The Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Benefit Cost Compendium is a continuation of the series of reference documents and tools developed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Operations designed to assist planners and operations professionals in evaluating the benefits and costs of Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) strategies and technologies. The TSMO Compendium is a collection of cases from across the country where benefit-cost analysis (BCA) has been applied to a specific TSMO technology/strategy or group. These actual project evaluations demonstrate the use of custom spreadsheet analysis developed by the agency or its contractors or the application of available software tools to conduct the BCA. The Compendium also includes hypothetical cases designed to demonstrate how BCA can be used for a specific TSMO technology/strategy or group. FHWA has developed a sketch planning BCA tool, called the Tool for Operations Benefit-Cost Analysis (TOPS-BC), for application to TSMO projects. For the hypothetical cases TOPS-BC is used to assist in the measurement of benefits and costs and in the calculation of the benefit-cost ratio. Each case demonstrates how planners have or could in the future conduct a BCA on one or more TSMO technologies or strategies. There are over two dozen cases presented in the Compendium and they cover a wide range of TSMO technologies and strategies where each case addresses one or more specific issues or procedures.

The Road Weather Management (RWM) Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) Compendium provides information about benefit cost analyses conducted around the country for specific RWM technologies or operational strategies. The actual project evaluations involve the use of custom spreadsheets developed by the agency or its contractors, or the application of available software tools to the BCA. The Compendium also includes hypothetical cases designed to demonstrate how BCA can be used for a specific RWM technology or operational strategy. FHWA has developed a sketch planning BCA tool —the Tool for Operations Benefit/Cost (TOPS-BC)—for application to TSMO projects, including RWM projects. For the hypothetical cases, TOPS-BC is used to assist in the measurement of benefits and costs and in the calculation of the benefit cost ratio. Each case demonstrates how planners conducted, or could conduct, a BCA on one or more RWM technologies or strategies. There are 17 cases studies presented in the RWM Compendium, and each addresses one or more specific BCA issues or procedures.

This review of benefit-cost analysis as a tool for evaluating alternative courses of action describes the technique, discusses a number of benefit-cost studies, and indicates the difficulties inherent in this area of applied economics. * The author concentrates on the application of the technique to large scale transport problems, reviews the literature and indicates in his conclusions where the technique can be helpful and where there is little chance for its success.

Excerpt from Notes on the State-of-the Art of Benefit-Cost Analysis as Related to Transportation Systems This may be contrasted with an emphasis on meeting some postulated requirement regardless of cost, or at minimum cost, or with awareness of only a restricted class of costs and benefits those only to the users of a transportation system). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.