Sustainable transportation: fad or fabulous

Abstract

Paper presented at the 20th Annual South African Transport Conference 16 - 20 July 2001 "Meeting the transport challenges in Southern Africa", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa. ABSTRACT: Sustainable transportation attempts to address economic development, environmental stewardship, and social equity of current and future generations. While numerous qualitative studies have been performed on this topic there has been little quantitative research and/or implementation of sustainable transportation concepts. The main reasons for this are related to a lack of understanding of sustainable transportation and a lack of quantified performance measures. It was found that the implementation of such concepts, can to a large extent, be improved if they are clearly defined, quantified and used in the decision-making process. A framework is provided on how performance measures for sustainable transportation can be identified and quantified as part of the transportation planning process and how the quantified measures can lead to implementation. This framework was applied to a real test case in Houston, Texas. It was shown that by using quantified performance measures it is possible to produce sustainable transportation index values. This type of approach makes it possible to determine the sustainability index for different user groups commuting along the corridor as a result of projects, programs and policies. It was concluded that sustainable transportation can potentially be a very useful concept for addressing economic development, environmental stewardship, and social equity of current and future generations. This can, however, only come to fruition if sustainable transportation is clearly defined, quantified and used in the decision-making process.