COMPARING MULTIMODAL ALTERNATIVES IN MAJOR TRAVEL CORRIDORS

In the past, metropolitan planning organizations usually compared transportation projects using measures of effectiveness that are uniquely applicable to a specific mode. But if highway and transit projects are to be compared, as will be necessary under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, common measures of effectiveness applicable across modes must be used. Another problem that will arise in such a comparison involves accounting for costs. For valid comparisons across modes, the full costs of each alternative must be taken into account. Public costs incurred by nontransportation public agencies, fixed private costs, and external social and environmental costs cannot be ignored. A new approach for cost-effectiveness evaluation of multimodal transportation alternatives in urban areas is presented. The approach is applicable at the level of system planning as well as corridor or subarea planning. The advantages of the new approach are that it allows (a) cross-modal comparison, (b) comparison of investment as well as policy alternatives, and (c) comparison of alternative scenarios or policies that could affect rates of future aggregate regional growth, with respect to their cost impacts. The approach is demonstrated through application of a simplified analysis technique using a microcomputer spreadsheet and travel demand model output data from a multimodal transportation corridor study. It is suggested that the approach can be a useful tool for comparing multimodal investment and policy alternatives.