ABSTRACT
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a rapid growth occurred in the application of evaluation tools to major transport projects. In the United Kingdom, largely under the influence of the Department of the Environment, the framework for such growth of evaluation was the formal cost-benefit model. Analysts sought to identify an enlarged range of impacts of transport projects, to measure these impacts in physical terms as far as possible and place monetary values on the impacts. In the event of impacts having no obvious physical measure, attempts were occasionally made to go more directly to monetary valuations. In the United States a similar growth in impact analysis occurred, although the evaluation approach was less concerned with expression of all impacts in monetary terms, increased attention being focused on evaluation in a political framework. ‘Social severance’ gained widespread recognition during this period as an important possible consequence of public projects. The British Urban Motorways Committee (1972), for example, listed severance as one of the main areas requiring research in the planning of major urban roads.
