IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/transr/v32y2011i1p29-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Cost--Benefit Analyses Influence Transport Investment Decisions? Experiences from the Swedish Transport Investment Plan 2010--21

Author

Listed:
  • Jonas Eliasson
  • Mattias Lundberg

Abstract

Cost--benefit analysis (CBA) for transport investments is particularly useful for situations where a large number of investments have to be ranked against each other. This study draws on experiences from the development of the Swedish National Transport Investment Plan 2010--21. We study how CBA results were used in the process of shaping the investment plan and what influence they had on investment decisions. In particular, we compare the planners' rankings versus the politicians' rankings. We find that planners' rankings of investments are influenced by benefit--cost ratios (BCRs), in particular for low and moderate BCRs, while the politicians' rankings are not. By interviewing planners about how CBA was used in the process, we clarify what role CBA actually played in the planning process. We find that not only did the CBAs play a role in investment selection, they also forced investment design to be more cost-efficient. Furthermore, we explore planners' implicit valuations, as revealed by their investment selection, finding that freight benefits were implicitly valued higher and traffic safety lower than the officially recommended CBA weights. Finally, we identify the most important areas for improvement of CBA state-of-practice methodology.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonas Eliasson & Mattias Lundberg, 2011. "Do Cost--Benefit Analyses Influence Transport Investment Decisions? Experiences from the Swedish Transport Investment Plan 2010--21," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 29-48, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:transr:v:32:y:2011:i:1:p:29-48
    DOI: 10.1080/01441647.2011.582541
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01441647.2011.582541
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01441647.2011.582541?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nellthorp, J. & Mackie, P. J., 2000. "The UK Roads Review--a hedonic model of decision making," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 127-138, April.
    2. Bristow, A. L. & Nellthorp, J., 2000. "Transport project appraisal in the European Union," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 51-60, January.
    3. Mackie, Peter & Preston, John, 1998. "Twenty-one sources of error and bias in transport project appraisal," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 1-7, January.
    4. Daniel McFadden, 1976. "The Revealed Preferences of a Government Bureaucracy: Empirical Evidence," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(1), pages 55-72, Spring.
    5. Daniel McFadden, 1975. "The Revealed Preferences of a Government Bureaucracy: Theory," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 6(2), pages 401-416, Autumn.
    6. Szeto, W. Y. & Lo, Hong K., 2004. "A cell-based simultaneous route and departure time choice model with elastic demand," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 593-612, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Björklund, Gunilla & Swärdh, Jan-Erik, 2015. "Valuing in-vehicle comfort and crowding reduction in public transport," Working papers in Transport Economics 2015:12, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI).
    2. Vigren, Andreas & Ljungberg, Anders, 2018. "Public Transport Authorities’ use of Cost-Benefit Analysis in practice," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 560-567.
    3. Hultkrantz, Lars & Svensson, Mikael, 2012. "A Comparison of Benefit Cost and Cost Utility Analysis in Practice: Divergent Policies in Sweden," Karlstad University Working Papers in Economics 1, Karlstad University, Department of Economics.
    4. Börjesson, Maria & Eliasson, Jonas, 2012. "The value of time and external benefits in bicycle appraisal," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 673-683.
    5. Andersson, Henrik & Hultkrantz, Lars & Lindberg, Gunnar & Nilsson, Jan-Eric, 2017. "The role of economic analysis for investment priorities in Sweden’s transport sector," Working papers in Transport Economics 2017:12, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI), revised 23 May 2018.
    6. Björklund, Gunilla & Swärdh, Jan-Erik, 2016. "Valuing in-vehicle comfort and crowding reduction in public transport," Working papers in Transport Economics 2016:2, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI).
    7. Salvador Bertomeu & Antonio Estache, 2016. "Unbundling Political and Economic Rationality: a Non-Parametric Approach Tested on Spain," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2016-17, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bondemark, Anders & Sundbergh, Pia & Tornberg, Patrik & Brundell-Freij, Karin, 2020. "Do impact assessments influence transport plans? The case of Sweden," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 52-64.
    2. Jan Anne Annema & Koen Frenken & Carl Koopmans & Maarten Kroesen, 2017. "Relating cost-benefit analysis results with transport project decisions in the Netherlands," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 109-127, March.
    3. James Odeck, 2009. "What Determines Decision‐Makers’ Preferences for Road Investments? Evidence from the Norwegian Road Sector," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 473-494, June.
    4. Ait Ali, Abderrahman & Eliasson, Jonas & Warg, Jennifer, 2022. "Are commuter train timetables consistent with passengers’ valuations of waiting times and in-vehicle crowding?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 188-198.
    5. Salvador Bertomeu & Antonio Estache, 2016. "Unbundling Political and Economic Rationality: a Non-Parametric Approach Tested on Spain," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2016-17, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Dominique Prunetti & Alexandre Muzy & Eric Innocenti & Xavier Pieri, 2014. "Utility-based Multi-agent System with Spatial Interactions: The Case of Virtual Estate Development," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 43(3), pages 271-299, March.
    7. Khraibani, R. & de Palma, A. & Picard, N. & Kaysi, I., 2016. "A new evaluation and decision making framework investigating the elimination-by-aspects model in the context of transportation projects' investment choices," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 67-81.
    8. Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney, 2004. "The Political Economy of Environmental Policy," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 1, pages 3-30, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Thomopoulos, N. & Grant-Muller, S. & Tight, M.R., 2009. "Incorporating equity considerations in transport infrastructure evaluation: Current practice and a proposed methodology," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 351-359, November.
    10. Ostrihoň, Filip, 2022. "Exploring macroeconomic imbalances through EU Alert Mechanism Reports," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    11. Helland, Eric, 1998. "The Revealed Preferences of State EPAs: Stringency, Enforcement, and Substitution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 242-261, May.
    12. van Exel, Job & Rienstra, Sytze & Gommers, Michael & Pearman, Alan & Tsamboulas, Dimitrios, 2002. "EU involvement in TEN development: network effects and European value added," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 299-311, October.
    13. Takalo, Tuomas & Tanayama, Tanja & Toivanen, Otto, 2008. "Evaluating innovation policy: a structural treatment effect model of R&D subsidies," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 7/2008, Bank of Finland.
    14. Tsamboulas, Dimitrios A., 2007. "A tool for prioritizing multinational transport infrastructure investments," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 11-26, January.
    15. Daniel L. McFadden, 1976. "Quantal Choice Analysis: A Survey," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 363-390, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Mouter, Niek, 2017. "Dutch politicians’ attitudes towards Cost-Benefit Analysis," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-10.
    17. Nicanor R. Roxas & Alexis M. Fillone, 2016. "Establishing value of time for the inter-island passenger transport of the Western Visayas region, Philippines," Transportation, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 661-676, July.
    18. Rabello Quadros, Saul Germano & Nassi, Carlos David, 2015. "An evaluation on the criteria to prioritize transportation infrastructure investments in Brazil," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 8-16.
    19. Takalo, Tuomas & Tanayama, Tanja & Toivanen, Otto, 2008. "Evaluating innovation policy : a structural treatment effect model of R&D subsidies," Research Discussion Papers 7/2008, Bank of Finland.
    20. Marc Gaudry & Emile Quinet, 2012. "Shannon's measure of information, path averages and the origins of random utility models in transport itinerary or mode choice analysis," Working Papers halshs-00713168, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:transr:v:32:y:2011:i:1:p:29-48. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TTRV20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.