Prioritizing transport infrastructure projects at early stages of projects

Abstract

Investment on transport infrastructure is a significant component in a country’s budget as it is identified as a key factor to facilitate the country’s development. At the same time demand for transportation is positively correlated with the development. With this increasing demand for transport infrastructure and limited funding available, it is necessary to prioritise appropriate projects. Current appraisal practices at the early stages of projects fail to identify some important criterions and therefore, may ultimately end up not selecting the most appropriate project(s) which addresses contemporary concerns. Therefore the objective of this study is to identify a cost effective method and factors that should be considered in evaluating alternatives at the early stages of transport infrastructure projects. Both academic and grey literature was reviewed to identify current practises; methodologies and factors concerned in the recent past. Most of the time feasibility reports used descriptive format and often gave vague conclusions. Therefore the final selection of alternative(s) is implicit. A performance matrix was developed in this study based on multi criteria analysis linear additive model. This method was primarily selected as it is easy to use in practise. In addition to the traditional criterions, this matrix contains new criterions that should be looked into with the current interests. A case study for Kandy expressway alternative selection based on this developed performance matrix is presented in this paper. In addition to the new matrix, a modified scoring system was used in the analysis to minimise the variations, as scores are given by different experts. Further, analysis was compared with the view of different experts and results of sensitivity analysis to address the possible arguments on weight given to each criterion.