Abstract Manager

The Region of Waterloo is in the preliminary stages of developing an Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP) for 2051.  To build and improve upon evaluation methodologies developed in earlier strategic plans, the Region has built a scenario evaluation tool to quantify trade-offs between alternative future scenarios (e.g. between a road-oriented scenario and a transit-oriented scenario).  The tool integrates with the Region’s travel forecasting model to measure economic, financial, and social costs and benefits using a single, monetized output metric.

While there is precedent for this type of analysis—including frameworks used in Ottawa and Calgary—the tool is designed to address two of the main shortcomings with current practice:

• Scale: The most rigorous work assessing transportation benefits and costs is done at the project evaluation level, usually to assess whether a project’s total benefits exceed its total costs.  However, there are fewer examples of the measurement of the total marginal cost of travel by each transportation mode.
• Health and other outcomes: TAC’s Integrating Health and Transportation in Canada report flagged the need to standardize the measurement of the health outcomes of travel.  Likewise, measures of other social outcomes such as equity and accessibility are in the early phases of practical deployment.  This tool presents an accounting of these dimensions of costs and benefits.

To build the tool, the study team conducted a comprehensive accounting of the total personal and external costs and benefits of travel by each mode of transportation, such as fuel, vehicle ownership, health benefits, safety risks, travel time, infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, and many more.  These costs and benefits were then normalized per person-kilometre of travel, and fed with travel information from the Region’s travel forecasting model.  This direct integration of the model permits the testing of different scenarios being evaluated as part of the IMP.

The presentation will provide an overview of all aspects of the development of the tool, from the original motivations behind its development, to information about its internal logic and structure, and lessons learned during and following its development.  Insights will be shared from both the client sponsor and consultant project manager.