Economic Evaluation Tool

The Vendor is required to provide an economic analysis tool to evaluate the effects of different transportation plans or policies based on a wide variety of economic performance measures.
- Software package or platform that can evaluate the economic impacts of transportation infrastructure investments and policy decisions.
- This software should be able to accurately and reliably estimate the short- and long-term job benefits, additional income, Gross-Regional Product (GRP) and total output accrued in all counties of the agency.
- The impacts resulting from large transportation investments at the MPA, state, and national levels are also expected.
- The product of this study will be an economic model that can measure the effect of transportation projects and policies in a much broader context beyond transportation.
- This software package/platform is expected to analyze and interpret agency regional travel model outputs to assist with conducting sensitivity analyses and evaluating alternative scenarios.
- The software should be able to consider the output of the agency regional travel model to convert transportation system improvements such as Vehicle Hours Traveled, Vehicle Miles Traveled, and Trips into passenger cost savings, travel time savings, safety benefits, market access benefits, emission benefits, accessibility/productivity benefits, reliability benefits, fuel cost savings, and vehicle maintenance savings. 
- Further, the awarded software package/platformshould have and maintain the capacity to quantify how these transportation benefits reflect into economic figures – jobs, income, GRP, and output – across the different geographies listed above. In addition to transportation investments, the software package/platform is expected to consider policy changes adopted within the region such as changes in tax rates, gas tax, toll rates, or funding formulae for transit infrastructure investments.
- The applicants shall identify and document all necessary inputs for evaluating the economic impacts of transportation infrastructure investments and policy decisions. Applicants are encouraged to submit detailed documentation of the how the input – capital expenses, policy choices, and output of the travel models – are utilized to generate economic metrics.
- Applicants shall also clearly describe the type and data format their software requires to read and process output from the travel demand model.
- Software should be adaptable, allowing users to incorporate alternative factors, multipliers, or equations to evaluate different scenarios. For example, users should be able to adjust the value of parameters like travel time, pollutant emission rates, or accident costs while retaining the ability to use defaults adopted from national sources.