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TRAN5631 Economic Appraisal and Economic Performance

Resit Coursework Guidance 2023

This Coursework will contribute 50% of your overall Assessment on the module. Word limits, formatting and deadlines are detailed at the end of this guidance.

The questions cover: Generalised Costs; Matrix-Based Appraisal; Valuing the Urban Realm; and Business Valuation of Travel Time Savings (BVTTS).

1. Define generalised cost and use your formula to calculate the generalised cost for the trip below – for use in an economic appraisal. This is a trip to access employment, for a person who lives near ITS and has become aware of a work opportunity in the tech sector in central Manchester. 

Assume that the person would need to be at work for 09.00 (on a weekday). Consider the two modal options of (i) a car trip, and (ii) a public transport trip. For each mode, calculate the generalised cost for the year 2023.

You will need to make an assessment of journey times using Google Maps, for example. You should use an appropriate appraisal value of time, based on the 2010 commuting time value in Table A1.3.1 of the TAG Data Book, May 2023 version, which needs to be updated to 2023 using the index for appraisal values of time in column AA of the Annual Parameters sheet (in the TAG Data Book).

Where you think appropriate, use wait time and access/egress time multipliers detailed in TAG Unit A1.3 paragraph 4.4.1.

State any further assumptions you make. 

Show your calculations clearly, and report your results for (i) and (ii).     (15%)

Reading/references: 

DfT (2023), TAG Data Book, May 2023 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tag-data-book 

DfT (2022), TAG Unit A1.3, May 2022 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/webtag-tag-unit-a1-3-user-and-provider-impacts-march-2017 

Nellthorp, J (2017), ‘The principles behind transport appraisal’, Ch 12 in the Routledge Handbook of Transport Economics. London: Routledge.

(See pages 8&9 – there is a copy on Minerva – Learning Resources: General folder).

2. The file ‘Bus Priority Project – user benefits 2023.xls’ (on Minerva) contains all the data you need to estimate the user benefits of a project for the year 2023. This is for a bus priority project in a city that has been divided – for analysis purposes – into four zones (Figure 1). The priority measures are all for the direction of travel during the morning peak (the AM peak), and you can assume there are no benefits during the rest of the day.

Assume there are 2.5 AM peak hours per weekday, and the annualisation factor from 1 weekday to the whole year is 250.

a) What are the user benefits of the project for the whole year, 2023? Show your working.      (10%)

b) If all the generalised cost changes are due to journey time changes, what can you infer about the size and sign of travel time changes across the network, what conclusion might be drawn about the impact of the project on particular groups of users, and what might be the consequences of this?  (10%)

Figure 1: Schematic City zone map

Reading/references: 

Nellthorp, J (2017), ‘The principles behind transport appraisal’, Ch 12 in the Routledge Handbook of Transport Economics. London: Routledge.

(See pages 10&11 – there is a copy on Minerva – Learning Resources: General folder). 

3. What is the urban realm, why are urban realm improvements challenging to value in transport appraisals, and what techniques do you think would be helpful in improving the evidence base on urban realm valuation?   (25%)

Reading/references: 

See Lecture 13a ‘Urban Realm & Multisectoral Evaluation’.

4. a) The wage rate is regarded as the best measure of the marginal product of labour.  Are there any economic reasons why we might expect the business value of travel time savings (BVTTS) to depart from the wage rate?  Discuss with reference to economic theory and empirical evidence.   (30%)

b) What would this theory and evidence (in part (a)) imply for the business VTTS of the ‘new mode’ autonomous vehicles relative to driving a ‘normal’ car?    (10%)

Reading/starting references:

Wardman, M., Batley, R., Laird, J., Mackie, P. and Bates, J., 2015. How should business travel time savings be valued?. Economics of transportation, 4(4), pp.200-214.

Batley, R., Bates, J., Bliemer, M., Börjesson, M., Bourdon, J., Cabral, M.O., Chintakayala, P.K., Choudhury, C., Daly, A., Dekker, T. and Drivyla, E., 2019. New appraisal values of travel time saving and reliability in Great Britain. Transportation, 46, pp.583-621.

The overall word limit for the coursework is 2,000 words (plus tables, figures and references).

Please use Harvard style for citations and references (https://library.leeds.ac.uk/skills-referencing#activate-references_and_citations_explained).

The Coursework is due on Monday 14^th August 2023 at 13.59. Please submit electronically via Minerva. Submit one main document containing the answers to all questions. Also submit your Excel spreadsheet (this will enable us to check your working which may allow us give you credit for working even if your final answer was incorrect).

Remember: all coursework will be run through Turnitin so please do not copy any of your own submitted work; or others’ work; or material from published or internet sources. Please write new material and put any quotes inside quotation marks (“”). Follow standard ITS procedures – see your Student Handbook.