London, due to its regional, economic and political prominence both nationally and internationally, constantly aims to expand the performance levelof its transportation infrastructure, mostly in form of boosting up the capacity of public transport infrastructure. Whilst improvements to railwayinfrastructure are considered to be long term measures and cost intensivein nature, the introduction of bus priority schemes on some of the busiest roads in London, is often seen to be an efficient and cost effective public transport oriented approach in bringing in more capacity to the transportation system. Transport for London (TfL) being entrusted with the onerous task of selecting and implementing the projects expected to bring in maximum returns in form of revenues and social benefits; has devised an approach of prioritising the schemes based on a socio-economic and financial appraisal system, through the preparation of business schemes. This includes: determining the project life cycle based on its nature and scale; determining operation, management and other indirect costs over and above the scheme capital cost; identifying a long list of likely project benefits focussing on multiple areas and dimensions; a methodology for optioneering and shortlisting of likely benefits in consultation with various stakeholders; methodologies for quantifying various nature of benefits; considerationof underlying assumptions and their possible impact on benefits forecasting; uncertainties in bus operations in the medium to long term and defining the sensitivity tests to incorporate those risks; and incorporating indirect effects of schemes in the vicinity which are likely to have impacts on the project(s) being appraised. The paper is intended to share the innovative approach adopted for the appraisal of various scales of projects, bygiving examples of different case studies. The objective is to present a balanced approach in preparing business cases in order to achieve maximum robustness of the appraisal as well as exploring as many dimensions and benefit streams, within the given time and cost constraints. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.
Samenvatting