Methodologies for updating parameter values for economic evaluation of road transport projects in Australia

The review of the National Guidelines for Transport System Management (NGTSM) is currently underway. The first part of the review has involved the updating of unit parameter values for road user cost (RUC) components for use in economic evaluation of road transport projects in Australia, namely: fuel, engine oil, tyres, new vehicles (depreciation), travel time and crash costs. This paper presents an overview of the methodologies used to update the parameter values for RUC components supplied to the NGTSM review. The paper provides parameter values for each of the components for an extended 20 vehicle classification (including passenger cars, light & heavy commercial vehicles and buses) for input prices in terms of both market and resource prices. Values of travel time are provided for vehicle occupants across all vehicle types, as well as values of travel time for freight in urban and rural environs. Finally, the paper reviews the methodology used to estimate the costs of casualty crashes and provides estimates of average cost of crashes for both human capital and willingness to pay (WTP) approaches, taking into account crash rates and injury severities across jurisdictions.