Travel behaviour change evaluation procedures

Technical report

Print version: Travel behaviour change evaluation procedures (PDF, 1.57 MB, 98 pages)

7. Conclusions and recommendations

• 7.1   Conclusions
• 7.2   Recommendations

7.1   Conclusions

TBhC projects are a relatively new and growing area of transport system management. Different types of TBhC project are being tried in different countries. This project has reviewed the effectiveness of common types of TBhC projects based on experience and an extensive literature review of TBhC project results and case studies. Statistical analysis of the results of existing TBhC projects has found a large variation in the effectiveness of TBhC projects and a lack of statistically significant explanatory factors for the variations in effectiveness.

There is limited international experience in the economic evaluation of TBhC projects prior to implementation. New Zealand and Australia provided the main examples of experience used in this project. An evaluation method based on changes in perceived costs plus resource cost corrections and externality effects was adopted for TBhC projects in New Zealand because it is considered theoretically sound and it provides an explicit measure of the benefits to travel behaviour changers.

An economic evaluation procedure has been developed that achieves an appropriate balance between Transfund and EECA’s requirements for procedures that are consistent with the Transfund Allocation Process and are evidence based, yet are simple to understand and apply and involve an analysis effort that is in proportion to the scale of the proposed projects.

The evaluation procedure should be regarded as interim and likely to benefit from ongoing review and refinement as further knowledge is gained from evaluation experience and monitoring of actual TBhC projects.

A Guidance Handbook has been prepared that provides advice on types of projects, components, and preconditions that have been found to be successful or unsuccessful in New Zealand and/or overseas, preparation of evaluations and funding applications, design of before and after monitoring programmes, and a listing of relevant sources of further guidance for developing successful TBhC proposals.

7.2   Recommendations

It is recommended that the interim evaluation procedure developed in this project be reviewed after one year. This review should focus on the practicality, applicability, and success (in generating TBhC proposals) of the evaluation procedure.

There is unlikely to be sufficient evidence from monitoring of TBhC projects after one year to undertake any meaningful review of diversion rates or other effects of TBhC projects. Accordingly it is recommended that a further more comprehensive review be undertaken in approximately three years time to refine the default diversion rates and if possible provide further identification of contributing factors to TBhC project effectiveness.

It is recommended that further research be undertaken to refine some of the benefit values including:

• Behaviour changer benefits
• Congestion (particularly Christchurch)
• Accidents
• Health benefits.

Research is also recommended to confirm/refine the estimates of the extent to which some benefit categories are perceived by behaviour changers or require resource cost corrections.

 

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Page created: 29 October 2008