What would you do with an additional 3.2 minutes each day? What would you do with an additional 53 cents a day? If you had an additional 3.2 minutes each day, would your day be $0.53 better off?

These are the questions that the Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments (NLCOG) is answering in its report, "Economic Impacts of I-49 Completion, Inner City Connector."

Before I get too far into this, let me give a disclaimer of sorts. While I'm going to show you, in a three part series, how the conclusions of this report are nothing but propaganda -- outright fiction that should outrage everyone -- I'm going to point out that this isn't the fault of the report's authors. They are merely following standard industry practice which, in this case, is largely determined by the federal government.

You can look at federally funded projects from around the country and they are going to contain the same fictions spun into a seemingly-rigorous narrative for project proponents to use. It's an industry problem, so direct your outrage accordingly.

The report on economic impacts details three ways in which the I-49 Inner City Connector project in Shreveport is going to have economic benefits. Those are:

Travel time and vehicle operation cost savings, Differentials in economic output from real estate development, and Impacts from differentials in agglomoration economies.

For those not used to industry jargon, the report is claiming that the Inner City Connector is going to save people time, allow more land development and make it easier for people to find the best job in the region and that each of these has economic benefits that can be measured and predicted. Today I'm going to focus on the first: travel time and vehicle operation cost savings.

Long time readers of Strong Towns have seen me discuss this before. Project proponents convert very small amounts of time savings into cash equivalents to show all the benefit a project is creating. Here's how I put it in a piece last fall called "Project Propaganda":