As federal and state funding increasingly emphasizes economic and "triple bottom line" (economic, environmental, social/health) return on transportation investments, there is a need for methods to evaluate that return, particularly since the recession. For example, a key criterion of the Transportation Infrastructure Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program (which funds capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure) is that the project can demonstrate generation of economic development. The 2010 Government Accountability Office report on statewide transportation planning found that, "in selecting projects, states assigned greater importance to factors such as political and public support than to economic analysis of project benefits and costs." The benefit-cost calculator tool can be used not only for comparing different active transportation projects in different locations to each other, but also for comparing different treatments in the same location, by changing the crash countermeasures inputs. It is flexible in its applicability to type of active transportation project, location (urban or rural), and project size.
Evaluating Return: A Benefit-Cost Calculator for Active Transportation Projects
ITE journal ; 86 , 9
2016
Article (Journal)
English
Development of Benefit Cost Analysis Tools for Evaluating Transportation Research Projects
Transportation Research Record | 2019
|Investment Planning for Transportation Projects: Benefit/Cost Ranking
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1997
|Evaluating Multimodal Transportation Strategies Using Benefit-Cost Analysis
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1997
|Transportation Research Record | 2023
|Transportation Benefit–Cost Analysis
Transportation Research Record | 2008
|