Cost and Benefit Analysis of Line 2 of Mashhad BRT

Traffic studies are extremely complicated in developing cities. The increase in the number of vehicles and population has given rise many problems such as traffic congestion, increase in accidents rate and casualties, air pollution, increase in travel time, waste of citizens' time and increase in the use of energy resources in the cities. Therefore, it seems necessary to use the Bus Rapid transit in this city. The purpose of this study is to present a method for evaluating the environmental impacts of Rapid System transit lines. In this research, criteria such as the time horizon of the project, discount rate, social cost of carbon, road safety effects estimation, economic benefits due to improvement of road safety estimation, statistical value of life, the effect of increasing the physical activity of citizens, greenhouse gas reduction, and the air quality effect has been applied to analyze the cost benefit of this system in this research. The results of this study showed that the total benefits from the implementation of Mashhad Bus Rapid transit line 2 is equal to 339857701 dollars, whose net present value by applying a discount rate of 15% is equal to 85059606. The internal of return rate is also estimated at 2915%.