Social Benefits, Indices & The
Ghana Feeder Road Prioritisation
John Hine
World Bank
Social Benefits: Why the Concern ?
• There is unease with conventional appraisal based primarily on transport
cost savings to traffic
• There is a strong desire at both community level and national level for
better access and mobility which is frequently not matched by standard
measured economic benefits
• All over the ‘rich’ world governments subsidise rural transport. Should the
same happen for developing countries ?
• Isolation is a recognised characteristic of poverty
• There is a feeling that a minimum degree of access and mobility is a
‘basic human right’
• International development has moved away from a narrow definition of
economic development towards concern with ‘livelihoods’ and meeting
‘Millennium Development Goals’ that are very health orientated
• The issue is particularly important when roads are impassable to motor
traffic.
Economic & Social Benefits
Consumers and producers surplus approaches are very economic in
their orientation. Yet roads provide ‘social benefits’ – including
improved access to health and education facilities and improved
social mobility that cannot be easily translated into conventional
economic benefits. – Although they may have important long term
‘economic’ consequences. Improved health and education and more
secure social networks increase long term earning capabilities but
so far the economic forecasting framework does not include this.
When roads are impassable to motorized traffic we know that the
quality of health care and schooling falls. Drug supply and
supervision drops. Likewise no NGO, government agency or
commercial enterprise will establish or support a service which
cannot guarantee all year round access.
Does road accessibility affect
health (in Ethiopia)?
SNNP Region life expectancy and road density
Road density
200
150
100
50
0
30
35
40
45
50
Life expectancy
55
60
Indices and Ranking
• Widely used for feeder road planning; there are many
different approaches
e.g. i) cost of improvement / population
ii) estimated trips / cost
Advantages: Speed , simplicity, transparency, many
factors can be incorporated
Disadvantages: How do we value widely different
factors ? (adding up apples and pears); weightings are
not stable ; cannot easily address questions of road
standards, timing etc, ; possible double counting
Two Indices
i) Andhra Pradesh
cost effectiveness = cost of upgrading/ population served
But – no measure of condition change and no importance to traffic
ii) Airey & Taylor
1st for impassable roads
rank
= cost per head of establishing basic access
2nd when access is there:
prioritization index
estimated trips x access change
= -------------------------------------------rehabilitation cost per km
Ghana -Background
• DFID and Department of Feeder Roads wanted new planning
procedure suitable for low volume feeder roads including a social
dimension.
• Road program was to be based primarily in Northern Ghana in an
area of tribal conflict. – Previously ignored by authorities.
• Existing procedures used based on producers surplus appeared
arbitrary and not transparent.
• Many roads and tracks were impassable for varying periods through
the year – no traffic makes consumers surplus approach difficult to
use
The Requirements
• Responsive to wishes of road users –rather than engineers or
planners
• Address poverty and gender issues
• Equitable between all ethnic communities
• Suitable for decentralisation decision making
• Transparent
• Simple
• Economically rational
• Robust based on objective measures
• Makes engineering sense
Approach An Outline of the 1
• Project covers 9 districts. 50 % of total money was initially to be
issued equally between each district. In the second round the
remaining money was to be allocated to roads in the whole area on
the merits of each case. The approach is ‘budget limited’.
• Community consultation is carried out in each district to determine a
list of candidate roads – every road is a ‘wanted road’.
• An engineering assessment is made of each candidate road to find
the current state of accessibility and the costs of improvement
• For each road traffic counts are carried out and census data
examined to find adjacent population to benefit from the road
improvement
An Outline of the Approach 2
• Benefits are estimated from improving each road based on transport
cost savings and additional ‘social’ benefits of better accessibility
(based on population)
• Two indices are constructed of benefits divided by costs for
accessibility improvements and full rehabilitation.
• An initial priority listing is prepared to spend available budget in
each district based on the technical criteria.
• Communities are asked to prepare separately their own priority
listing.
• The proposed lists are discussed at a public hearing.
• An agreement is reached on which roads to build.
• More detailed engineering design carried out.
Outline of Approach 3
• Roads constructed for first round.
• Second round roads are selected amongst the best candidate roads
on the basis of the index not selected in the first round.
• Poverty weighting comes into play because different districts have
different poverty ratings.
Consultation
• NGOs are selected and training to carry out consultation
• Team and NGOs meet District works Sub Committee who oversee
process.
• NGOs carry out interviews with service providers to learn about road
condition.
• NGOs contact communities and select representative people along
with district nurses etc, willing to participate in the process.
• In each Area (10 Areas to District) meetings are held to select two
candidate roads per Area.
• Later a District meeting is held to prioritise the roads from the 20
roads nominated in the District.
• Finally a public hearing is held to discuss two priority lists prepared
by public nominations and the technical analysis.
The Index
Benefits are the sum of traffic and social benefits per year.
The index is: total benefits/ construction costs
(accessibility improvements and full rehabilitation
improvements are estimated separately)
An adjustment is made to engineering costs for structures
(x 0.5) because these last longer than other
improvements
The index is contained in an easy to use spread sheet.
The Engineering Assessment
• Local consulting engineers are selected and trained in the
procedures.
• They visit the road using the analysis sheets and identify key
problems with a chainage.
• The problems are divided into Access category A, B or C.
• Category A – impassable roads, dangerous, road under water
• Category B- access is possible but unreliable
• Category C- access OK but surface attention required for roughness
reduction
• A costing is carried out and condition of road assessed in terms of
roughness, passability and trafficability.
Population & Traffic
• Maps are consulted to identify roads and
location of key facilities including markets health
centres and hospitals
• Local consultants selected to carry out two -day
traffic counts on the roads
• Counts cover pedestrians, NMTs, and vehicles
• The Population in the catchment area of the
road (i.e. adjacent and people living beyond the
road who would use the road to go to key
facilities).
Transport Benefits
• Transport benefits are calculated using fixed coefficients
to show how change in road condition will reduce
transport costs for existing traffic.
• Benefits are given to both motor vehicles, pedestrians
and NMTs. The assumption is that improved roads will
encourage some switch of mode from walking and NMTs
to motor vehicles
• In periods of the year when the road is deemed
impassable high transport benefits are given on the
assumption that traffic has to divert some distance, or
uses more expensive solutions (such as walking or
NMTs.)
Social Benefits
• In addition to transport cost savings social benefits are given to road
improvements to represent an improvement in the minimum degree
of accessibility. The values were based on the assumption that 5
return vehicle trips per year represents an acceptable level of social
trip making that may be added to existing traffic levels to cover a
basic access social benefit component. (With 10 people per vehicle
the weighting is ‘1’ assuming 10 single trips).
• For roads with an average distance of more than 10 km from a
health centre an ‘health isolation’ weighting of 0.5 is added
• For roads with an average distance of more than 10 km from a
market a ‘market isolation’ weighting of 0.1 is added
• For the third of the districts with income levels below $325 (given in
the Common Fund Allocation procedure) a weighting of 0.5 is
added.
• For all of the above the social benefits are dependent upon average
transport cost savings (i.e. motor vehicle change in transport costs
per km x distance)
Experience of the Nanumba Trials
• The procedure was found to work fairly well with a good degree of
acceptability
• For the available first round budget of $ 900,000 the Community
District ranking for Nanumba would have selected 3 roads, 55 km
with 8,383 beneficiaries.
• In contrast the technical analysis selected 5 roads, 95 km benefiting
17,650 people.
• At the public hearing it was agreed by all that the technical analysis
was a better basis for planning.
• However the community did draw attention to a major problem of
one road where people were walking half a km up to their chest in
water (not selected in the priority ranking).
Documentation
• The Procedure is well documented
• 12 separate guides and manuals
• And one spreadsheet to calculate the
index
• Contact jhine@worldbank.org if you want
the full set.