From 1996 to 2000, The Norwegian Ministry of Transport provided financial support to organizations and authorities who carried out public transport packages of measures. As a part of this trial scheme, the Institute of Transport economics (TOl) has developed a common evaluation plan for public transport experiments. This year the final results from evaluation of these packages are published. This paper describes the evaluation approach and the methodological approach. The objective is to illustrate what kind of analyses that are possible when conducting a common evaluation plan across cities and a variation of measures. An important requirement for the evaluation is that the method is relatively inexpensive and easy to carry out. This has been the focus for the evaluation method being tested in Norway during a period of 10 years, first on single experiments and then on packages of public transport measures. The evaluation plan is unique in that it can be used to evaluate effects in the same way, irrespective of experiment, city or country. It is also possible to control for different external conditions and it is a useful tool for evaluations of the effects of combined measures. The main challenge for an evaluation of packages of measures is to find the isolated effect of the measures, corrected for the effect of a changing environment. Analysis of the increase and decrease in public transport use is useful to illustrate the significance of isolated effects. Analyses indicate that the expected decline in use of public transport is almost twice as large as the expected increase in use of public transport. Without the public transport measures, the decline in public transport use probably would have been worse. How a common evaluation plan across a variation of measures can enable analyses of synergy effects is described. For the covering abstract please see ITRD E135207.
Abstract