The objective of this document is to propose harmonised guidelines for project assessment for trans-national projects in Europe. This includes the provision of a consistent framework for monetary valuation based on the principles of welfare economics, contributing in the long run to consistency with transport costing. These guidelines have been developed within the EC funded research project HEATCO, based on latest research results on the different aspects of transport project appraisal and on an analysis of existing practice in the EU countries and Switzerland. This document gives an overview of the recommendations for harmonised guidelines for infrastructure project appraisal covering the following elements: • General issues (incl. non-market valuation techniques, benefit transfer, treatment of nonmonetised impacts, discounting and intra-generational equity issues, decision criteria, the project appraisal evaluation period, treatment of future risk and uncertainty, the marginal costs of public funds, producer surplus of transport providers, the treatment of indirect socio-economic effects), • Value of time and congestion (incl. business passenger traffic, non-work passenger traffic, commercial goods traffic time savings and treatment of congestion, unexpected delays and reliability), • Value of changes in accident risks (incl. accident impacts considered, estimating accident risks, valuing accident costs), • Environmental costs (incl. air pollution, noise, global warming), • Costs and indirect impacts of infrastructure investments (incl. capital costs for project implementation, costs for maintenance, operation and administration, changes in infrastructure costs on existing networks, optimism bias, residual value). (Author/publisher)
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