NEW APPROACH TO ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF LABOR-INTENSIVE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS (ABRIDGMENT)

The managerial economics literature has provided easy-to-use tools for decision making under uncertainty for more than a decade. Recently social planners have begun adopting some of these concepts. Applying these tools for decision making and planning under uncertainty to a proposed bicycle-pedestrian transportation sytem on a medium-sized university campus generated important low-cost, easy-to-use information. Both benefits and costs contained a number of difficult-to-measure social and environmental variables such as loss of consumer surplus to restricted drivers and increased exercise and recreation for pedestrians and bicyclists. After the data were ranged from expected low to high values, a computer simulation model generated a distribution of costs and benefits with an expected benefit-cost ratio of 1.7:1 and probability of failure between 2.6 and 26 percent. Failure of the bicycle-pedestrian system (restricting parking and driving and developing other forms of transportation) would entail a low financial cost-$346,000 of fixed investment--and would be easily reversible. A hand-calculated example of the technique is presented by Everett.

• Record URL:
  http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/trr/1976/599/599-012.pdf
• Record URL:
  https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=NEW+APPROACH+TO+ECONOMIC+EVALUATION+OF+LABOR-INTENSIVE+TRANSPORTATION+SYSTEMS+(ABRIDGMENT)&author=M.+Everett&author=J.+Dorman&publication_year=1976
• Availability:
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• Supplemental Notes:
  • Sponsored by Committee on Bicycling and Bicycle Facilities. Distribution, posting, or copying of this PDF is strictly prohibited without written permission of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials in this PDF are copyrighted by the National Academy of Sciences. Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved
• Authors:
  • Everett, Michael
  • Dorman, Jack
• Publication Date: 1976

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: References;
• Pagination: p 65
• Monograph Title: Transportation programming, economic analysis, and evaluation of energy constraints
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Record
  • Issue Number: 599
  • Publisher: Transportation Research Board
  • ISSN: 0361-1981

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Bikeways; Decision making; Economic conditions; Economic impacts; Investments; Transportation planning; Walkways
• Subject Areas: Economics; Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Society; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00148670
• Record Type: Publication
• ISBN: 0309025680
• Report/Paper Numbers: HS-020 305
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Mar 15 1977 12:00AM