PRIORITISING EXPENDITURE ON THE NATION'S ROAD TRANSPORT ASSETS

Recent research by a number of organisations has identified the need for investment in the nation's transport infrastructure and has illustrated the economic worth of such investment. Road investment has continued to occur at varying levels over the past decade; rail investment has increased significantly in recent years with the implementation of the Federal Government's 'One Nation' statement and the establishment of the National Rail Corporation. These activities notwithstanding, the processes followed in Australia in evaluating, prioritising and programming transport infrastructure investment are in their infancy and significant additional effort is required to develop appropriate evaluation techniques and to define appropriate policy frameworks. This paper describes the application of social cost benefit analysis to transport infrastructure investment decisions, by reference to a number of case studies. Procedures developed specifically for this purpose are described, in particular the application of an economic evaluation model for road projects. (a)