Case Study:

Sacramento, California

Conclusions

User Benefits and Equity

• The user benefit analysis illustrates how an important effect - overall benefits to travelers - can be measured and compared among scenarios. Simply measuring time savings for existing trips does not provide a complete picture of traveler benefits. The measure used here also considers changes in travel cost, other measures that affect the overall "utility" of travel, benefits to new travelers, and the overall capital and operating costs of infrastructure. In addition, the measure calculates benefits differently for commercial vehicle travel than for personal travel. As a result it provides a picture of whether the project is economically beneficial overall (although external costs and benefits are not included).

• User benefits can further be analyzed by income group, consistent with income groupings used in the travel model. This can help in analyzing the equity impacts of various policy combinations. For example, the pricing/transit scenario and the TOD/transit scenario were both found to have positive net economic benefits. The pricing/transit scenario, however, affected the lowest-income group negatively, while the TOD/transit scenario affected all income groups positively.

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