Methodologies and implementation consequences of measuring costs and benefits of surface transportation

Limited and non-renewable resources require investments to be analyzed fully using most appropriate evaluation methods for determining costs and benefits in implementation of the most efficient and feasible alternative. Omission of including some benefits and costs (such as air and water pollution, equity and threshold effects) that are not easily measurable during assessment of transport projects result with over valuation of projects focusing on improving mobility of motor vehicles and reducing accessibility of non-motorized transport means such as walking and cycling. Cost and benefits that are quantifiable are commonly included into evaluations while non-quantifiable effects are generally neglected if they were unimportant. This approach result with biased decisions neglecting consideration and losses of some modes. Economic and financial feasibility assessments made for transportation projects in our country are not comprehensively studied as many external costs and effects are omitted intentionally or by mistake. Evaluation criteria to be used for assessment of the projects and weighting the criteria have not been defined clearly. In addition, unclear legal procedures and technical methodology to be used during the project evaluation stages result with incorrect project selection and implementation timing. Responsibilities of wrong assessments are not easily defined within such an unclear medium. This study intends to fill a void in our country in evaluation of transport projects to reach a comprehensive and complete assessment methodology by defining approaches, techniques and criteria to include costs and benefits of transport projects that are commonly omitted to be expressed in monetary values during an analysis. Valuation of costs and benefits of transport projects has been analyzed in detail with empirical examples before through evaluation of a number of urban and intercity rail project feasibilities prepared in our country for inclusion of internal of external costs during the assessment practices. Finally, the study concluded with a number of proposals to improve current practices and complete voids for evaluation and selection of transportation projects in the country.