Cost-benefit Analysis (CBA), or Multi-criteria Decision-making (MCDM) or Both: Politicians’ Perspective in Transport Policy Appraisal

The scientific literature frequently discusses questions if cost-benefit analysis (CBA) or multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is the appropriate appraisal tool in transport policy-making, or a combination of both. Hardly any literature exists on the opinions of real transport policy decision-makers about appraisal tools such as CBA or MCDM (or both) which are actually supposed to help them. The aim of this paper is to discuss from a politicians’ perspective how a useful transport policy appraisal tool might look like. Twenty-one Dutch transport politicians were interviewed on their views on CBA. The results show that they use CBA but in a non-decisive manner and they find the aggregate outcome (the composite result) of CBAs pretentious. They seem especially interested in appraisal tools which show clearly to them the political important trade-offs of a transport policy. This paper proposes a possible approach for such a trade-off information sheet using both CBA and MCDM.