Transport policy formulation & evaluation: PLUTO lab exercise

October 17
A. Your task

You have to advise the leader of Plutopia City Council on an appropriate package of transport
measures over the next five years to meet the situation as described below. You will use PLUTO
to help you do this. The Council will be in power for the next five years, when there will be an
election. (Note that PLUTO has to be run year-by-year it cannot jump five years ahead in one
go).

Situation: The leader of the Council aims for a balance between the financial management and
the other transport planning objectives. In particular, the leader targets to develop a financial
balance of $50M by the end of the fifth year and wants to improve the safety, environment and
efficiency indicators relative to the inherited levels. Winning the next election (>50% votes) is
important to the Council leader too.

For your chosen situation:

a. use PLUTO to help determine a suitable policy package which you think would be
acceptable to your Council leader;
b. produce an executive summary style report (Max 1000 words excluding tables and
appendices, Times New Roman Font Size 12 please) to the Council setting out:

the PLUTO indicators you have chosen to represent your objectives

The components (instruments) of your policy package;
Briefly why/how you arrived at this package of measures (e.g. describe how the
output (against your objectives) from one run influenced your decision(s) for the
next run);
The extent to which your final package satisfies the objectives (ensure that you
show, in the text of your answer, actual numbers from the PLUTO output to support
this discussion). Compare against base year and do minimum (see important
points below);
Very briefly (bullet points), set out any problems which pursuing these policies
could cause for the council residents (or particular groups) use appropriate parts of
your PLUTO output to support your report.

Attach an Appendix to your report containing the following for your recommended policy
package only:
A list of the input values you used for all input variables for each year
A table showing the values of your chosen indicators for all the five years and also
showing the base year (inherit or year 0) and do-minimum values of these indicators.
Appendix 3 below shows a suitable format for this table.

Constraints: In all three situations, it is essential that:

transport facilities are properly maintained (if not, capacity will reduce);
the Council does not go into financial deficit (if it goes into deficit, you will not be able
to spend, i.e. PLUTO will not allow you to do anything); and
domestic/commercial taxes are not altered during any of the five years.

Deadline for batch 1: 09.00hrs on Thursday 19th October 2017 at the MSTT office.
Deadline for batch 2: 12.00hrs on Thursday 19th October 2017 at the MSTT office.

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B. Important points

Appendix 5 gives you guidance in using PLUTO.

See Appendix 6 for some useful indicators. PLUTO has 53 indicators but you should choose just
a few key indicators (roughly between 4 and 12, including vote) related to your objectives and
use these as the main way of deciding whether your policies are successful in fulfilling your
objectives. (Note that peak and off-peak values of the same indicator counts as two indicators).

There is no need to use PLUTOs full (detailed) output.

You can set targets for your indicators but you dont have to.

Ideas for policy instruments likely to be affective in achieving your objectives will come from
your lectures/notes on policy instruments. If you are not sure what some of the measures in
PLUTO are (e.g. traffic calming), try PLUTOs help.

Some people like to test policy instruments individually before putting them together into
strategy: its up to you.

You may use any of the instruments in PLUTO, except development control (land use
planning).

Read the PLUTO notes and jot down a rough first strategy before using the model.

Every time you do a PLUTO run, make sure that you have a record of all your inputs. PLUTO
does not save your input values: a pity to get a good result and forget how you achieved it.
There is a form that you might find useful to record your inputs in Appendix 4.

Note that it might take several years for the benefits of some actions to properly materialise
particularly for road construction projects.

Most income goes to the current account. Capital expenditure (including road maintenance)
comes from the capital account. This means you may have to transfer money from the current to
the capital account to be sure you have enough money to implement a policy.

You should compare your results, for the key indicators relating to your objectives, against:
The base year (inherit) values of those indicators (This shows the amount of
improvement or worsening compared with the present condition) and
The fifth year do minimum values of those indicators. The suggested do-minimum,
(with expenditure only on road maintenance and nothing else) is shown in Appendix 2 to
this note. The do-minimum shows the amount of change that would have taken place if
no action (other than maintenance) had been taken in the five year period. Comparing
your results with the do-minimum might be considered to be a better comparison than
comparing with the base year (inherit) situation.

The best results will be obtained using a combination of sensible thought and then using PLUTO
to test your ideas, then using the PLUTO output as the seed for your next thoughts. The
coursework is not a matter of seeing how many PLUTO runs you can do in the time available.

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Note that there is no correct answer to this coursework assignment: a reasonable package of
instruments will be looked for, plus a sensible and structured approach towards the attainment of
your objectives (followed by a good report covering the items indicated above).

When writing your answer, it is important to ensure that the text is fully understandable to
someone who has no access to the complete PLUTO output. Extract the specific numerical
output you need to illustrate each point and put it into the text, as an individual figure or as a table
as appropriate. Appendices are not part of the text: statements such as: As can be seen in the
output shown in the Appendix . . . or even As can be seen in block 9 page 4 of the Appendix . .
. are not acceptable. Much better is a format, in the main text, such as: Table 4, which shows
the comparison of accidents resulting from my policy compared with the base year and the do
minimum situations, clearly illustrates that . . . . A concise and clear way of structuring
your report, with no waffle, is suggested in Appendix 1 to these notes. You do not of course have
to follow this structure if you have a good approach of your own.
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Appendix 1: a possible structure for the coursework

The Council favours Situation 2, with the following set of objectives:

environment,
safety and
equity.
As indicators of success in achieving these objectives (and thus also to help guide the input for
the next run), particular attention will be paid to the following PLUTO indicators:
xxxx
yyyy and
zzzz.
However, the outputs of . . . . and . . . will also be monitored, to make sure they do not become
unacceptably bad.

For Run 1: implement a combination of the following input measures:

Pink buses, because . . . . (specify specific value input to PLUTO)
Hovercraft lanes, because . . . . . (specify specific value input to PLUTO)
Imprisonment of illegal parkers, because . . . . (specify specific value input to PLUTO)
etc
At the end of run 1:
Table A shows the value(s) of xxx against the base year and against the do nothing,
from which it is concluded that . . .
Table B shows the values(s) of yyy against the base year and the do nothing, from
which it is concluded that . . . .
etc
Overall, from Run 1, the following is concluded . . . (brief discussion and conclusion). This
suggests that it would be reasonable to try the following measures for Run 2:
Reduce the number of pink buses to . . . (give new input value),
Build more hovercraft lanes (new input value),
Maintain imprisonment for illegal parkers (give input value),
and in addition:
Introduce a city-wide tax on pedestrians with ugly dogs (input value)

(Repeat the above for Runs 2 to 5)

At the end of Run 5: give a final assessment of how well you think you have met your objectives,
and ensure that you have answered all parts of the questions asked in the coursework. You
might also like to suggest (very briefly) what you might try if you had another chance.

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Appendix 2: a suggested do-minimum scenario

Expenditure is only on maintenance over the five year period. No other money is spent, except to
shelve active projects in Year 1.

The do minimum maintenance expenditure in each of the five years should the absolute
minimum suggested by PLUTO, or a little more. The following annual expenditure is
recommended for the do minimum:
Year 1: 4200 K $
Year 2: 4400 K $
Year 3: 4600 K $
Year 4: 4800 K $
Year 5: 5000 K $

Appendix 3: Record of Progress (Reporting form)

Make copies of this form to record the output values of your indicators over the five years for the
strategies you try, plus the do min and target values (if used).

Indicator Inherit Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 Yr 5 Do min Target

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 Appendix 4: Form to record input values (strategy record form)
Use one copy for each strategy you try

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5

Construction:
Projects
Investment
Shelve Project?
Maintenance:
Expenditure
Peak Buses:
Fixed Part Fare
Variable part fare
Extra buses
Off Peak Buses:
Fixed part fare
Variable part fare
Extra buses
Bus Lanes:
On links
Number of Lanes
All day Lanes?
Parking:
In zones
Long stay Charge
Short Stay Charge
Spaces LS to SS
Traffic Calming/ Safety:
Traffic calming expenditure
On links:
Safety Stay Charges
Education Expenditure
Traffic Management & Restraint:
No of Cells in cell system
Cordon Pricing Link
Cordon Pricing fee
Road Pricing value
Road pricing on links
SCOOT?
TRANSYT?
Route Guidance?
Park and Ride?
Development Control/Land Use:
In Zones:
% housing allowed
% retail allowed DO NOT USE THESE POLICY INSTRUMENTS
% commercial allowed
Financial
Domestic tax
Commercial tax
Transfer current to capital

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Appendix 5: How to use PLUTO
Double-click on the green PLUTO FOR WINDOWS 32 on the desktop screen (if no icon on
desktop, open the folder C:/program files/pluto103 and click on the icon there).
Click OK on the Welcome to PLUTO opening screen
You will now have a choice of:
Another run (one run is a PLUTO strategy run for one year)
New series (a series is a strategy so only click this when starting a new strategy)
View current conditions shows the current situation on the indicators etc.
Click on each in turn to become familiar with how PLUTO is laid out.
When ready to begin to run your strategy:
Click new series (= another strategy)
Enter a brief title for this strategy and click OK
You will now be in the Pluto configuration screen which gives a range of options under 9
headings (quickly explore each heading to get an idea of all the options that PLUTO offers)
After you have selected your choice of input under the heading you have chosen, click finished
Then go on to your next heading on the Pluto configuration screen, and so on, until you have
finished inputting your complete strategy for the year, then click run. (Keep a note of your
decisions on the strategy record form)
You will now see the results of that run on the Pluto results screen. After inspecting results you
can either accept run or abort run
If you abort the run you are given the opportunity to input different options for that year. (You
can abort a run as often as you like but try not to do it too much or you will waste a lot of time).
When you finally click accept run, PLUTO will take you to the next year and you can input your
options for that year, and so on until you stop after Year 5 (Run #5).
Your strategy test is now complete and the results should be put on the Reporting Form.

Important note: when in the Pluto results screen do not click on any of the buttons except accept run or
abort run. If you click on the set to default button you may lose some of your indicators.

Appendix 6: Some useful indicators

Indicator (op=off peak period; p=peak) H/L* PLUTO name What it indicates
Av gen cost of trips by non-car-owners-op L AGC-nco-op Equity (lower transport costs for non-car
Av gen cost of trips by non-car-owners-p L AGC-nco-p owners, who are generally poorer)
Total fatalities L cas-fatal Road safety
Index of Business Confidence H confindex Economic growth (new businesses)
Environment indicator (whole city) L env-city Environment citywide
Total financial balance ($) H fin-bal-tot Financial situation of city (current plus
capital accounts)
Modal split (% all trip by car) - op L** mscar-op Less car use = more efficiency and safety,
Modal split (% all trip by car) - p L** mscar-p and better environment
Speed on slowest road link - op H sp-min-op Efficiency (amount of congestion, as
Speed on slowest road link - p H sp-min-p evidenced by slowest road link)
Share of vote if election held now H vote Whether your party will be thrown out
* suggests the best direction for the indictor: H=high value is better; L=low value isbetter
** a low value is best if the aim is to reduce car use and encourage public transport

Oct 2017