The third report of Austroads Project Improving Traffic Incident Management published in January 2007 provides an evaluation framework to assess priorities for new alternatives in traffic incident management (TIM).
It involves a literature review of relevant evaluation approaches followed by application to three case studies.It was found that benefit costs analysis (BCA) provides for a comprehensive framework to include benefits, cost and impacts that can be monetised.
It was also found that multi criteria analysis (MCA) is best regarded as an adjunct to BCA. It is a means of coping with a partial BCA – one that fails to provide a dollar value for significant impacts.
MCA offers much in terms of information about a TIM project, because the criteria used are transparent and can be presented in a form suitable for decision makers and the stakeholders.
It is recommended that the evaluation framework for TIM projects use a modified MCA approach, incorporating a BCA, to take into account all the other impacts, including qualitative and non-monetisable impacts.
Download the free report from Austroads [Report AP-R298/07, 77 page PDF, 0.62MB]