In recent years, there has been a growing demand from central agencies for reliable, up-to-date, and accurate analysis of environmental aspects of project evaluation to be included in the evaluation of road projects. It has been observed that the current methodologies for updating environment cost estimates have become outdated, and an opportunity exists to further update current externality values, review past observations from key reports, and consider the applicability of these and other selected Australian and international studies. The aim of project TP1670 is to update and improve unit costs and price indices used to estimate environmental externality costs for use in the economic evaluation of road infrastructure and transport projects in Australia. In addition to scheduled updating of estimates to June 2013 values, the project has used revised methodologies and data sources to derive estimates. This provides an enhanced basis for estimation of environmental costs for use in project evaluation. This project comprises a number of stages, conducted over two years. The first task in Year 1 (2012—13) was the conduct of an extensive literature review outlining international and Australian-specific data requirements. This took on board the findings from a previous Austroads (2011) project, which involved a review of the Australian and international research on externalities up to 2009. It also contains updated research since this time, and a selected shortlist of seven documents for further analysis was developed. For each of the seven Australian and international studies identified, the background to each study, and advantages and disadvantages for using these studies for the project have been assessed. An assessment of methodologies in selected reports and an assessment matrix was developed to identify the most appropriate method(s) for updating the transport externality estimates for Australia. The CE Delft, Infras & Fraunhofer ISI (CE Delft et al. 2011) study involving 27 European Union (EU) countries was identified as the most recent, comprehensive study of transport externalities across modes and externality types that could be used, and adapted to Australian conditions. In Year 2 (2013—14), a modelling approach was developed for calculating the updated externality parameter values. The methodology selected builds on the methodologies in Austroads (2003) Valuing environmental and other externalities and this source provided a consistent framework for updating these values using best practice from Europe adapted for Australia. As a result, a series of calibrated environmental costs and user guidance (updated to June 2013) is provided across a range of externality types such as air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, noise, soil and water pollution, biodiversity, nature and landscape, additional urban and upstream and downstream categories. These are further disaggregated according to passenger and freight transport (road and rail) in urban and rural locations. Maximum and minimum ranges are also calculated for these externalities. Due to changes in some methodologies and data sources, a key finding in this study was that there was a reduction in externality values derived compared to previous Austroads research, and this issue is examined in detail in Appendix E. Whilst it is acknowledged that there are many avenues for further research, these updated externality values are part of a process to develop more knowledge and use of these estimates in project evaluation. The work carried out in this update provides a set of values which have been calculated according to a consistent source and enables comparisons to be made across all externality types in the look-up tables using internationally recognised research adapted for Australian conditions. Additionally, detailed user information on the application of the externality values derived is also provided. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting