Do we need a new approach to appraisal? Lessons from a comparison of guidelines for the appraisal of transport infrastructure investment

The transport sector in Europe and worldwide is facing major challenges: emissions need to be reduced drastically and rapidly while maintaining an adequate level of transport activity to ensure mobility needs and access for everyone. Are transport appraisal methods prepared to analyse and assess projects and policies to meet these challenges? To discuss this, I conduct an abstract comparison of appraisal guidelines from select European countries to identify three building blocks of transport appraisal: forecasting, evaluation of marginal impacts, and economic cost-benefit-analysis (CBA). Given the above challenges, each of these building blocks is associated with a puzzle which I term the “Transformation Problem”, the “Intervention Problem”, and the “Welfare Analysis Problem”.     «

The transport sector in Europe and worldwide is facing major challenges: emissions need to be reduced drastically and rapidly while maintaining an adequate level of transport activity to ensure mobility needs and access for everyone. Are transport appraisal methods prepared to analyse and assess projects and policies to meet these challenges? To discuss this, I conduct an abstract comparison of appraisal guidelines from select European countries to identify three building blocks of transport app...     »