Workshop 7 report: Assessing the wider benefits of public transport projects

Workshop 7 concluded that the terminology, 'wider benefits', tends to reinforce a narrow impact assessment-based approach to transport policy and project evaluation. Participants argued that a preferred approach is to concentrate on identifying (triple bottom line) societal goals and identifying initiatives to achieve those goals, in which case 'wider benefits' become core rather than add-ons. This shifts the planning/policy cycle focus to the starting point: need identification and initiative definition, as distinct from narrowly based impact assessment of initiatives conceived elsewhere. Against this background, Workshop papers examined a range of economic and social goals whose achievement can be enhanced, or set back, by transport initiatives, considering issues such as land use transport integration, land value uplift, customer amenity benefits, new technologies, social justice and mobility-related social exclusion, together with ways to identify those at risk of such exclusion and engage them in initiative identification and assessment. Recommendations for policy and research are outlined, together with discussion suggestions for Thredbo 17.