Travel time savings, transport infrastructure and path dependence, the case of Melbourne, Australia英文教材.pdfVIP

Travel time savings, transport infrastructure and path dependence, the case of Melbourne, Australia John Odgers and Nicholas Low1 Introduction In this paper we argue that investment in transport infrastructure in developed eonomies cannot be justified by an appeal to economic benefit arising from travel time saved. We examine the case of the City Link freeway expansion in Melbourne, Australia. We argue that transport infrastructure policy can best be explained as ‗path dependent‘. Infrastructure policy, for decades heavily dominated by expenditure on roads at the expense of every other form of transport, is a policy setting that is ‗locked in‘ by its capacity to deliver increased power and influence to the state apparatus that produces it. Travel time saving In a recent book David Metz, former chief scientist of the UK Department of Transport, discusses the monetized time savings conventionally used to justify public expenditure on infrastructure, and particularly on road programs. He cites data from the UK National Travel Survey to show that average per capita travel time in Britain remained more or less constant between 1970 and 2005, a period which saw enormous investment in new and improved roads. He observes that he was surprised to find no analysis in the research literature that measured whether a particular road investment had actually achieved the travel time savings claimed for it. He ‗drew a blank‘, he says, from his search (Metz, 2008, p. 30). Recent work in Australia seeks to fill the gap identified by Metz by evaluating the claims made for a major motorway expansion carried out in Melbourne between 1996 and 2000. City Link is a 22 kilometre roadway expanding and linking existing motorways by means of a new section of elevated motorway, a bridge and two tunnels (Lay and Daly, 2002). City Link was built under a Concession Deed granted to a consortium of companies (Transurban comprised of Transfield Engineering and Obayashi) to des