Quick-scan appraisal method to determine cost-effectiveness of traffic and demand management measures

This paper presents a quick-scan approach to assess the cost-effectiveness of smaller and poorly demarcated transportation measures; the approach can be used as an initial scan while packages are established to solve specific transportation problems. This paper adds to the available evaluation literature and relies on a combination of expert opinions and simple models rather than on data-intensive, four-stage transportation models. The approach consists of five steps and yields an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of the measure that is being evaluated. As an illustration of this approach, the cost-effectiveness of a pricing measure within a large Dutch travel demand management program was determined to illustrate the approach itself and the plausibility of its results. It was concluded that the proposed method was suitable for an initial quick-scan assessment. This assessment would be valuable in the first selection of packages of measures and could support policy makers who must decide in which measures to invest, even when those measures have not yet been described or designed at a highly detailed level.