The framework by which the Government decides which transport projects to approve benefits neither the motorist nor the environment, according to new research.

The research found that the Department for Transport’s appraisal framework – New Approach to Appraisal (NATA) – favours projects which increase CO2 emissions, car use and motorists’ fuel bills, while penalising projects that reduce fuel use.

Published by the Green Alliance and Campaign for Better Transport, the research coincides with a public consultation on NATA, which the Government is reviewing in response to the Eddington and Stern reviews.

Schemes which cause higher fuel bills are more attractive because fuel duty is part of the NATA cost-benefit analysis, meaning any money raised by fuel duty is deducted from the capital cost of a scheme, the report highlights.

Public transport, cycling and walking schemes, as well as those which make driving more efficient, fare poorly for this reason. Yet the value which NATA assigns to damage caused by carbon emissions is far too low to counteract this effect – currently calculated at around 5-6p per litre compared with 55-60p per litre for fuel duty and VAT on fuel.

The report says NATA also fails because time-savings get distorted, taking no account of size or length of journeys. Pointing to government research, it says time savings of less than a few minutes are barely valued by most drivers, but NATA puts the aggregated, total time-savings into the appraisal summary table (AST), thereby distorting the value of these savings.

‘If this is actually one minute saved on 24,000 separate journeys, the monetary value of these savings should be almost zero and the time-savings should not be used to justify more carbon emissions or more accidents.’

It also claims few examples of smarter travel measures are valued under a NATA assessment. Stephen Hale, director of Green Alliance, said the Government should ‘move away from its obsession with cost benefit analysis, and establish carbon standards for new transport schemes’.

The DfT’s consultation on NATA closes on 31 March. Click here to view Getting transport right.