Managing congestion is the key objective for many road improvements. However, standard planning strategies that are used to assess improvements for road sections with recurring congestion tend to consider only levels of service or broad estimates of benefits. To date, these strategies generally have not accounted for congestion or its costs in the benefit-cost analysis. The inclusion of monetary criteria, while not the sole basis for decision-making, allows stakeholders to understand the full benefits and costs of alternative actions. To this end, unique methods to measure and quantify costs of congestion for Canadian cities were recently developed. This paper presents the processes used to quantitatively assess these congestion mitigating strategies using a practical and realistic approach to measuring congestion. The merits of these processes are explained, including the improved ability to link planning, operational and design decisions. The findings and results for the various strategies are then documented in terms of the fiscal analysis and business cases. For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD number E211521.
Abstract