Author: Daniel Pece
Pece, Daniel, 2021 BCA assessment of public transport alternatives for the Modbury corridor Adelaide, Flinders University, College of Science and Engineering
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This Thesis aims to generate and evaluate Public Transport Options for the Modbury corridor in Adelaide, where the O’Bahn (a guided-busway semi-rapid system) was constructed.
Two types of evaluations are performed, transit performance evaluation and economic BCA evaluation.
For this sake, this report starts with an introduction, setting the background, justification and objectives. Then continues with a literature review, examining the relevant theoretical background.
Thereafter, the Transit Mode options are developed and evaluated from the performance point of view.
At this point, before continuing with economic considerations, the Benefits, Costs and impacts not considered are defined.
The following two chapters aim to Model the transport network to obtain Volumes parameters and Travel Time parameters for Benefits and Costs calculations.
Furthermore, the evaluation parameters are defined, followed by the Benefit-Cost Analysis results with a discussion of them. The following chapter compares the results with the Transit Modes performance parameters.
Finally, the conclusions and future research possibilities are reflected, where the main conclusions were that the three most important components affecting the BCA are the Transit Capacity because it defines its feasibility, Capital costs and Travel Time saving at peak hour because are the most relevant components in NPV and BCR.
Moreover, the Guided-Bus Rapid Transit is considered the best option from an economic point of view, for the expected demand growth in the next 30 years. Similar to the conclusions formulated in past evaluations, for the past 30 years, before the O’Bahn was constructed. Indeed, the O’Bahn produces a positive NPV in all evaluation considerations, which is considered rare for transit services. Even if the demand would grow more than expected, the Guided-BRT, or the current O’Bahn, is still the best option and still feasible as long as the performance is improved accordingly.
Keywords: Benefit Cost Analysis, Cost Benefit Analysis, BCA, CBA, NVP, BCR, Transit, Public Transport, Project Evaluation, Transit Performance, Public Transport Performance, Peak Hour, Congestion, Congestion function, Akcelik, Akcelik formula, bus, O'Bahn, Guided Busway, Light Rail, Heavy Rail, Semirapid, semi rapid, shadow prices, economic value, Adelaide, South Australia, Modbury, corridor, Big Data, SCATS, Bluetooth, hourly variation
Subject: Engineering thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2021
School: College of Science and Engineering
Supervisor: Nicholas Holyoak