§ Ms. WalleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what rate of return on investment is achieved on(a) local safety schemes and (b) motorway widening schemes.
§ Mr. Kenneth Carlisle[holding answer 13 November 1992]: Returns provided by local authorities indicate that the sums earmarked for local safety schemes in the transport supplementary grant settlement for 1991–92 produced an average first year rate of return of 76 per cent., and over the first three years an average rate of return of 213 per cent.
Motorway widening schemes are appraised using the COBA and QUADRO computer programs. For those programmed motorway widening schemes that have reached the stage of having a validated cost-benefit assessment based on current traffic forecasts, the average ratio between the discounted benefits and the discounted costs is 3: 1.