Contournement de Rabat, Morocco

The scope of this SAVi assessment

The International Road Federation and Autoroute du Maroc (ADM) asked IISD to use SAVi on the Contournement de Rabat (or Rabat bypass) road project, which was officially inaugurated in August 2017. It has a length of 41.1 km and includes the Mohammed VI Bridge, an important landmark. The toll road was built to improve mobility around the city and to re-route traffic not destined for Rabat.

SAVi was applied to the Rabat bypass to inform the ADM on the costs of operational risks and their impacts on the overall financial viability of the project. We also used SAVi to value four externalities and demonstrate their impacts on the costs, revenues and financial viability of the project.

This was the first time ADM worked on valuing the costs of risks and the costs of externalities of roads and motorways.

Externalities

The analysis takes the following externalities into account:

Discretionary spending of labour income: Valuation of the additional income spent in the domestic economy as a result of the employment created by the project.

Cost of accidents: Economic valuation of accidents on the bypass road.

Carbon dioxide emissions: Valuation of carbon dioxide emissions based on the social cost of carbon.

Value of time saved: Valuation of time that is saved as a result of the bypass road. This improves economic productivity.

The scenarios

The risk scenarios included in the assessment are described in the table below. They all present risks to the management and operation of the bypass. ADM identified these risks in their risk matrix, and they were selected through in-depth discussions between IISD, ADM and the International Road Federation.

IndicatorUnit
Scenario 1: Business as UsualCapital and operational expenditure as budgeted by ADM over the lifetime of the road
Scenario 2: Reduced Maintenance Expenditure5% reduction in maintenance expenditure due to the budgeted cuts
Scenario 3: Increase in Road Works200 metres of road is closed for reconstruction, every year from 2018 to 2060
Scenario 4: Short-Term Traffic Increase200% traffic increase in the short term
Scenario 5: Increase in Heavy Vehicle Traffic30% increase in heavy vehicle from 2018 to 2030
Scenario 6: Road Damage Due to Climate Change2 km of road is damaged as a direct result of climate change, every 10 years

The SAVi integrated cost–benefit analysis (CBA) demonstrates that externalities have a significant impact on the operating costs of the bypass.  The value of time saved and the total cost of accidents across the different scenarios are particularly high. For example, in Scenario 2, we observe that a reduction in maintenance expenditure from EUR 73.64 million to EUR 65.34 million will lead to an increase in the cost of accidents from EUR 212 million to EUR 236 million. In Scenario 5, we observe the increase in revenue from EUR 456.10 million to EUR 464.89 million generated by increased heavy vehicle traffic. This does not, however, offset the costs of the externalities: the integrated CBA leads to a net loss of EUR 16.3 million.

Learn more about this assessment in the English or French report and English or French brochure.