The Victoria Line of the London Underground is currently one of the most heavily used lines in the entire United Kingdom. It has in excess of 130 million users every year. The railway is not only extremely busy but also was the historic subject of a milestone in economic appraisal. The 1963/65 cost benefit analysis by Foster and Beesley was the first application of the technique to British public transport, and described in a paper entitled "The Victoria Line: social benefit and finances" (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 1965). This paper revisits the original appraisal. It adopts two methods of approach. Firstly, the original methods are used to recalculate the appraisal with actual data from the line's construction and operation. Secondly, the current best practice in London is adopted to rework the analysis taking account of developments over the past three decades in the treatment of issues such as congestion and trip generation supported by modern computing resources. The work illustrates the difficulty of consistent data collection but using some simplifying assumptions an appraisal is able to be presented. It is now very difficult for Londoners to imagine life without the Victoria Line. However, for all its patronage the results of the new analysis still show that some elements of the perceived case for the line are still not captured by current appraisal practice. The paper's conclusions produce lessons for today's decision makers who are called upon to assess the new generation of major rail schemes in London and elsewhere. Cost-benefit analysis is important but it isn't everything.
Abstract