Numerator-denominator issue in the calculation of benefit-cost ratios. Paper presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Highway Research Board HRB, Washington, D.C., January 1971.

This paper presents the application of the benefit-cost ratio method to the evaluation of alternative highway design, after which it is concluded that the ratio cannot be altered from greater than unity to less than unity merely by adding or subtracting a constant from both numerator and denominator.