Relating cost-benefit analysis results with transport project decisions in the Netherlands

Abstract

This paper relates the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) results of transportation policy proposals in the Netherlands with the decision to implement or abandon the proposal. The aim of this study is to explore the relation between the CBA results and decision-making. Multinomial logit regression models and Latent Class Analysis are used in this paper as the statistical tools to identify associations between CBA results and decisions and to reveal unobservable classes underlying the CBA results and the decisions for projects. Analysis was carried out on 106 Netherlands CBA reports (2000–2012) containing 454 observations. Each observation is a CBA result of a transport project variant. In line with most of the international literature, this study cannot find a significant association between Net Present Values (NPVs) and the variants chosen in political decisions (after controlling for other relevant variables). However, a positive NPV does keep variants ‘pending’, preventing a negative decision.