ABSTRACT
Appraisal is an important component of decision making. While recognizing that decision making is not necessarily a rational process, appraisal information is still a prominent key factor. One might regard decision making as a complex interplay of information, interests and opinions of groups in society on the one hand, and democratic action and political skill on the other. Transport policies typically have a host of very different impacts (DfT, 2009). Examples are travel times, emissions to the environment, road accidents, wider economic effects, investment costs, and income distribution. In appraisal, it is important to fi nd ways to make the impacts comparable, by computing total impact indicators for society as a whole. Often used methods are cost-benefi t analysis (CBA), multicriteria analysis (MCA) and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) (Nijkamp et al., 2003).
