Need for a Holistic Assessment of Urban Mobility Measures – Review of Existing Methods and Design of a Simplified Approach

Abstract

The lack of suitable tools to assess sustainable mobility measures' costs, benefits and overall impacts is a significant factor impeding their implementation. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is often applied to large-scale infrastructure projects, but does not capture all relevant socio-economic impacts. Small-scale but potentially highly cost-effective measures often do not have the critical mass to warrant a thorough cost-benefit analysis. This paper reviews existing assessment methodologies, including their advantages, limitations and application to different urban mobility measures, and current assessment practice in cities based on survey results. Based on these analyses, a holistic approach for project appraisal is proposed, consisting of aspects of a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and CBA and applicable to a variety of urban mobility measures.

Economics of everyday cycling and cycling facilities

“…Benefit-cost analysis [BCA] is a discounted cash flow analysis for evaluating the desirability to the community of public sector investments (Callan & Thomas, 2010;Hüging, Glensor, & Lah, 2014). The basic idea of BCA is to determine whether investment projects are worthwhile from a social or taxpayer viewpoint, taking into account all the financial costs and revenues, and positive and negative externalities resulting from the project.…”

“…In this technique, performance scores are assigned to each of the policy options on each of various criteria that reflect the multiple objectives (for example, financial, environmental and social objectives) under consideration (Hüging et al, 2014). The performance matrix is called an effects table (Janssen, van Herwijnen, & Beinat, 2003;Janssen & van Herwijnen, 2006).…”

“…In comparison to BCA, MCA does not have to involve the conversion of all costs and benefits associated with a policy option into monetary terms (Hüging et al, 2014). MCA thus has the advantage of avoiding the risk of spurious quantification of non-market values -that is, the difficulties of converting to dollar value can be avoided by leaving the results of qualitative assessments of environmental values in a qualitative form (Gurocak & Whittlesey, 1998;Hajkowicz, McDonald, & Smith, 2000).…”

“…MCA thus has the advantage of avoiding the risk of spurious quantification of non-market values -that is, the difficulties of converting to dollar value can be avoided by leaving the results of qualitative assessments of environmental values in a qualitative form (Gurocak & Whittlesey, 1998;Hajkowicz, McDonald, & Smith, 2000). Another important aspect of MCA is that this decision-support technique enables diverse groups of stakeholders to play a key role (Hüging et al, 2014). They articulate their views of policy options and participate in identifying evaluation criteria and assigning performance scores to the options being evaluated (Bennett, 2000).…”

“…MCA is applicable to assessing urban mobility projects (Hüging et al, 2014). There are several steps to be followed in the MCA process.…”