The Economy Criterion is also concerned with improving the efficiency of economic activities. The transport costs and benefits captured by the TEE are intended to represent an acceptable approximation of the full economic impacts of a project, expressed in terms of economic welfare. However, it has been suggested that the benefits, generated through CBA, fail to capture the additional wider benefits of improved transport provision to economic development. The SACTRA (1999) report on Transport and the Economy considered in some detail the extent to which these issues are relevant and commissioned further research.
This research has come to fruition and the approach taken by STAG is to calculate these wider economic benefits (WEBs) as a sensitivity to the TEE results. The main reason for inclusion as a sensitivity is one of evaluation and monitoring - the methodology is such that it is very difficult to monitor or evaluate the benefits captured by WEBs.
Detail on the methodology to be used is presented in Section 9.3.
