Accessibility benefit measurement of integrated land use and public transport investments: searching for synergies Paper for the 58th North American Annual Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, November 11-13, Denver, USA Karst Geurs(*), Michiel de Bok(#),Barry Zondag(±) (*)Centre for Transport Studies, University of Twente, Enschede (NL) (#) Significance, The Hague (NL), FEUP, Porto (PT) (±) Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague/Bilthoven (NL) Corresponding author:
[email protected] 1 Introduction Major investments in public transport in the Netherlands are often not efficient from a welfare economic perspective; i.e. of about 150 cost-benefit analysis of public transport projects in the Netherlands conduced in the past decades only one third of the projects had a positive benefit/cost ratio (Bakker and Zwaneveld, 2010). These public transport projects were typically not part of an integrated planning approach, and the CBA’s examined the costs and benefits of transport project only. In particular, the role of spatial planning or spatial developments in these CBA’s was ignored or not made explicit; i.e. land use is assumed to be fixed or does not differ between project alternatives. In recent years, however, integrated spatial and transport planning is receiving more attention in Dutch national policy making. In 2007, a national policy document, Randstad Urgent, was published, aiming to improve cooperation between national and regional governments and create joint policy decision making process for different spatial projects and transport infrastructure projects that are to be realised within the same region (Ministry of Transport Public Works and Water Management, 2007). The policy document focused on 40 projects within Randstad Area; the most urbanised region in the western part of the Netherlands.