A new approach for user benefit assessment by a LUTI model: The case of Madrid

Abstract

Assessing user benefits in transport policy implementation has been studied using theoretical or empirical measures. Among user benefits analysis, the equity issue is one that has not been fully studied nor recognized as a key factor representing public’s benefits. This paper aims to develop a new approach to include equity within the consumer surplus in the user benefits evaluation. This new approach is to re-weight the consumer surplus based on an equity factor that considers both household income and value of time. Three different transport policies, namely road pricing, parking charging and public transport improvement, are simulated through the Metropolitan Activity Relocation Simulator, or MARS model (a LUTI model calibrated for Madrid). Their impacts on user benefits have been evaluated through the social welfare function (WF) that includes both costs and benefits for public users and private operators. The results of the analysis show that road pricing generates a negative effect on user benefits, especially on the low income users. The results of this research can be a key issue to understand the relationship between transport policies and user benefits distribution in a metropolitan context.