Project appraisal - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 360

in NATA, the way they are framed will be different. Typically they prioritise particular
localities or social groups, usually as part of broader spatial, economic or social policies.
A common example of this is the designation of certain routes within the highway
network as being of strategic importance (i.e. a local or regional version of the principle
followed nationally with trunk roads). This is accompanied by policies to the effect that
investment should be concentrated on these routes - by implication even if better 'value
for money' might in theory be obtained from individual schemes elsewhere.
Prioritising problems within a local area can be considered another form of 'pre-
determined' distributional assessment - in this case on a subset of situations where
conditions have been identified as most in need of improvement. This contrasts with
the way in which Government objectives are framed - only identifying directions of
change. On this basis a certain improvement in conditions for a given expenditure is
considered to be of equivalent value irrespective of whether the original condition is
relatively good or bad. Clearly this is not how local people tend to view the situation!
DfT advice on this subject is expressed rather tartly:
Overall, whilst assessment of strategies or plans in relation to solving identified
problems is a useful exercise which is important for the decision-making process it
is not a substitute for assessing the extent to which strategies or plans offer value
for money against objectives.
(TAG unit 2.5 para 1.4.5)
However without assessment relative to problems there is a danger of improvements
being skewed to where they can be obtained most cheaply (because this offers greater
value for money) rather than where they are most needed.
As far as distributional effects are concerned, the information presented in the
AST is deliberately 'neutral' reflecting the impartiality principle noted earlier. The
impacts of schemes are aggregated under the individual sub-objectives irrespective of
where they occur and who gains or loses and by how much.
This approach is helpful in the sense that it enables the application of value judgements
by decision-takers to be focused on the relative importance of the overall outcomes
identified under each heading. By itself however this would imply that politicians and
others are indifferent to the way these outcomes are experienced by different groups. This
is plainly not the case! People will be concerned about effects on their own constituencies
of interest (e.g. as users of a particular mode or residents of a particular place). They
will also have views on how far the issue of 'fairness' should be a factor and whether the
impact on disadvantaged groups should be accorded special importance.
To enable these issues to be considered, a supporting analysis of distributional
effects is undertaken. Computerised map-based presentations based on outputs
from transport models can assist decision-makers considerably in the understanding
of spatial distributional effects. The scope of such work will depend on the nature,
purpose and circumstances of the scheme in question - information is only required to
the extent that it is likely to have significance for the decision being made.
The second set of supporting analyses is concerned with the financial impacts of a
proposal and other aspects relevant to its deliverability. These are considered under
two headings:
• affordability and financial sustainability
• practicability and public acceptability.