This report provides a broad indication of the methodology, project components, expertise available and indicative costs required to produce a robust national willingness to pay (WTP) estimate of the social cost of Australian road crashes. The project involved a review of local experience in the form of the WTP approach applied by the New South Wales (NSW) Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) in 2008, now Transport for NSW. The study also reviewed a number of selected international case studies, focusing on the New Zealand experience. The case studies included valuable information not only on the published results obtained, but extracted detailed information on the methodologies employed as well as data collection methods in terms of questionnaire/experiment design, sampling and interview techniques. The study undertook interviews with a number of identified WTP experts to obtain information on their experience in previous studies and expertise in the area of discrete choice modelling. The interviews also included requests for their advice on the key research components and indicative costs that might be anticipated in a national WTP study for Australia. The study also identified and assessed several interim options for WTP values that may be used until a national WTP study for Australia is completed. The study identified one of these as a preferred interim option in the form of updated WTP values resulting from the RTA NSW experience. However, this should not be regarded as a long-term alternative to the estimation of a set of national WTP values for Australia. In terms of scoping a national WTP study, a number of project components were identified: pilot study, survey/experiment, data analysis and project management. This study has identified the types of skills required, and established that Australia does indeed possess the necessary expertise to successfully complete this kind of WTP study. Consultations with identified WTP experts reveal that a national WTP study would cost around $1 million (in 2012 prices) and would have to be repeated every 8—10 years. However, it would also require a consistent set of crash type and exposure data across the country and, to this end, it is important that current efforts continue involving BITRE working with jurisdictions towards a consistent set of data in a National Crash Database. A national WTP study would therefore require a significant but not excessive amount of funding, involve a range of skills which have been identified, as well as important crash type and exposure data, which is necessary to place the WTP estimates in the context of the exposure of road users to this risk. It would also require a significant length of time (3—4 years) from compiling a study brief, issuing a request for proposals to commissioning the project through to undertaking the WTP experiment, data analysis and submission of a final study report and obtaining stakeholder approval. Of this, the time required to complete the national WTP study alone is estimated to be 1 —2 years, according to experts consulted in the project. Finally, it must be noted that additional costs arising from road crashes, e.g. emergency services and crash site clean-up costs, will not form part of the national WTP study and, if values for these components are to be made available, they must continue to be estimated separately as they have been until now by BITRE. (Author/publisher)
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