The role of road user costs in benefit-cost analysis.

Abstract

An economically and socially healthy urban region always needs to move people and goods in a timely fashion. However, with the development of urban land, many corridors in urban regions suffer from great congestion, since demand is close to or greater than the capacity of the roadways. In order to improve traffic conditions, transportation planners need to identify and select the best projects that will expand and upgrade existing facilities by using Benefit-Cost Analysis. Usually, Benefit-Cost Analysis assists transportation planners by balancing the consideration of user benefits against the total costs of the projects, by translating them into monetary terms. The principal elements in Benefit-Cost Analysis are travel time costs, vehicle operation costs, and safety costs. These elements of a Base Case are compared to those of one or more Project Alternatives that offer significant improvements. However, the Road User Costs (RUC) during construction, which have the same three components, is often ignored in Benefit Cost Analysis. When RUC is significant, it can generate different results in a Benefit Costs Analysis. The objective of this study is to propose an improved process of Benefit-Cost Analysis, evaluating investment costs and all user costs and benefits during construction and during a facilities' lifetime. Furthermore, since comprehensive calculations of areawide RUC during the construction phase are often lacking, this study also proposes three procedures of user cost calculation by utilizing three levels of analytical tools: one Sketch-Planning Tool (specifically, QuickZone); one Travel Demand Model (Cube Voyager); and one Microscopic Simulator (AIMSUN). In order to implement this improved procedure of Benefit-Cost Analysis, the TH-36 reconstruction project, in North St Paul, Minnesota, was utilized. Through conducting Benefit-Cost Analysis of two planned construction alternatives, Full Closure and Partial Closure, this study concluded that RUC during the construction phase are important and the selection of an optimal construction alternative can be different due to the inclusion of RUC.