Transportation projects can lead directly to benefits beyond the traditional measures of traveler impact, which are based on average travel time and travel cost. These wider benefits are effects on business productivity–factors that enable businesses to gain efficiency by reorganizing their operations or by changing the mix of inputs used to generate products and services. There are at least three classes of transportation system impacts that can directly lead to wider benefits for business organization and operation–reliability, connectivity, and accessibility. SHRP 2 Capacity project C11, Development of Tools for Assessing Wider Economic Benefits of Transportation, addressed these three classes of effects and developed spreadsheet tools for each that transportation agencies can use to assess specific changes in transportation conditions associated with transportation project proposals as well as their economic consequences. The tools shift the focus of analysis from traditional transportation impact measures to include broader factors that also matter to business operators, and thus drive economic development processes. The scope of this analysis provides planners the basis for more realistic and comprehensive assessments of the economic impacts of highway projects. (Author/publisher)
Abstract