Next Tuesday, the Government Economics Network and Auckland Council are hosting a seminar entitled “Economic evaluation in Auckland – new ideas and challenges“. It’s on a topic that I personally find very interesting – some readers may also be keen:
Estimating the economic impact of transport interventions using the Gross Value Added approach.
Current transport appraisal methods, with their focus on the economic welfare benefits and costs of transport investment, are well grounded in theory and widely used. However, these methods do not provide estimates of extra Gross Domestic Product and extra jobs, nor the spatial distribution of any economic gains and losses. Gross Value Added (GVA) models, have recently applied in the United Kingdom and the United States to account for some of these effects.
In this presentation, Anthony Byett, outlines the results of NZTA-commissioned research on the development of a GVA model for New Zealand. The research uses 2001 and 2006 census data from the 72 sub-national territories, and applies the model to a proposed additional Waitematā Harbour crossing. Promisingly, the model reveals productivity gains from local agglomeration and points to some productivity gains from wider connectivity as well. However, the building and use of the model also reveals shortcomings with the measurement of effective densities and the ability to reach inferences about regional distribution. Nonetheless, the model did prove insightful in highlighting where the benefits of another harbour crossing will likely lie.
Economic evaluation and Cost Benefit Analysis: Implications for practitioners, government agencies and Auckland Council.
Chris Parker, Auckland Council’s recently appointed Chief Economist, will reflect on recent developments in economic evaluation, including the NZTA research using the Gross Value added approach, and discuss some of the implications for practitioners, government agencies and Auckland Council.
The two speakers promise to be pretty interesting. Anthony Byett has led some pretty interesting work into the productivity of road networks. Chris Parker has just been appointed as the Council’s new Chief Economist following on quite a bit of work in transport appraisal at consultancy NZIER.
The seminar is being held at the Council Chambers in the Auckland Town Hall from 1pm to 2:30pm on Tuesday 17 February. You can RSVP at the GEN website.
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Pity it wasn’t a 6.00 thing so people who have day jobs could attend.
I went to this presentation and found it interesting. Gross Value Added is GDP minus taxes. They used a model originally developed for high speed rail in the UK but with some US simplifications. Basically they looked at the number of working age people with a 40min commute and the total of all people within 120 mins and estimated GVA of another harbour crossing as a test of the method using a two-stage least squares model to try and deal with mutual causality. It looks interesting as it could be a means to get away from travel time and traffic predictions which we all know are difficult. The presenter was straight forward about current short-comings and where it needs to go to be used. Here’s hoping.