This pioneering text provides a holistic approach to decisionmaking in transportation project development and programming, whichcan help transportation professionals to optimize their investmentchoices. The authors present a proven set of methodologies forevaluating transportation projects that ensures that all costs andimpacts are taken into consideration. The text's logical organization gets readers started with asolid foundation in basic principles and then progressively buildson that foundation. Topics covered include: Developing performance measures for evaluation, estimatingtravel demand, and costing transportation projects Performing an economic efficiency evaluation that accounts forsuch factors as travel time, safety, and vehicle operatingcosts Evaluating a project's impact on economic development and landuse as well as its impact on society and culture Assessing a project's environmental impact, including airquality, noise, ecology, water resources, and aesthetics Evaluating alternative projects on the basis of multipleperformance criteria Programming transportation investments so that resources can beoptimally allocated to meet facility-specific and system-widegoals Each chapter begins with basic definitions and concepts followedby a methodology for impact assessment. Relevant legislation isdiscussed and available software for performing evaluations ispresented. At the end of each chapter, readers are providedresources for detailed investigation of particular topics. Theseinclude Internet sites and publications of international anddomestic agencies and research institutions. The authors alsoprovide a companion Web site that offers updates, data foranalysis, and case histories of project evaluation and decisionmaking. Given that billions of dollars are spent each year ontransportation systems in the United States alone, and that thereis a need for thorough and rational evaluation and decision makingfor cost-effective system preservation and improvement, this textshould be on the desks of all transportation planners, engineers,and educators. With exercises in every chapter, this text is anideal coursebook for the subject of transportation systems analysisand evaluation.

This title was first published in 2002: There is a multitude of assessment methods available for analyzing and reporting on the impacts of policies, all with different underlying assumptions and a wide range of criteria. Since the 1950s, much research has gone into creating guidelines for policy analysis, yet only a small percentage of evaluation has been carried out on transport policy - and none by political scientists or social policy specialists. The editors of this volume recognize that European integration has seen a drive to bring policy evaluation on to the transport agenda and has increased demands for ’strategic assessments’. It has become apparent that to gain a fuller understanding of the success of a transport programme, a much more complex combination of analytical methods must be used, and a set of guidelines specifically for the field of transport must be developed. This book achieves this by bringing together a multidisciplinary team of analysts from throughout the EU to discuss in a much broader way the various types of assessment methods and how they can best be used to evaluate transport programmes and systems, both individually and in combination.