Valuing Travel Time Savings: problems with the paradigm David Metz Centre for Transport Studies University College London

National Travel Survey

Economic benefits of Crossrail (DfT 2005)

Problems with appraisal based on time savings SP values of time are sensitive to context Tenuous connection between short-term SP values of time and value of long term development No distribution of benefits By region (for long distance rail) By market segment (for roads) Observable changes in land use and value disregarded, hence disconnect with Business Case

Journey time reliability Reliability Ratio: value of travel time variability (SD) divided by the value of travel time savings. RR enables changes in variability of journey time to be expressed in monetary terms Research findings: reduce RR for car travel from 0.8 to 0.4

Problems with WebTAG appraisal Under-estimate benefits of urban rail investments Over-estimate benefits of inter-urban road investments No indication of distribution of benefits Under-estimate benefits of digital technologies

Treasury guidance Green Book – investment analysis. WebTAG an outlier Aqua Book – quality assurance of analytical models RIGOUR Grounded in reality: connections made between the analysis and its real consequences

Transport Planning Society membership survey 2016 “Most TPS members consistently say that appraisal methods should be reformed. In the most recent survey, only 3.5% considered current methods did not need reform, with 60% having major issues with them. The top reason for this by some way was the need to appraise changes in land values, land-use or travel behaviour.”

Space, not Time Transport moves people and good through space (not time) Investment that increases speed or capacity leads to more movement through space (not time) Need economic framework that recognises spatial characteristics – Spatial Economics

www.peakcar.org