Value for money of cycling farcilities

[Wanlock Dod]

Given that the benefits of cycle farcilities come indirectly as a result of increased levels of cycling, through improvements to e.g. congestion, air quality, and public health it seems relevant to consider the number of additional cyclists, or cycle journeys, relative to the cost of the farcility.

Does anybody have any idea what would be considered an acceptable level of increase in numbers of cycle journeys per £100,000 of expenditure?

[mjr]

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ion-grants is the current government policy for the city and national park grants. Maybe the answer can be derived from that.

[gaz]

The Department for Transport has said that "for every £1 of public money spent, the funded schemes provide £5.50 worth of social benefit."

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... grants.pdf

The £5.50 is an average, some schemes have been shown to deliver £35 worth of social benefit for every £1 spent.

(Effectively the same link as mjr).

[Wanlock Dod]

Thanks, I'm not sure that has got me much further. Perhaps it would be best to explain my concerns. These are that the benefits of cycling can only actually be realised where people are genuinely encouraged to cycle. My principal concern is that local councils are assuming these benefits without any concern over whether or not they are actually being realised. If money is spent on the assumption of benefits occurring, but the farcility is of such a poor standard that it does not result in increased levels of cycling, then there will be no (or possibly negative) benefits but the cost of the farcility is still incurred.

Value for money assessments of cycle farcilities therefore seem to need to be based on an actual measure of an increase in numbers of cycle journeys, so that we do not simply assume that chucking a bit of paint on the road will be worthwhile.

I think that I will try to look at total levels of expenditure in cycle farcilities in Londinium, and relate that to increased numbers of cycle journeys in the area. That should at least provide me with a benchmark of what has actually been achieved in Little Britain, and I will be able to evaluate the cost effectiveness of other councils against that benchmark.

Can anybody suggest a more robust approach?

[mjr]

It would be far more robust to get the analysis done by someone not so biased that they seem to call ALL infrastructure "farcilities". It may even be interesting to look for a difference between the arguably-farcical (Leeds/Bradford or Norwich stage 1) and the almost-OK (Norwich stage 2 or Cambridge).

[pjclinch]

Your use of "farcility" illuminates a lot of the issue. The sort of thing that gets in to Warrington CC's "Facility of the Month" pages is in no way, shape or form "value for money". These are box-ticking exercises.

Much of this issue might be disappeared if cycle infrastructure was required to meet the sort of standards that the DfT's publications on the matter suggest they should, and do stuff like connect to destinations and other infrastructure.

The Transport Select Committee has (yet another) consultation open at the moment. You might want to raise these points through that, especially where they are highlighting their wonderings about whether there are fundamental planning issues which need to be addressed as part of an any approach to active mode travel.

Pete.

[Wanlock Dod]

If I wasn't quite so appalled at the levels of expenditure on cycling in Scotland (3% of the transport budget over the last 7 years) having achieved basically nothing (the government were recently boasting about an increase in cycling levels by 3%, taking then from ~1% to ~1%) then I certainly wouldn't be wasting my time trying to hold them to account. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be questioning why so much expenditure over such a long period of time has failed to produce meaningful results. The councils clearly have no interest in incriminating themselves by admitting that they have been wasting money, and so it falls to disgruntled tax payers to try to hold them to account.

[mjr]

If I wasn't quite so appalled at the levels of expenditure on cycling in Scotland (3% of the transport budget over the last 7 years) having achieved basically nothing (the government were recently boasting about an increase in cycling levels by 3%, taking then from ~1% to ~1%) then I certainly wouldn't be wasting my time trying to hold them to account. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be questioning why so much expenditure over such a long period of time has failed to produce meaningful results. The councils clearly have no interest in incriminating themselves by admitting that they have been wasting money, and so it falls to disgruntled tax payers to try to hold them to account.

3% of the transport budget doesn't seem like "so much" but I've no idea what Scotland's transport budget is. What is it in £ per person per year? More or less than the £20pppy suggested by several cycling campaigns as necessary to produce meaningful results within a decade? More or less than the £10pppy given to a few blessed cities in England and Wales in recent years?

[Wanlock Dod]

I think we have had about 7 years of ~£40 million pa (which for a population of about 5 million is about £8 per head), which was doubled to ~£80 million pa when they realised that two thirds of the way through their programme to increase levels of useful cycling by an order of magnitude that the results were slightly negative. Now, with only just over a year to go they still have basically all of the work left to do (in terms of recruiting cyclists) and most of the money has already been spent.

[FatBat]

During my days as a Right-To-Ride rep, my day job involved performing Cost-Benefit Analysis for proposed transport schemes (ranging from a 1km road just outside of Grimsby, to the High Speed 2 rail project). When I was "consulted" as Right-To-Ride rep, my professional training kicked in and I liked to ask probing questions about the nonsense schemes proposed by my local council.

For one particular howler, I asked what the expected usage of the scheme would be, and how this had been determined, and how this impacted on the scheme's value for money. The answer was that the scheme would be "lightly" used, this had been determined by guesswork and that no value for money assessment had been done.

To give the council some credit, they didn't waste much money on the scheme, as can be determined from this StreetView

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.7679246 ... 312!8i6656

[atlas_shrugged]

@FatBat That is a useful post - thanks. Could you post any links to how campaigners can do a 'Value-for-money' assessment that will satisfy a council looking at any proposal. Maybe orientate this towards a single campaigner i.e. an individual with limited time and money at their disposal.

[Cunobelin]

During my days as a Right-To-Ride rep, my day job involved performing Cost-Benefit Analysis for proposed transport schemes (ranging from a 1km road just outside of Grimsby, to the High Speed 2 rail project). When I was "consulted" as Right-To-Ride rep, my professional training kicked in and I liked to ask probing questions about the nonsense schemes proposed by my local council.

For one particular howler, I asked what the expected usage of the scheme would be, and how this had been determined, and how this impacted on the scheme's value for money. The answer was that the scheme would be "lightly" used, this had been determined by guesswork and that no value for money assessment had been done.

To give the council some credit, they didn't waste much money on the scheme, as can be determined from this StreetView

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.7679246 ... 312!8i6656

What if often needs is people willing to give up time and experience, along with Councils willing to listen

We worked with our local Council under "Agenda 21" and it was worthwhile


One of the best meeting results was a Saturday morning market stall

We had two big maps of the local area, one for the routes that you actually cycled, and ones that you would cycle if there were improvements

The maps were a mess at the end, but it did highlight may common routes and "desire lines" that then informed the Council policy

Classic was a route where there were tow very busy roundabouts, and a dual carriageway.

One of the routes on bot actual and desired routes was a footpath across MOD land that cut 1/2 a mile off the route and avoided the busy roads. Within weeks it was widened, designated as shared use and is heavily used.

[FatBat]

@FatBat That is a useful post - thanks. Could you post any links to how campaigners can do a 'Value-for-money' assessment that will satisfy a council looking at any proposal. Maybe orientate this towards a single campaigner i.e. an individual with limited time and money at their disposal.

Things might have changed since I last worked in Transport Planning, but the standard guidelines are known as WebTAG and they run into many hundreds of pages. You can find them all here; https://www.gov.uk/guidance/transport-a ... nce-webtag

Obviously, lots of people make a good living doing Value for Money assessments and the whole process is loaded against the interested amateur. But, to do a very basic Value For Money analysis of a cycling scheme the process would be;

1. Try to figure out the costs of the scheme (construction costs, maintenance costs, plus anything else you can think of). Transport schemes are generally assessed over a sixty year period, so you have to account for all costs over this period!

2. Try to figure out, and place a monetary value on, any benefits associated with the scheme. To start of, I'd look at time savings. If the scheme can save X people Y minutes per day, this can be monetised over the sixty year period. People are assumed to place a monetary value on their time - for example, if the scheme saves 100 people 2 minutes of travel time every day, and they value their time at 20p per minute, you have a benefit of £40 per day. You can then extrapolate that over 60 years (taking into account the fact that values-of-time will change over the years, and that benefits accrued far in the future are worth less than those accrued in the near future (this is known as discounting). You might then want to add in accident cost savings - every accident is assumed to cost the economy money and so reducing accidents can have a monetary value placed on it. All the numbers you will need are at this link; https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... k-may-2018

3. Try to add in other benefits that you can think of - better health, better air quality, reduced congestion, etc. This is a bit outside my expertise, but I'm sure WebTAG will have something to say about it. When I did Cost-Benefit analysis for rail schemes, we used a rule-of-thumb that each vehicle-kilometre removed from an urban setting would have a benefit of £0.50. In rural areas it would be £0.10. This was suitable for a "back of an envelope" calculation.

If the benefits are more than the costs, the scheme is considered value for money. Divide the benefits by the costs to get the Benefit to Cost Ratio (BCR). A sensible policy would prioritise schemes with the highest BCR. Road schemes never got a look-in unless they had a BCR of at least 6. Cycling schemes are often said to have a BCR of at least 30. High Speed 2 struggled to get a BCR approaching 2, and this went down with every re-appraisal. I wonder what it is now.

[FatBat]

There is also this paper;

Evaluating the demand for new cycle facilities, by P Hopkinson and M Wardman.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 0X96000200

It looks like you have to pay for it.