Wider Benefits in Transport Projects Using an Impact Analysis Evaluation Method

Abstract

UK government has revised its transport appraisal manual called WebTAG to accommodate various environmentally friendly transport projects in a wider perspective, which was commissioned by Sir Eddingtons’s transport studies. The guidance has triggered to revise the other transport appraisal guidances of commonwealth countries and international agencies such as OECD and WHO (World Health Organization). This paper therefore reviews the newly revised transport guidances for accommodating wider benefits currently used in OECD, UK, Australia and New Zealand. And then we attempt to draw some basic ideas commonly used and applicable in order to apply for calculating some environmentally friendly transport projects in downtown of Seoul such as Old Town Renaissance Project and Seoul’s high line project. In particular, we calculate health improvement benefits, which are comparable with WHO’s HEAT and UK’s SART health benefit in the framework of an impact analysis used in USA and OECD. These valuations of the health improvement benefits used in WHO, UK and New Zealand government guidances are used in the baseline to calculate willingness to pay of health improvement in Seoul cases. We have found that these benefits are not negligible by comparison with the existing core benefits such as travel time saving and vehicle operating cost saving benefits.