20 | Planning Curses
on decision making. The process of reaching this conclusion was lengthy and painful. It required considerable analysis and argument and lots of meetings. Even when the principle of ‘wider benefit’ was accepted, there were still hurdles of method and measurement. What exactly is the extra productivity? If people with high skill levels didn’t work in London, would they still be more productive than others? Where would they work? How should we capture any such effects? Officials needed to produce their own research and definitions, rather than relying on those created by the Crossrail team. And the point here is that the answer is not trivial. The benefits of Crossrail, even on the most cautious assumption, were doubled by our research which took account of this effect. This means that we have been underestimating the benefits of new transportation schemes in cities by a phenomenal amount and therefore underinvesting. And the assumptions are cautious. If we take the view that over 50 years or so, the rest of the system will still be as busy as it is today, while Crossrail is also full, we will be delivering around 80,000 more people to this highly productive place. That additional productivity is worth around £70 billion in today’s prices. Crossrail will be good value even if the costs over-run. Values of time and the value of the economy
Saving 3me can be considered the welfare benefit of an investment.
It can be defined as the willingness of an individual to pay for
something – in this case for an extra minute of 3me. The approach
is described in the official guidance as follows:
“The basic strategy of the willingness-to-pay (WTP) calculus
is to arrive at a money measure of the net welfare change
for each individual that is brought about by the project under considera3on, and then to sum these. The welfare