Program:
DAY 1: Wednesday 8 August 2007
start 8:30
Session 1: Strategic framework
Addressing needs to monitoring outcomes. Government desired outcomes. Importance of the right framework. The Project cycle. Project preparation. Performance measurement. The National Guidelines. Introduction to economic evaluation (Charles/Bray)
Session 2. Urban transport planning
Key aspects of transport planning theory, generalised costs for modelling & evaluation, value of time, sources of information
Right modelling tools - urban transport models pros and cons
Differences between small and large urban areas
Bridging the gap between transport analysis & economic evaluation (Bray/Sayeg)
Session 3. Estimating project benefits
Review of DMR/QT approach
Some key economic principles & issues
Economic & financial values
Link between prices, travel demand & benefits
The importance of the Base Case
Calculating user benefits, including mode switching benefits & sources of data
Broader economic benefits, including agglomeration effects & option value (Sayeg/Bray)
lunch 12:00-1:00
Session 4. Practical exercises
Group exercise: calculating generalised costs; estimating benefits for local road, major road and public transport improvement projects; discuss the effect of different sources of data on benefit valuation; estimating external benefits; introduction to estimation of benefits when using travel demand model output
close 5:00
DAY 2: Thursday 9 August 2007
start 8:30: brief summary of Day One
Session 5. Costs, discounted cash flow analysis, & sensitivity testing
Establishing costs in the Project & Base Cases
interpreting and applying discounted cash flow analysis
Choice of decision criteria
Differences between economic, financial & financing analyses
Sensitivity testing, including probability-based risk analysis (Charles/Bray)
Session 6. Practical exercise
Putting it all together: complete evaluations, including calculate net present value, benefit-cost ratio and internal rate of return; conduct sensitivity tests; the reliability and use of evaluation outputs; interpret the content of completed economic evaluations; the implication of use of fixed matrix approaches for transport demand modelling and evaluation, and limitations; key briefing points for transport planners and modellers to ensure data is obtained in the correct format; when it is valid to include region-wide economic benefits such as effects on employment.
Session 7. Other approaches
National Guideline adjusted benefit cost approach
Various approaches to the design & application of multi-criteria analysis
Cost effectiveness and incidence/distributional analysis (Sayeg/Bray)
Session 8. Group discussion
Discuss how to apply the principles to evaluate other projects that are currently being proposed
Review findings & link to policy
Discuss issues eg data quality
Lessons learnt from course (Bray/Sayeg)
close 12:30
