Applying sustainable transportation in Texas

Abstract

Paper presented at the 28th Annual Southern African Transport Conference 6 - 9 July 2009 "Sustainable Transport", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

The aim of this project was to develop a performance-measurement based approach for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to evaluate and enhance the relative sustainability of transportation projects. TxDOT's strategic plan contains five goals (reduce congestion, improve safety, increase economic opportunity, preserve the value of transportation assets, and improve air quality), each of which need to be addressed to improve the sustainability of the transportation system. This project uses a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach for the sustainability evaluation, which requires the development of appropriate performance measures, which are evaluated and aggregated into a composite indicator of sustainability. The focus of the project was on the transportation corridor level and focused on the highway mode of transportation. As part of the project a user-friendly analysis tool in the form of a spreadsheet-based calculator was developed that can quantify the selected performance measures and apply the sustainability enhancement methodology. Several case studies were performed using the methodology and applying the analysis tool. Finally, it is demonstrated how the methodology is being integrated into TxDOT's planning process.