Resources

A review of the values of travel time savings used for the evaluation of road projects in New Zealand and incorporated in the 1991 Transit New Zealand Project Evaluation Manual was undertaken, largely in 1992. Travel time savings comprise the major portion of the benefit of many road improvement projects, and thus the unit values of time savings are a crucial input to road project evaluations. The basis of the unit time values used in the Project Evaluation Manual was described, highlighting the aspects of particular weakness or uncertainty.

The state of international knowledge on travel time values was reviewed in detail, under four main headings:

• theoretical basis
• methods and findings from behavioural studies
• transferability of international research
• practical application for project planning and evaluation.

An outline research programme on valuation of travel time savings was developed for New Zealand, and priorities were established based on cost:effectiveness ratios.

Keywords: behavioural evaluation, New Zealand, resource, time, travel, valuation, value