Alternative Transport Appraisal with a Focus on Land-use and Transport Integration


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Dr Eilya Torshizian

The Principal Economics team collaborated with a large team of frontier researchers and practitioners and developed a transport appraisal methodology that is grounded in an accessibility framework and integrates travel behaviour, environmental impacts and economic principles.

The project sought to address limitations in the current appraisal methodology, which although well-established, has notable limitations. To address these, the research considered the pros and cons of six potential appraisal methodologies, drawing on the identified advantages of each to establish an access-based synthesised accessibility appraisal methodology as an alternative.

The synthesised methodology will improve land-use and transport policy integration. It:

  • separates analysis of expected travel behaviour change (which can be the complex and uncertain) from analysis in the change in 'potential'
  • adopts access values based on travel purpose for each income quintile
  • highlights the low-hanging fruits for environmental improvement
  • recommends filtering outcomes that do not meet emission targets.

    • Our team has applied the synthesised accessibility appraisal methodology to three case studies. A comparison of the outcomes produced by the synthesised accessibility appraisal methodology with those generated from a status quo appraisal highlighted the importance and usefulness of the new approach. The new methodology was shown to cohesively combine various components of land-use and transport policy, and provide transparent information for decision-makers, and demonstrated it could lead to significantly higher benefit–cost ratios if the potential benefits of transport projects and programmes are accommodated by permissive land-use policies.