Appraisal in Land-Use/Transport Interaction: Development Stage 1

Report to Government Office for the North-West, July 2002

David Simmonds Consultancy 10 Jesus Lane Cambridge CB5 8BA Phone 01223 316098 Fax 01223 313893 dsc@davidsimmonds.com www.davidsimmonds.com in collaboration with: John Bates Services MVA

This report has been prepared by David Simmonds Consultancy under sub-contract to MVA Ltd. The work reported herein was carried out under a contract with the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions.

Executive summary

This Report presents the findings from Stage One of a project to implement a method of appraisal appropriate to forecasts of land-use/transport interaction. The intended method was set out in an earlier report, and is being developed with the intention of using it to provide further analysis of outputs from the Greater Manchester Strategy Planning Model (GMSPM). Stage One covered further development of specifications and the implementation of an initial spreadsheet-style example.

A range of issues have had to be considered in order to develop the specifications to the point where they could be applied to a simple example. These have generally tended to clarify the arguments and conclusions put forward in the January 2001 Design Report. No major theoretical problems or insuperable practical obstacles have been identified, though it remains the case that the work is difficult at both the conceptual and the practical levels.

A very simple example model has been set up using the same DELTA software as is used in GMSPM itself. This has been used to test a small set of "strategies" which can be appraised against a Reference Case. The appraisal to date is concerned almost exclusively with the measurement of user or consumer benefits. These are the most difficult part of the problem. Producer benefits will also need to be taken into account in later stages of the work but should not be so complex. The results of the appraisal exercises suggest that the proposed method does produce meaningful estimates of benefits from land-use and transport changes in interaction with each other. The method may also be applicable to other models and as a structure for the consideration of benefits in less formal analyses. The resources required to implement the appraisal method for the full GMSPM model will need to be reviewed in the light of experience to date.

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