Multicriteria versus Cost Benefit Analysis: a comparative perspective in the assessment of sustainable mobility

TLDR

Sustainable Mobility at the neighbourhood level is assessed using two ex‑ante approaches, Multicriteria Analysis and Cost‑Benefit Analysis. The paper aims to compare the strengths and weaknesses of MCA and CBA for neighbourhood‑scale SM and to test their applicability to specific SM strategies. The authors provide detailed descriptions of MCA and CBA and review their prior applications to neighbourhood‑scale SM. They find that each method has complementary strengths, and that combining MCA and CBA yields a coherent framework for evaluating both efficiency and effectiveness of SM policies.

Abstract

The paper focuses on the methodology for assessing Sustainable Mobility (SM) at the neighbourhood scale, and pays attention to two different ex-ante evaluation approaches: the Multicriteria Analysis (MCA) and the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). If MCA is an acknowledged technique for the assessment of sustainability at neighbourhood level, CBA is mainly used for infrastructure and large transformation projects. The aim of the paper is twofold: (i) highlight strengths and weaknesses of the two techniques, especially when assessing SM at the neighbourhoods scale; (ii) investigate the applicability of MCA and CBA to evaluate some relevant SM strategies and policies at the neighbourhood scale. To do so, a detailed description of MCA and CBA is presented and, when it exists, a review of their application to assess SM at neighbourhood level is described. Strengths and weaknesses of the approaches are, therefore, highlighted and their applicability to some specific SM measures are examined. It results that the joint use of the two methodologies could overcome their mutual weaknesses, providing a coherent methodology for assessing both efficiency and effectiveness of SM policies and projects.