Measure Option Generator Introduction

The Measure Option Generator is designed to help cities quickly to identify those policy measures (or "instruments"), and packages of measures, which may be of particular value in their context. It operates within a matter of seconds, and is equally of use to professionals, politicians, stakeholders and members of the public with an interest in urban transport policy.

The user starts by specifying their context and, in particular:

• the type of city or area on which they are focusing;
• their policy objectives, and their relative importance; alternatively users can specify these in relation to problems to be overcome or performance indicators to be achieved;
• their overall strategy.

The Measure Option Generator uses this information, and a database of assessments of the policy instruments described in the Policy Guidebook, to provide suggestions at three levels.

The first is a list of all the policy instruments contained in the Policy Guidebook, ranked in terms of their potential to contribute to the needs described by the user.  This is not designed to be prescriptive, but to prompt the user to investigate policy instruments which the city may not yet have considered.  To facilitate this, each instrument has a link to the fuller description of the instrument in the Policy Guidebook.

At a second level, the user can select any one instrument, and identify those other instruments which are most likely to complement it.  They can do this in terms either of instruments which reinforce the selected instrument, or of instruments which help overcome the barriers to its implementation.  The suggestions appear again in a list of all the other policy instruments in the Policy Guidebook, ranked in terms of their potential to complement the selected instrument in the context described by the user.

At a third level, the user can select a shortlist of up to ten instruments, and identify those packages, of up to five instruments at a time, which are likely to contribute most to the needs identified by the user.  Again, the user can do this in terms either of packages which reinforce one another (through “synergy”) or which help overcome the barriers to the implementation of individual instruments.

All the concepts used in the Measure Option Generator are described more fully in the Decision-Makers’ Guidebook.