Defining the social value of transport infrastructure

A value proposition articulates the essence of a business, defining how products and services are assembled and delivered to final users in order to meet their needs. Maslow developed value curves of the human need groups relative to time, and the sum of the curves yields an almost sigmoid curve. Winters and others created transportation groups of needs including safety and security, time, societal acceptance, cost and comfort and convenience. This research studied social value as something holistically affected by all the mentioned factors by asking individuals, in a structured interview process that was representative of the UK’s demography, to evaluate the social value of eight transport modes. The hypothesis tested is that the value to the individual relative to the aforementioned factors should have an almost sigmoid curve. This was verified: the social value function fits with the hyperbolic tangent function. Accordingly, the geometric form is used to represent the exponential increase in the studied phenomenon for a period of time, followed by a levelling off at the critical point. The inference is if infrastructures’ social evaluation has passed the critical point, they do not require further investments as the social value growth is slow.