Importance of Highway Planning towards the economy of Country

Highway Planning and Design

Submitted To: Prof. Dr. Mumtaz Ahmed Kamal

Submitted By: Imtiaz Ahmed (2k11F-MS-Tran-01) Faizan Ali (2k11F-MS-Tran-02) Shiraz Ahmed (2k11F-MS-Tran-03)

IMPROTANCE OF HIGHWAY PLANNING TOWARDS THE ECONOMY OF THE COUNTRY

Highway Planning
The process of transportation planning entails developing a transportation plan for an urban region. It is an ongoing process that seeks to address the transport needs of the inhabitants of the area, and with the aid of a process of consultation with all relevant groups, strives to identify and implement an appropriate plan to meet these needs.

Highway and transportation planning can be described as a process of making decisions which concerns the future of a given transport system. The decisions relate to the determination of future demand; the relationships and interactions which exist between the different modes of transport; the effect of the proposed system on both existing land uses and those proposed for the future; the economic, environmental, social and political impacts of the proposed system and the institutional structures in place to implement the proposal put forward.

Transport planning is generally regarded as a rational process, i.e. a rational and orderly system for choosing between competing proposals at the planning stage of a project. It involves a combined process of information gathering and decision-making.

The five steps in the rational planning process are summarized in Table 1.3.

Highway Economy
Highways are constructed because they provide benefits to the society as a whole or as individuals. Good transportation facilities raise the level of entire economy by providing for ready transportation of goods, they are of assistance in problems of national defense, they make easier the provision of community services like: police and fire protection, medical care, schooling and delivery of the mails, they open added opportunities for recreation and travel.

Highways benefit the land owner because ready assess makes his property more valuable.

They benefit the motor vehicle user through reduce cost of vehicle operation, saving in time, reduction in accidents, and increase comfort and ease of driving. On the other hand, road improvements take money that might be used for other productive purposes by individuals or by Government. They can be justified only if the benefits exceed the costs entailed in providing them, including some allowance for return on the money invested.

The total cost of motor transportation is the essential consideration in the long term planning for highways. Over a century ago, highway economy was under discussion. W.M. Gillespe, Professor of Civil Engineering at Union College, in his manual of the principles and practice of road making, stated that A minimum of expense is, of course, highly desirable; but the road which is truly the cheapest is not the one which has cost the least money, but the one which makes the most profitable returns in proportion to the amount expended upon it.

For many years attention was focused largely on the relative economy of various road surfacings, and later on the cost of motor vehicle operation. Only after the advent of the state-wide planning

surveys with the masses on data developed by them has attention to many other factors of the subject been possible.

Additional Advantages
Following are some additional benefits that can be achieved by the better highway planning. Time Saving: Driver Comfort and Convenience Motor-vehicle operating cost

Time Saving: Proper route planning and road improvement results in reduced travel time. For trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles, reduce travel time in turn often means savings in wages of drivers and helpers.

Driver Comfort and Convenience Origin and destination surveys have shown that many drivers chose routes along freeways and expressways in preference to those along conventional highways or streets, even though overall distances are much longer and travel times greater on the former. Thus, there is substantial evidence that driver place a money value on the comfort and convenience provide by the modern highway facilities. Highway economists agree that improved comfort and convenience is economic benefit.

Motor-vehicle operating cost Savings in motor-vehicle operating cost are tangible and real. If highway planning and design sre to be placed on a scientific basis, these benefits must be considered in justifying the highway expenditures.

Economic assessment
Within the US, both economic and environmental evaluations form a central part of the regional transportation planning process called for by federal law when state level transportation plans required under the Intermodal Transportation Efficiency Act 1991 are being determined or in decisions by US federal organizations regarding the funding of discretionary programmes.

Cost-benefit analysis is the most widely used method of project appraisal throughout the world. Its origins can be traced back to a classic paper on the utility of public works by Dupuit (1844), written originally in the French language. The technique was first introduced in the US in the early part of the twentieth century with the advent of the Rivers and Harbours Act 1902 which required that any evaluation of a given development option must take explicit account of navigation benefits arising from the proposal, and these should be set against project costs, with the project only receiving financial support from the federal government in situations where benefits exceeded costs. Following this, a general primer, known as the Green Book, was prepared by the US Federal Interagency River Basin Committee (1950), detailing the general principles of economic analysis as they were to be applied to the formulation and evaluation of federally funded water resource projects. This formed the basis for the application of cost-benefit analysis to water resource proposals, where options were assessed on the basis of one criterion their economic efficiency. In 1965 Dorfman released an extensive report applying costbenefit analysis to developments outside the water resources sector. From the 1960s onwards the technique spread beyond the US and was utilized extensively to aid option choice in areas such as transportation.

Cost-benefit analysis is also widely used throughout Europe. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a rapid expansion in the use of cost-benefit analysis within the UK as a tool for assessing major transportation projects. These studies included the cost-benefit analysis for the London Birmingham Motorway by Coburn Beesley and Reynolds (1960) and the economic analysis for the siting of the proposed third London airport by Flowerdew (1972). This growth was partly the result of the increased government involvement in the economy during the post-war period, and partly the result of the increased size and complexity of investment decisions in a modern

industrial state. The computer programme COBA has been used since the early 1980s for the economic assessment of major highway schemes (DoT, 1982). It assesses the net value of a preferred scheme and can be used for determining the priority to be assigned to a specific scheme, for generating a shortlist of alignment options to be presented to local action groups for consultation purposes, or for the basic economic justification of a given corridor. In Ireland, the Department of Finance requires that all highway proposals are shown to have the capability of yielding a minimum economic return on investment before approval for the scheme will be granted.

References:
Highway Engineering by Laurence I. Hewes, Clarkson H. Oglesby http://www.vnce.org/transportation-planning-process.html#more-22

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