SMART Seminar: Applying Benefit-Cost Analysis to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and the Australian context
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- ITS refers to a collection of technologies applied to transportation problems rather than a single technology. It can be viewed broadly or narrowly. - Academic literature on benefit-cost analysis of ITS is limited, focusing more on narrow technical outcomes than broader social benefits. Policy literature is more comprehensive, like the EU's ITS action plan. - In Australia, ITS has long been implemented without conception as an integrated system. A more systematic approach to evaluation is emerging, considering both single projects and ITS as a larger system to identify net impacts.
SMART Seminar: Applying Benefit-Cost Analysis to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and the Australian context
- 1. Applying Benefit-Cost Analysis to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and the Australian context Cameron Gordon Associate Professor of Economics Faculty of Business, Government and Law University of Canberra Presentation to SMART Centre 16 June 2014
- 2. What is ‘ITS’? • What is ITS? In fact, it is not one technology, but a collection of disparate technologies, some not so new, applied to a series of disparate transportation problems. • One definition is as follows: "Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) apply well-established technologies in communications, control, electronics, and computer hardware and software to improve surface transportation system performance." (US FHWA 2000) • ITS has been defined by another source as “those transport systems that apply information, communication and other forms of high technology, to the efficient and safe movement of goods and people, across a suburb, across a city, across the continent, or across the globe.” (Australian Parliament 2002) Definitions like this are typical: broad and nonspecific.
- 3. Three ways to look at ITS • (1) ITS can be a broad label covering a whole range of individual investment projects that happen to employ some sort of ‘smart’ technology. This is indeed how the label is often employed. • For example ramp-metering and digital signage are now fairly low-tech and in the case of the latter quite common. • Yet many would consider these ‘ITS’ because there is the use of technology to manage some aspect of the transport system in a dynamic and at least notionally interactive way.
- 4. • (2) A broader conception of ITS is one that looks at technological means broadly as a series of interrelated component programs, with varying degrees of scale, as parts of a larger ‘machine’ designed to serve specific ends, e.g. US FHWA (2000) : • Freeway, Incident, and Emergency Management, and Electronic Toll Collection • Arterial Management • Traveler Information Systems • Advanced Public Transportation Systems • Commercial Vehicle Operations • This sort of approach is more system-based, seeing the linkages between technologies and their proximate and/or ultimate purposes in achieving some sort of systematic outcome. • Analytically this has more power to it, though its limitation is that it remains constrained by engineering and technical definitions of outcome.
- 5. • (3) ITS finally could be seen as a complete system where technology is the means towards achievement of distinct social, economic and policy ends. • This sort of thinking is in a sense likely what inspired the label in the first place, i.e. the use of technology for ‘smart’ system management. • One large analytical advantage of this sort of conception is that mere technical advancement is not accepted as a good in and of itself but only good if it improves social welfare in some way. • Although some may assume that new technology applied to transport is always a net gain, in fact this is the question that needs to be answered by policymakers when considering such technology. • Although many use the term with this broad sense in mind they typically go back to more narrow technical measures when delving into program assessment.
- 6. The academic literature on ITS benefit- cost analysis • Brand (1994) has written one of the early articles on the subject in which he applies standard benefit-cost analysis to the discrete transportation investments typically bundled under the ITS label. He basically argues that ITS benefit-cost analysis should be approached like any other transportation investment except that the ‘causal chain’ should be carefully understood.
- 7. • A critical issue in ITS evaluation is the notion of ‘benefit’. Economists consider benefit as a net gain to society. But many in the ITS field focus on much more narrow technological outcomes, such as improvements in crash rates, ‘customer satisfaction’ or throughput on a particular segment where a particular technology is deployed (e.g. variable speed limits on motorways). • A 2005 literature survey of benefits evaluations for ITS consists almost entirely of such measures (Koonce 2005). • Indeed the literature thus far tends to have a distinct split between conceptual and methodological exercises on notional projects and ‘case studies’ or ‘evaluations’ that are more partial and limited in nature (Gough 2001, Maccubin et. al. 2003, Bekiaris et. al. 2004). Leviäkangas et. al. (2002) have conducted a profitability analysis of an ITS system; Juan et. al. (2006) have reviewed various attempts to measure its socio-economic impacts; and Chowdury and Sadek (2003) have considered planning ITS planning principles. • But ITS benefit-cost analyses, at least as represented in the literature, are few and far-between.
- 8. Evaluating ITS as a system
- 9. The policy and planning literature on ITS benefit-cost analysis • While academic study of ITS benefit-cost analysis remains fairly thin, more and more professional and governmental attention have been paid to the problems of ITS cost and benefit, particularly in the last decade as ITS expenditures rise and systems, as opposed to technical components, take shape. • The European Union in particular has been a leader in adopting an ITS action plan promulgated in detail by the European Commission in 2011 and building upon a legal framework approved by the European Parliament in 2010. This action plan has 6 elements, two of which have a benefit-cost flavor to them: Action Area 1 which calls for optimal use of road traffic and travel data and Action Area 4 which focuses on integration of vehicle data with infrastructure systems (European Commission 2011).
- 11. The Australian context • The 2002 Australian Parliamentary inquiry into ITS did note that the use of technology in transport and its academic and professional study was long-standing, particularly into technological aspects. • But it also noted that “Intelligent transport systems are often little noticed elements in Australia’s complex and diverse transport system. ITS is so much a part of the accepted background of Australia’s transport infrastructure that many users of transport systems are not aware of the contribution ITS makes to the efficient and economic movement of people, produce and products.” (Australian Parliament 2002, p. 3)
- 12. • Ten years later the Standing Council on Transport and Infrastructure, part of the Australian Department of Infrastructure and Transport, has issued a “Policy Framework for Intelligent Transport Systems in Australia” (DiT, 2012). • That report mentions a project on “Economic Analysis of Smart Infrastructure” whose goal is to incorporate results of the economic analysis by BITRE of Smart Infrastructure/ITS, in order to ensure the policy framework is consistent with the goals of government in enhancing asset productivity. (DiT, 2012, p. 16)” • A more comprehensive view, however, is already emerging in Australia, at least for roads. Austroads (2011) is a clear example of this. • The study’s stated purpose is to identify policy issues of cross-jurisdictional scope involved under two theoretical scenarios – a market-driven and a policy- driven approach – with respect to ITS introduction and rollout nationally.
- 14. Conclusions • The discussion up to this point has both ex-post and ex-ante implications. Almost all of the transport technology implemented in Australia has not really been conceived of, or implemented as, a system to begin with. But it is probably useful to re-examine some of these collections of investments to see if they did, in fact, achieve some systematic impact, whether that impact was a net positive or negative, and if the result was in fact just a series of local impact programs, not functioning as a system, whether that made any difference. • The ex-ante dimension is that it is probably useful to consider whether a technology investment is just a single project or perhaps a phase of a larger system. Benefit-cost analysis should be done in both cases, but a system analysis of the sort undertaken by Brand and colleagues would be recommended in the latter case. • There is also a critical public-private dimension. If the ITS project is purely privately provided, planned and financed, profitability analysis will be sufficient. If it is a PPP, then the government needs to take a broad system view and conduct benefit-cost analysis as to whether the project should be put out to tender at all, with the private provider doing its assessment of whether there will be a profitable market. And with sole public provision, the problem collapses down into proper design of the analysis, along the lines suggested already.