[sustran] re: How to assess local governments' transport policies

[Paul Barter]

Also taking the liberty of forwarding a useful response to yesterday's query
from Korea. 
Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Litman [mailto:litman at VTPI.ORG]
Sent: Wednesday, 4 July 2001 10:41
To: UTSG at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: How to assess local governments' transport policies


It is very important when developing such evaluation criteria that they be
based on the goal of access (the ability to obtain desired goods and
services, and reach desired activities), rather than treat mobility and
traffic as an end in itself. Many actions that improve vehicle mobility
reduce access overall by reducing pedestrian and bicycle mobility, and by
encouraging more dispersed land use patterns.

For example, when siting a school or business, the best location from a
mobility perspective is on a busy highway at the urban fringe, where it is
convenient to reach by car and there is land for abundant parking. But such
a location reduces access, because it is difficult to reach by walking,
cycling and public transit. Access is maximized by clustering major
activity centers in a centralized area with good transit service.

Evaluation criteria for access could include:
* Average door-to-door travel time costs for residents in a region.
* Average annual transportation expenditures for residents in a region.
* Freight transportation delivery speeds.
* Crashes and crash fatalities per capita.
* Quality of transportation choices for non-drivers and lower-income people.
* Quality of the pedestian and cycling environments.


For more discussion see the "Measuring Transport" chapter of the VTPI
Online TDM Encyclopedia, available at http://www.vtpi.org.


At 07:16 AM 7/4/01 +0100, Sangjin Han <han at KOTI.RE.KR> wrote:
>Dear all
>
>I am Sangjin Han, working for Korea Transport Institute. Recently, I have
>been involved with the project, "Evaluation of local transport policies and
>thier implementation results". The project is devised to encourage local
>governments to follow central government's transport stragies and to
>introduce competition between local governments by scoring their tranport
>policies. We are planning to establish trees of transport policies
>according to hierarchies, and we will score each policies according to some
>numerical scales. Then we will make comprehensive score for each local
>government using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). Possibly, the central
>government may consider this assessment score, when they allocate subsidies
>to local governments. This idea seems to be too strict to local government
>which should be assessed.
>
>Anyway, I need some documents, reports, books, web sites, or whatever,
>which show experience of assessing or evaluating local governments'
>transport policies.
>
>Thank you very much.
>
>
>SANGJIN HAN
>
>PhD in Transport Studies (BSc, MSc)
>
>Department of Transport Planning
>Korea Transport Institute
>2311, Daewhadong, Ilsangu, Kyunggido
>Korea
>
>tel: +82-(0)31-910-3112
>fax: +82-(0)31-910-3225
>e-mail: han at koti.re.kr
>
>
>

Sincerely,

Todd Litman, Director
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
"Efficiency - Equity - Clarity"
1250 Rudlin Street
Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, Canada
Phone & Fax: 250-360-1560
E-mail:  litman at vtpi.org
Website: http://www.vtpi.org