Which are the relevant costs and benefits of road safety measures designed for pedestrians and cyclists?
Introduction
The use of cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the impacts of road investment projects has been common in the motorised countries for at least 30 years. In Norway, the first cost-benefit analyses of road investments were made in the mid-1960s (Bjørnland, 1989). Since then, much work has been done to improve the techniques of cost-benefit analysis, for example, by including a wider scope of impacts in the analyses and by revising the economic valuations of non-marketed items included in the analyses. A major revision of the manual the Norwegian Public Roads Administration uses for cost-benefit analyses, including the computer software, was recently completed (Statens vegvesen, 1995).
Despite the fact that, over time, more and more impacts have been included in cost-benefit analyses of road investment projects, road authorities readily admit that these analyses remain incomplete. In particular, environmental impacts and impacts of road schemes specifically designed for pedestrians and cyclists are not fully included in current impact assessments and cost-benefit analyses, see Table 1, to be discussed subsequently.
This paper is intended to give a brief survey of the state-of-the-art of impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis with respect to measures that are designed to improve the safety and/or mobility of pedestrians and cyclists. Many of these measures are low-cost traffic engineering measures for which cost-benefit analyses have traditionally not been performed. The main points to be discussed are:
- 1.
How to define the impacts that ought to be included in impact assessments of measures for pedestrians and cyclists,
- 2.
To indicate whether these impacts can at present be included in cost-benefit analyses or not, that is whether an adequate monetary valuation of the impacts is possible,
- 3.
To illustrate, by means of hypothetical examples, how ‘ideally designed’ cost-benefit analyses (analyses that include all impacts) of measures for pedestrians and cyclists ought to be made. These examples are, however, highly hypothetical.
Section snippets
A framework for impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis of measures for pedestrians and cyclists
There is an extensive literature about impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis of transport projects (see, for example, the books of Jones-Lee, 1989, Button, 1993, Maddison et al., 1996, Verhoef, 1996). An important subject area in this literature is the negative, external impacts of transport, in the form of accidents, traffic congestion, noise, and environmental pollution. To a very large extent, these impacts are caused by motorised travel. It is likely that congestion, noise and air
Preliminary estimates of generalised costs of travel for pedestrians and cyclists
Some of the elements that are likely to be part of the generalised costs of travel for pedestrians and cyclists were identified in a stated preference survey carried out by the Institute of Transport Economics as part of the WALCYNG-project sponsored by the EU-Commission (Stangeby, 1997). Some results of the stated preference survey are presented in Fig. 3. Fig. 3 shows the valuations of several aspects of cycling of a sample of commuters who used their own cars to work. They were offered
Hypothetical examples of ideal cost-benefit analyses of three measures for pedestrians and cyclists
Based on the assumptions made above concerning the generalised costs of travel for pedestrians and cyclists, three hypothetical examples have been prepared to show what an ‘ideal’ cost-benefit analysis of measures designed to improve safety or mobility for pedestrians and cyclists might look like. In all examples costs and benefits have been discounted to present values using a time horizon of 25 years and an annual discount rate of 7%.
Discussion
Cost-benefit analysis is widely used to assess the advantages and disadvantages to society of carrying out road investments. The weight that cost-benefit analyses will carry in policy making depends on the confidence policy makers have in the results of those analyses. The confidence placed in the results of cost-benefit analyses depends in turn on whether these analyses include all relevant policy objectives and impacts, and on whether the relative priority given to the various policy
Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study presented in this paper are:
- 1.
A survey was made of the state-of-the-art of impact assessment of measures designed to improve the safety or mobility of pedestrians and cyclists. It was concluded that a number of impacts that are likely to regarded as important for pedestrians and cyclists are not included in current impact assessments and cost-benefit analyses as these are made in Norway.
- 2.
Impacts that are not currently included in impact assessments and
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