ABSTRACT
The importance of investment analysis is obviously critical in transport economics, for the investments are usually long lived and commonly exercise a decisive influence on the way in which communities live and grow. The essence of such analysis is the comparison of a future stream of receipts from a project with the future pattern of costs, so that a decision can be made on which of several projects is financially most attractive or whether indeed society may prefer to reject all the projects in favour of expenditure elsewhere. Whether the investment is undertaken privately by an individual or company, or employs public funds, it involves the fundamental issue of choosing allocations for scarce funds.
