Lars Rognlien

Lars Rognlien is a transport and urban economist with more than 20 years of international experience in business cases, economic modelling, appraisal and impact analysis. Lars has developed and applied methods for identifying projects' and operations' economic impacts and benefits across freight and passenger transport, urban renewal and health and human services sectors.

Lars developed the official guidelines on wider economic benefits and impacts of transport for the UK Department for Transport and the New Zealand Transport Agency; the section on land use benefits of transport in Infrastructure Australia’s Assessment Framework; and he pioneered a practical method for assessing the economic benefits of urban renewal, now formalised into guidelines by the Treasury of New South Wales (“NSW”).

Lars is an internationally recognised expert on cost-benefit analysis, applying his expertise across sectors, including freight and passenger transport, urban renewal, social housing, justice, health and technology. He strongly focuses on developing innovative analyses, tools and solutions that suit clients’ requirements.

Relevant Experience:

• Western Sydney Freight Line and Mamre Road Intermodal Terminal: Led the economic appraisal for the strategic business case. The analysis included benefits associated with freight cost savings, road decongestion, passenger rail capacity improvements and reliability, and freight reliability. The cost benefit analysis further considered a range of other benefits to be investigated as part of a future final business case, including inland port benefits, relieving Port Botany capacity constraints and the role of the intermodal terminal in supporting logistics and warehousing in Western Sydney.
• Inland Rail Business Cases: Led the development of the economic appraisal approaches for a series of business cases for investments related to Inland Rail. The analysis considered the cost and benefits of reducing rail freight costs, shipping times and modal shift from road. This included acting as an economics SME on a study into the potential long-term economic benefits flowing to regions as a result of Inland Rail, setting out the long-term benefits of Inland Rail for the region’s corridor.
• Infrastructure Australia (‘IA’) and Australian Transport Assessment and Planning (‘ATAP’) guidance modules on land use impacts of transport: Led the drafting of both IA and ATAP economic appraisal guidelines on how to measure and quantify land use impacts of transport. This included documenting the link between infrastructure and land use, measuring land use impacts, addressing key challenges and considering the ways to quantify land use benefits in a cost benefit analysis context. The guidelines are considered best practice in Australia for cost benefit analysis practitioners assessing land use change and its associated benefits in economic appraisals.
• NSW Land and Housing Corporation: Led the preparation of a final business case for the redevelopment of the Waterloo Social Housing Estate into a mixed-tenure development with social, affordable and market dwellings, including a comprehensive and innovative economic appraisal quantifying the value of the improved outcomes across all impacted stakeholders; ultimately Lars guided the business case through NSW assurance where it began procurement.
• Transport for NSW: Led the economic analysis and business case drafting for the Western Harbour Tunnel and Beaches Link projects, including developing cutting-edge methods for valuing previously unincorporated benefits as part of the cost benefit analysis.