Value of travel time: An economic assessment for transport appraisal decision-makers

The continuous growth of vehicles on the road and the consequent traffic congestion, especially in suburban areas, is a source for major concern. It impacts negatively on the operating costs of infrastructures and on the social and economic life in the surrounding area. From an economic perspective, travel time for the displacement between two junctions of a network is one of the most significant factors to be taken into consideration. On this basis, the designer decides on the level of service and the type of infrastructure to be built and the traveller assesses the alternatives to the existing modes of transport and his willingness to face the associated cost. In Europe, United Kingdom (UK) was the first country to value travel time in the early 1960s. Moreover, until 2011, it contributed to the estimation of the monetary value of time for 60% of international studies within the EU. The UK Department for Transport (DfT) adopts the Transport Analysis Guidance (WebTAG) as useful transport planning and design tool. This paper discusses on the guidelines and software tools adopted for the economic evaluation of transport interventions in UK and Italy, highlighting particularly, the values and methods for estimating the value of time (VOT) in both countries. We propose a strong integration of the two models taking into account the numerous parameters examined in UK and at the same time the method’s easy applicability for countries with different development conditions and needs.