Date: 25 April 2012 (Wednesday)
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Venue: Kwan Fong Lecture Theatre,
Room 223, 2/F Knowles Building, The University of Hong Kong (Map)
Lecture Abstract
There is at least a popular belief that major transport infrastructure projects
give rise to benefits which are not captured in conventional investment appraisal.
The building of a metro network, a major airport or a high speed rail line will
have ramifications which go beyond the simple measurement of time savings or
reductions in accidents. However, substantiating the idea with a methodology
which is both theoretically sound and empirically applicable has proved challenging.
Approaches have been refined in recent years and the empirical evidence has
become more robust and convincing, showing that any such impacts need not
always be beneficial. However, the adoption of formal measures of such impacts
in official appraisal procedures has been much less widely implemented leaving
decisions on major transport investments open to less scientific arguments for
and against. This presentation will review the arguments for consideration of
wider impacts and their treatment. It concludes with recommendations for the
development of transparent procedures to ensure consistent treatment of such
impacts.
About the Speaker
Roger Vickerman is Dean of the University of Kent's, Brussels Campus.
He is also Professor of European Economics at the University of Kent and
Director of the Centre for European, Regional and Transport Economics.
Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Sussex, he has an Honorary
Doctorate from the Philipps-Universitat, Marburg; he is an Academician of
Academy of Social Sciences; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a
Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.
He has been a visiting professor in Canada, Germany, Hungary and Australia.
Professor Vickerman's research focuses on the relationship between transport
(especially infrastructure), regional development and integration in the
European Union. He is particularly known for his studies on major infrastructure
projects, particularly the EU's Trans-European Networks. He has served as
a member of SACTRA (Standing Committee on Trunk Road Assessment), as an
advisor to Committees of both the House of Commons and House of Lords in
the UK Parliament and acted as a consultant to the European Commission,
various UK government departments and regional and local government authorities.
He is currently a member of the Analytical Challenge Panel to HS2 Ltd which
advises the UK Government on the development of high-speed rail. He is the
author of 6 books (including the textbook Principles of Transport Economics,
with Emile Quinet) and over 150 chapters, journal articles and reports. He
has edited the Handbook of Transport Economics (Edward Elgar, 2011) with
Andre de Palma, Robin Lindsey and Emile Quinet, which brings together state
of the art reviews from over 50 of the world's leading transport economists.
He sits on the editorial boards of several journals in both transport and
regional science and is Editor in Chief of Transport Policy.
Please click <here>
to download the presentation file.
