a project. A similar approach is used in the environmental analysis of total economic value . Both costs and benefits can be diverse. Costs tend to be most thoroughly represented in cost–benefit analyses due to relatively-abundant market data. The net benefits of a project may incorporate cost savings, public willingness to pay (implying that
3300-556: Is less laborious and time-consuming, since it does not involve the monetization of outcomes (which can be difficult in some cases). It has been argued that if modern cost–benefit analyses had been applied to decisions such as whether to mandate the removal of lead from gasoline, block the construction of two proposed dams just above and below the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River , and regulate workers' exposure to vinyl chloride ,
3400-516: Is possible to use different methods. One is to use weights, and there are a number of different approaches for calculating these weights. Often, a Bergson- Samuelson social welfare function is used and weights are calculated according to the willingness-to-pay of people. Another method is to use percentage willingness to pay, where willingness to pay is measured as a percentage of total income or wealth to control for income. These methods would also help to address distributional concerns raised by
3500-444: Is responsible for not only environmental damage but also slowing down economic growth. In the long run, the plan is to reduce traffic through a change in urban planning . Through economic incentives and attractive alternatives experts hope to lighten traffic in the short run. While quantitative methods of observing transport patterns are considered foundation in transport planning, the role of qualitative and mixed-methods analysis and
3600-426: Is the process of defining future policies, goals, investments , and spatial planning designs to prepare for future needs to move people and goods to destinations. As practiced today, it is a collaborative process that incorporates the input of many stakeholders including various government agencies, the public and private businesses. Transportation planners apply a multi-modal and/or comprehensive approach to analyzing
3700-416: Is the second priority action in the Big Move. The RTP identifies the following transit corridors, some of which are now in planning or construction: With Pearson Airport and Union Station in downtown Toronto being seen as the two most important mobility hubs in the GTHA, the RTP specifically identified an airport rail link as being necessary between them. Discussions and studies regarding a transit link to
3800-743: Is the support set of a probability density function f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} . Suppose that we impose a series of constraints that must be satisfied: where the last equality is a series of moment conditions. Maximizing the entropy with these constraints leads to the functional : J = max f ∫ S ( − f log f + λ 0 f + ∑ i = 1 m λ i r i f ) d x {\displaystyle J=\max _{f}\;\int _{\mathcal {S}}\left(-f\log f+\lambda _{0}f+\sum _{i=1}^{m}\lambda _{i}r_{i}f\right)dx} where
3900-622: Is to make use of the principle of maximum entropy , which states that the distribution with the best representation of current knowledge is the one with the largest entropy - defined for continuous distributions as: H ( X ) = E [ − log f ( X ) ] = − ∫ S f ( x ) log f ( x ) d x {\displaystyle H(X)=\mathbb {E} \left[-\log f(X)\right]=-\int _{\mathcal {S}}f(x)\log f(x)dx} where S {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}}
4000-414: The β i {\displaystyle \beta _{i}} terms correspond to the factor loadings. A generalization of these methods can be found in arbitrage pricing theory , which allows for an arbitrary number of risk premiums in the calculation of the required return. Risk associated with project outcomes is usually handled with probability theory . Although it can be factored into
4100-522: The λ i {\displaystyle \lambda _{i}} are Lagrange multipliers . Maximizing this functional leads to the form of a maximum entropy distribution: f ( x ) = exp [ λ 0 − 1 + ∑ i = 1 m λ i r i ( x ) ] {\displaystyle f(x)=\exp \left[\lambda _{0}-1+\sum _{i=1}^{m}\lambda _{i}r_{i}(x)\right]} There
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4200-522: The Clinton administration during the 1990s. Clinton furthered the anti-regulatory environment with his Executive Order 12866 . The order changed some of Reagan's language, requiring benefits to justify (rather than exceeding) costs and adding "reduction of discrimination or bias" as a benefit to be analyzed. Criticisms of CBA (including uncertainty valuations, discounting future values, and the calculation of risk) were used to argue that it should play no part in
4300-1072: The Fama-French model : r = r f ⏟ Risk-Free Rate + β M [ E ( r M ) − r f ] ⏟ Market Risk + β S M B [ E ( r S ) − E ( r B ) ] ⏟ Size Factor + β H M L [ E ( r H ) − E ( r L ) ] ⏟ Value Factor {\displaystyle r=\underbrace {r_{f}} _{\text{Risk-Free Rate}}+\beta _{M}\underbrace {\left[\mathbb {E} (r_{M})-r_{f}\right]} _{\text{Market Risk}}+\beta _{SMB}\underbrace {\left[\mathbb {E} (r_{S})-\mathbb {E} (r_{B})\right]} _{\text{Size Factor}}+\beta _{HML}\underbrace {\left[\mathbb {E} (r_{H})-\mathbb {E} (r_{L})\right]} _{\text{Value Factor}}} where
4400-520: The Federal Highway Administration announced that under one of its three Vital Few Objectives (Environmental Stewardship and Streamlining) they set the target of achieving CSS integration within all state Departments of Transportation by September 2007. In recent years, there has been a movement to provide "complete" transportation corridors under the " complete streets " movement. In response to auto-centric design of transportation networks, complete streets encompass all users and modes of transportation in
4500-469: The Gordon–Loeb model for decisions concerning cybersecurity investments). CBA's application to broader public policy began with the work of Otto Eckstein , who laid out a welfare economics foundation for CBA and its application to water-resource development in 1958. It was applied in the US to water quality, recreational travel, and land conservation during the 1960s, and the concept of option value
4600-511: The Monte Carlo method . However, even a low parameter of uncertainty does not guarantee the success of a project. Suppose that we have sources of uncertainty in a CBA that are best treated with the Monte Carlo method, and the distributions describing uncertainty are all continuous. How do we go about choosing the appropriate distribution to represent the sources of uncertainty? One popular method
4700-584: The PATH network , increasing the number of entrances, implementing energy efficiency measures and restoring heritage elements. Future work could include a new train tunnel for the GO Transit Lakeshore lines, with a new station being built slightly east of Union. There are 10 public transit agencies in the GTHA with individual fare systems. This forced some commuters to have multiple fare payment types. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation began trials for Presto,
4800-563: The poor , the elderly and the disabled . These documents reiterated the emphasis on integration: This attempt to reverse decades of underinvestment in the transport system has resulted in a severe shortage of transport planners. It was estimated in 2003 that 2,000 new planners would be required by 2010 to avoid jeopardizing the success of the Transport Ten Year Plan. In 2006, the Transport Planning Society defined
4900-406: The rational planning model of defining goals and objectives, identifying problems, generating alternatives, evaluating alternatives, and developing plans. Other models for planning include rational actor , transit oriented development , satisficing , incremental planning , organizational process , collaborative planning , and political bargaining . Planners are increasingly expected to adopt
5000-408: The white paper Transport Ten Year Plan 2000 again indicated an acceptance that unrestrained growth in road traffic was neither desirable nor feasible. The worries were threefold: concerns about congestion , concerns about the effect of road traffic on the environment (both natural and built ) and concerns that an emphasis on road transport discriminates against vulnerable groups in society such as
5100-513: The "soft" aspects of planning that are not really necessary, they are absolutely essential to ensuring that the models used in second phase are accurate and complete . The second phase is technical analysis. The process involves much technical maneuvering, but basically the development of the models can be broken down as follows. Before beginning, the MPO collects enormous amounts of data. This data can be thought of as falling into two categories: data about
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#17328560418445200-655: The Advanced Specialty Certification in Transportation Planning was developed by the American Planning Association thereafter in 2011. The Certified Transportation Planner credential is only available for those professional planners (AICP members) who have at a minimum of eight years of transportation planning experience. Most regional transport planners employ what is called the rational model of planning. The model views planning as
5300-456: The EU's Sixth Framework Programme , reviewed transport appraisal guidance of EU member states and found significant national differences. HEATCO aimed to develop guidelines to harmonise transport appraisal practice across the EU. Transport Canada promoted CBA for major transport investments with the 1994 publication of its guidebook. US federal and state transport departments commonly apply CBA with
5400-460: The FHWA and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) (2007), generally follows a pattern which can be divided into three different stages. Over the course of each of three phases, the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is also supposed to consider air quality and environmental issues, look at planning questions in a fiscally constrained way and involve the public. In the first stage, called preanalysis,
5500-433: The GTHA, collecting data within an 800-metre radius of each of them. In some hubs, Metrolinx undertakes detailed studies. For some hubs, these studies provide a broad plan for how the mobility hub should look and work over the long term, by informing more detailed planning, supporting future growth, and ensuring land use and transportation plans are well integrated. In other hubs, these studies address specific station issues in
5600-400: The GTHA. Metrolinx is also working towards establishing one single fare policy across the region, with the objectives to create one fare structure that is simple and easy to understand, and reflective of the distance travelled and the quality of service. Metrolinx is evaluating fare structures that include a flat fare, or differentiations by mode distance or zones. A transportation mobility hub
5700-500: The Kaldor-Hick criterion. Economic cost-benefit analysis tends to limit the assessment of benefits to economic values, ignoring the importance of other value factors such as the wishes of minority groups, inclusiveness and respect for the rights of others. These value factors are difficult to rank and measure in terms of weighting, yet cost-benefit analysis suffers from the inability to consider these factors comprehensively, thus lacking
5800-536: The MPO considers what problems and issues the region faces and what goals and objectives it can set to help address those issues. During this phase the MPO also collects data on wide variety of regional characteristics, develops a set of different alternatives that will be explored as part of the planning process and creates a list of measurable outcomes that will be used to see whether goals and objectives have been achieved. Johnston notes that many MPOs perform weakly in this area, and though many of these activities seem like
5900-571: The RTP. These green papers were developed and consulted upon in late 2007 and early 2008, with the purpose of presenting information on transportation trends, challenges and opportunities for the GTHA: The next stage was the release of two white papers in May 2008. Paper 1 – Visions, Goals, and Objectives , presented the basis for the final RTP, with specific goals and objectives that could be used for its development and evaluation. A broader proposed vision for
6000-511: The US, after the Federal Navigation Act of 1936 mandated cost–benefit analysis for proposed federal-waterway infrastructure. The Flood Control Act of 1939 was instrumental in establishing CBA as federal policy, requiring that "the benefits to whomever they accrue [be] in excess of the estimated costs." More recently, cost-benefit analysis has been applied to decisions regarding investments in cybersecurity-related activities (e.g., see
6100-435: The airport had been ongoing since the 1980s. Transport Canada began formal calls for proposals in 2001, and a contract was awarded in 2003. The public-private partnership was called off in 2010 after failed negotiations, and Metrolinx was handed responsibility for the project. The Union Pearson Express was completed and began operations on 6 June 2015, offering a 25-minute journey that departs every 15 minutes. Union Station
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#17328560418446200-435: The analysis. Finally, in route assignment, trips are assigned to the network. As particular parts of the network are assigned trips, the vehicle speed slows down, so some trips are assigned to alternate routes in such a way that all trip times are equal. This is important because the ultimate goal is system-wide optimization, not optimization for any one individual. The finished product is traffic flows and speeds for each link in
6300-678: The application of CBA to public policies include the Canadian guide for regulatory analysis, the Australian guide for regulation and finance, and the US guides for health-care and emergency-management programs. CBA for transport investment began in the UK with the M1 motorway project and was later used for many projects, including the London Underground 's Victoria line . The New Approach to Appraisal (NATA)
6400-507: The creation of vital public spaces . The initial guiding principles of CSS came out of the 1998 "Thinking Beyond the Pavement" conference as a means to describe and foster transportation projects that preserve and enhance the natural and built environments, as well as the economic and social assets of the neighborhoods they pass through. CSS principles have since been adopted as guidelines for highway design in federal legislation. Also, in 2003,
6500-411: The data that has been collected. In mode choice , trips are assigned to a mode (usually auto or transit) based on what's available in a particular zone, the characteristics of the household within that zone and the cost of the mode for each mode in terms of money and time. Since most trips by bicycle or walking are generally shorter, they are assumed to have stayed within one zone and are not included in
6600-487: The discount rate (to have uncertainty increasing over time), it is usually considered separately. Particular consideration is often given to agent risk aversion : preferring a situation with less uncertainty to one with greater uncertainty, even if the latter has a higher expected return . Uncertainty in CBA parameters can be evaluated with a sensitivity analysis , which indicates how results respond to parameter changes. A more formal risk analysis may also be undertaken with
6700-598: The distant future. For publicly traded companies, it is possible to find a project's discount rate by using an equilibrium asset pricing model to find the required return on equity for the company and then assuming that the risk profile of a given project is similar to that the company faces. Commonly used models include the capital asset pricing model (CAPM): r = r f + β [ E ( r M ) − r f ] {\displaystyle r=r_{f}+\beta \left[\mathbb {E} (r_{M})-r_{f}\right]} and
6800-498: The entire system was also presented. Paper 2 – Preliminary Directions and Concepts , looked at various policies, programs and tools that could be used in the RTP. There were also various transportation system concepts that were modelled and evaluated based on resulting transit ridership, urban congestion, and the emission of greenhouse gas and other air pollutants . A draft version of the Regional Transportation Plan
6900-405: The final RTP was approved and published by Metrolinx on 28 November 2008. Since its publication, it has been Metrolinx's mandate to implement the RTP, which includes new and improved GO Transit service, local rapid transit, stations, and fare payment systems. There was widespread consensus by community and business leaders in the GTHA that incremental change of the region's transportation system
7000-460: The key purpose of transport planning as: The following key roles must be performed by transport planners: The UK Treasury recognises and has published guidance on the systematic tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic in their initial estimates. Transportation planning in the United States is in the midst of a shift similar to that taking place in the United Kingdom, away from
7100-512: The mandate to develop and implement an integrated multi-modal transportation plan for the GTHA, and "The Big Move" plan was one of Metrolinx's first deliverables. It builds on the $ 11.5 billion MoveOntario 2020 commitment from the Government of Ontario announced on 15 June 2007, and includes new projects to support that initiative. An initial stage of the RTP process was to release a series of " green papers ", documents covering key issues for
7200-469: The measures would not have been implemented (although all are considered highly successful). The US Clean Air Act has been cited in retrospective studies as a case in which benefits exceeded costs, but knowledge of the benefits (attributable largely to the benefits of reducing particulate pollution ) was not available until many years later. A generic cost–benefit analysis has the following steps: In United States regulatory policy, cost-benefit analysis
7300-453: The more familiar task of measuring costs and benefits". The challenge raised is that it is possible for the benefits of successive policies to consistently accrue to the same group of individuals, and CBA is ambivalent between providing benefits to those that have received them in the past and those that have been consistently excluded. Policy solutions, such as progressive taxation can address some of these concerns. Others have critiqued
7400-410: The network. Ideally, these models would include all the different behaviours that are associated with transport, including complex policy questions which are more qualitative in nature. Because of the complexity of transport issues, this is often not possible in practice. This results in models which may estimate future traffic conditions well, but are ultimately based on assumptions made on the part of
7500-430: The planner. Some planners carry out additional sub-system modelling on things like automobile ownership, time of travel, location of land development, location and firms and location of households to help to fill these knowledge gaps, but what are created are nevertheless models, and models always include some level of uncertainty. The post-analysis phase involves plan evaluation, programme implementation and monitoring of
7600-457: The poor. Sometimes this is framed in terms of an argument about democracy, that each person's preferences should be given the same weight in an analysis (one person one vote), while under a standard CBA model the preferences of the wealthy are given greater weight. Taken together, according to this objection, not using weights is a decision in itself – richer people receive de facto a bigger weight. To compensate for this difference in valuation, it
7700-465: The potential harmful impacts of climate change. The growing relevance of climate change has led to a re-examination of the practice of discounting in CBA. These biases can lead to biased resource allocation. The main criticism stems from the diminishing marginal utility of income. According to this critique, without using weights in the CBA, it is not the case that everyone "matters" the same but rather that people with greater ability to pay receive
7800-406: The practice of discounting future costs and benefits for a variety of reasons, including the potential undervaluing of the temporally distant cost of climate change and other environmental damage, and the concern that such a practice effectively ignores the preferences of future generations. Some scholars argue that the use of discounting makes CBA biased against future generations, and understates
7900-496: The public has no legal right to the benefits of the policy), or willingness to accept compensation (implying that the public has a right to the benefits of the policy) for the policy's welfare change. The guiding principle of evaluating benefits is to list all parties affected by an intervention and add the positive or negative value (usually monetary) that they ascribe to its effect on their welfare. The actual compensation an individual would require to have their welfare unchanged by
8000-508: The region is subdivided into a large number of smaller units of analysis called traffic analysis zones (TAZs). Based on the number and characteristics of the households in each zone, a certain number of trips is generated. In the second step, trip distribution, trips are separated out into categories based on their origin and purpose: generally, these categories are home-based work, home-based other and non-home based. In each of three categories, trips are matched to origin and destination zones using
8100-533: The regulatory process. The use of CBA in the regulatory process continued under the Obama administration, along with the debate about its practical and objective value. Some analysts oppose the use of CBA in policy-making, and those in favor of it support improvements in analysis and calculations. As a concept in economics, cost-benefit analysis has provided a valuable reference for many public construction and governmental decisions, but its application has gradually revealed
8200-502: The regulatory process. After campaigning on a deregulation platform, he issued the 1981 EO authorizing the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to review agency regulations and requiring federal agencies to produce regulatory impact analyses when the estimated annual impact exceeded $ 100 million. During the 1980s, academic and institutional critiques of CBA emerged. The three main criticisms were: These criticisms continued under
8300-438: The results. Johnston notes that for evaluation to be meaningful it should be as comprehensive as possible. For example, rather than just looking at decreases in congestion, MPOs should consider economic, equity and environmental issues. Although a transportation planning process may appear to be a rational process based on standard and objective methodologies, it is often influenced by political processes. Transportation planning
8400-412: The road, widespread suburbanization and a large increase in federal or national government spending upon transport in urban areas. All of these phenomena dominated the planning culture in the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Regional transport planning was needed because increasingly cities were not just cities anymore, but parts of a complex regional system. The US process, according to Johnston (2004) and
8500-482: The short and medium term. The Big Move was to be accompanied by an investment strategy, to ensure that capital costs for the GTHA's regional transportation system were funded in a sustainable way. This would require the generation of $ 50 billion for all of the identified projects, which equated to $ 2 billion annually for 25 years. While the RTP outlined the preliminary requirements, an Investment Strategy would be crafted in more detail in separate cover. Metrolinx
8600-524: The single goal of moving vehicular traffic and towards an approach that takes into consideration the communities and lands through which streets, roads, and highways pass ("the context"). More so, it places a greater emphasis on passenger rail networks, which had been neglected until recently. This new approach, known as Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS), seeks to balance the need to move people efficiently and safely with other desirable outcomes, including historic preservation , environmental sustainability , and
8700-466: The sum of each user's willingness to pay, Dupuit illustrated that the social benefit of the thing (bridge or road or canal) could be measured. Some users may be willing to pay nearly nothing, others much more, but the sum of these would shed light on the benefit of it. It should be reiterated that Dupuit was not suggesting that the government perfectly price-discriminate and charge each user exactly what they would pay. Rather, their willingness to pay provided
8800-471: The technical process of transportation engineering design. Transport isochrone maps are a measure of accessibility which can be used by urban planners to evaluate sites. Cost%E2%80%93benefit analysis CBA has two main applications: CBA is related to cost-effectiveness analysis . Benefits and costs in CBA are expressed in monetary terms and are adjusted for the time value of money ; all flows of benefits and costs over time are expressed on
8900-494: The transport system and data about adjacent land use. The best MPOs are constantly collecting this data. The actual analysis tool used in the US is called the Urban Transportation Modeling System (UTMS), though it is often referred to as the four-step process . As its nickname suggestions, UTMS has four steps: trip generation, trip distribution , mode choice and trip/route assignment. In trip generation,
9000-468: The use of critical analytical frameworks has increasingly been recognized as a key aspect of transport planning practice which integrates multiple planning criteria in generating, evaluating, and selection policy and project options. In the United Kingdom , transport planning has traditionally been a branch of civil engineering . In the 1950s and the 1960s, it was generally believed that the motor car
9100-466: The value of human life can be influenced by income level. Variants, such as cost–utility analysis , QALY and DALY to analyze the effects of health policies, may be more suitable. For some environmental effects, cost–benefit analysis can be replaced by cost-effectiveness analysis . This is especially true when one type of physical outcome is sought, such as a reduction in energy use by an increase in energy efficiency. Using cost-effectiveness analysis
9200-450: The wide range of alternatives and impacts on the transportation system to influence beneficial outcomes. Transportation planning is also commonly referred to as transport planning internationally, and is involved with the evaluation, assessment, design, and siting of transport facilities (generally streets , highways , bike lanes , and public transport lines). Transportation planning, or transport planning, has historically followed
9300-405: The year 2031. The proposed regional rapid transit and highway network was expected to achieve significant benefits, even with the additional population. These benefits included reduced commuting times, increased active transportation and reduced environmental impacts. The region's transportation infrastructure has been characterized as neglected from under-investment. The core of the RTP is building
9400-421: Was an important element in the future of transport as economic growth spurred on car ownership figures. The role of the transport planner was to match motorway and rural road capacity against the demands of economic growth. Urban areas would need to be redesigned for the motor vehicle or impose traffic containment and demand management to mitigate congestion and environmental impacts. The policies were popularised in
9500-517: Was developed to represent the non-tangible value of resources such as national parks. CBA was expanded to address the intangible and tangible benefits of public policies relating to mental illness, substance abuse, college education, and chemical waste. In the US, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 required CBA for regulatory programs; since then, other governments have enacted similar rules. Government guidebooks for
9600-420: Was formalized in subsequent works by Alfred Marshall . Jules Dupuit pioneered this approach by first calculating "the social profitability of a project like the construction of a road or bridge" In an attempt to answer this, Dupuit began to look at the utility users would gain from the project. He determined that the best method of measuring utility is by learning one's willingness to pay for something. By taking
9700-583: Was given until June 2013 to draft such a strategy. On 27 May 2013, Metrolinx released its Investment Strategy, which would use the following tools to generate $ 2 billion annually for RTP projects: On 18 September 2013, the Government of Ontario under Premier Kathleen Wynne announced a panel to review the Investment Strategy, to "listen to different concerns and views and to assess them." The panel recommended two variant options of Metrolinx's Investment Strategy recommendations, which relied less on
9800-594: Was insufficient, and that it needed a dramatic transformation to meet the needs of the 21st century. The regional transportation system needed to be effective, integrated, multi-modal, and funded in a sustainable way. In response to these concerns, the Government of Ontario created the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority in 2006, which became known as Metrolinx in December 2007. Metrolinx was given
9900-664: Was later introduced by the Department for Transport, Environment and the Regions . This presented balanced cost–benefit results and detailed environmental impact assessments . NATA was first applied to national road schemes in the 1998 Roads Review, and was subsequently rolled out to all transport modes. Maintained and developed by the Department for Transport , it was a cornerstone of UK transport appraisal in 2011. The European Union 's Developing Harmonised European Approaches for Transport Costing and Project Assessment (HEATCO) project, part of
10000-550: Was provided to Metrolinx on 26 September 2008. A final version was approved on 28 November 2008. The GTHA is Canada's largest and fastest growing urban region, with a population forecast to grow by 2.6 million people by 2031. The region is becoming increasingly dependent and designed for automobiles, and traffic congestion is already costing commuters and the economy billions of dollars every year. Nine individual local transit agencies and one regional transit agency exist, and are poorly integrated when one out of four trips crosses
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