Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
37
As a consequence researchers play an influential role in CBA both in determining the
(prescribed) parameters, pricing, and other assumptions, and in doing the CBA analysis where
they have their responsibility of estimation, forecast, and other degrees of freedom.
The European Commission has undertaken several efforts to harmonise methods, forced by the
fact that many infrastructural projects have a transnational character. Apart from its
advantages, the harmonisation has made the decision process more rigid and standardised,
taking away space for other decisive arguments (non-priced effects, hard to quantify effects,
political or social preferences) and moving away from scientific dilemmas (European
Commission, 2014, Mackie, 2013, HEATCO, 2006).
There are several project evaluation criteria used to profile individual projects. The most used
criteria are net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and benefit-cost ratio (BCR)
(World Bank, 2013b, Mackie, 2014, Mackie 2013, European Investment Bank, 2013,
Bourguignon 2008, Canada, 2007, France, 2013).
For a complete and overall assessment of transportation infrastructure projects, Brown (2015)
suggests three more aspects to be considered
 role of infrastructure in economic growth
 sustainable development and climate concerns
 timing of investment decisions
Regarding the first two bullet points, there is a growing awareness and concern around the
green topic and Brown (2015) provides the definition for the term green infrastructure that
includes “infrastructure that preserves or increases the productivity of natural resources,
including reducing emission intensity”. Green infrastructures are believed to be essential to
“expand the frontier of the […] trade-off between environmental/climate sustainability and
economic growth”. Given the definition, an immediate example are renewable energy systems
including wind farms and solar power plants.
As described above, transport policy affects economic growth through its impact on services
such as health, education and provision of new jobs. Transport network, and implicitly NTI
planning, can therefore have influence on existing economic imbalances. The Royal Town
Planning Institute (2014) describes this effect both at a national level – in the United Kingdom,
focusing on London – and generally in Europe. There is found to be a correlation at both stages
between howmuch higher than the average the GDP is and the ease with which people canmove
from a region to another. As an example, in the UK, government funded infrastructure
investments are still mainly devoted to London and its surroundings, where projects and
programs in that region are at their highest in £ per capita, ranked between £4,001 and £4,333.
Transport planning, furthermore, has to be connected to land use planning to avoid excessive
expansion of cities, as documented by the Royal Town Planning Institute (2014), where due to
long distance the main mean of transport would become the private car and public transport
system would not be efficient. An immediate consequence is the increase in traffic, congestion
and consequently pollution.
In practice the financiers determine the format to be used for the feasibility study. In the case of
public funding the legal authorities are the financiers and determine the format.