Evaluating Impacts and Problems
Updated August 2009 |
| Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis: Techniques, Estimates and Implications [Second Edition] |
This is a comprehensive study of transportation benefits and costs, and a guidebook for applying this information for policy and planning analysis. It is unique in several important ways. It includes many impact categories that are often overlooked. It explains economic evaluation techniques and how to apply them. It provides extensive reference information, mostly available through the Internet. It provides costs values in a format designed to easily calculate costs and benefits in a particular situation. |
| Transportation Cost Analysis Executive Summary |
This short paper summarizes the comprehensive study, Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis: Techniques, Estimates and Implications. It discusses the importance of transportation costing research, defines major cost categories, describes how costs are estimated, summarizes major findings, and explores implications of this research. |
| Smart Congestion Reductions: Reevaluating The Role Of Highway Expansion For Improving Urban Transportation |
This report investigates claims that highway capacity expansion is a cost effective and desirable solution to urban traffic congestion problems. It identifies errors in proponents' analysis that overestimate the congestion reduction impacts and economic benefits of roadway capacity expansion, overlook negative impacts of induced travel, and ignore more cost effective alternatives. |
| Smart Congestion Reductions II: Reevaluating The Role Of Public Transit For Improving Urban Transportation |
This report investigates the role that public transit can play in reducing traffic congestion and achieving other transportation improvement objectives. It evaluates criticism that urban transit investments are ineffective at reducing traffic congestion and wasteful. |
| The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be Changing Trends And Their Implications For Transport Planning |
This paper examines demographic, economic and market trends that affect travel demand, and their implications for transport planning. Motorized mobility grew tremendously during the Twentieth Century, but the factors that caused this growth are unlikely to continue. Per capita vehicle ownership and mileage have started to decline in the U.S., while demand for alternatives such as walking, cycling, public transit and telework is increasing. This indicates that future transport demand will be increasingly diverse. |
| Safe Travels: Evaluating Mobility Management Traffic Safety Impacts |
This paper investigates the relationships between vehicle mileage and crashes, and the traffic safety impacts of mobility management, which consists of various strategies that increase transportation system efficiency by changing travel patterns. This analysis indicates that mobility management can be a cost effective traffic safety strategy, and increased safety is one of the largest potential benefits of mobility management.
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| Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation: Infrastructure Investments That Support Strategic Planning Objectives Provide True Economic Development |
This report discusses factors to consider when evaluating transportation economic stimulation strategies, including long-term economic, social and environmental impacts. Expanding urban highways tends to stimulate motor vehicle travel and sprawl, exacerbating future transport problems and threatening future economic productivity. Improving alternative modes (walking and cycling conditions, and public transit service quality) tends to reduce total motor vehicle traffic and associated costs, providing additional long-term economic savings and benefits. Increasing transport system efficiency tends to create far more jobs than those created directly by infrastructure investments. Public policies intended to support domestic automobile sales could be economically harmful in the long-term. |
| Smart Transportation Emission Reductions |
This report investigates methods for identifying the optimal (best overall, taking into account all benefits and costs) transportation emission reduction strategies. It describes ways to correct current planning bias so mobility management solutions can be implemented to the degree optimal.
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| Comprehensive Transport Planning Framework: Best Practices For Evaluating All Options And Impacts |
This report describes principles for comprehensive transportation planning, evaluates conventional transport planning practices with regard to these principles, identifies common planning distortions, recommends practical methods for correcting these distortions and improving transport decision-making, and discusses the likely impacts of these reforms. This type of analysis is particularly important for evaluating alternative modes and mobility management strategies. |
| Evaluating Research Quality |
This short paper provides guidelines for evaluating research quality and discerning propaganda from true research. |
| Are Vehicle Travel Reduction Targets Justified? Evaluating Mobility Management Objectives Such As Targets To Reduce VMT And Increase Use Of Alternative Modes |
This report investigates whether transportation policies should include mobility management objectives, such as targets to reduce vehicle travel and encourage use of alternative modes. It evaluates the justificatons and criticisms of such targets. Mobility management can provide many benefits, and specific policy objectives provide guidance for strategic planning. |
| Measuring Transportation: Traffic, Mobility and Accessibility |
This article compares three approaches to measuring transportation system performance and discusses their effects on planning decisions. Originally published in The ITE Journal, October 2003. |
| A Good Example of Bad Transportation Performance Evaluation |
This paper discusses transportation performance evaluation concepts and critiques indicators used in the study, Transportation Performance of the Canadian Provinces. Some of these indicators are appropriate, but several are ambiguous and biased, and a few are illogical. |
| Multi-Modal Transport Planning |
This short paper summarizes basic principles for transportation planning. It describes conventional transport planning, which tends to focus on motor vehicle traffic conditions, and newer methods for more multi-modal planning and evaluation. |
| Evaluating Transportation Equity |
Transportation decisions often have significant equity impacts. This paper defines different types of transportation equity, discusses various equity issues, and describes ways of incorporating equity into transportation decision-making.
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| Evaluating Accessibility for Transportation Planning |
This paper discusses the concept of accessibility and how it can be incorporated in transport planning. Evaluating transport based on accessibility rather than mobility allows more comprehensive analysis and expands the scope of potential transport improvement strategies.
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| Transportation Affordability: Evaluation and Improvement Strategies |
This paper discusses ways to evaluate and improve transportation affordability.
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| If Health Matters: Integrating Public Health Objectives in Transportation Decision-Making |
This paper investigates how transportation policy and planning practices would change if public health objectives were given a higher priority. |
| Integrating Public Health Objectives in Transportation Decision-Making |
This editorial explores how transportation decision-making can better support public health objectives, including reduced crashes and pollution emissions, and more physical activity. Originally published in the American Journal of Health
Promotion. |
| Active Transportation Policy Issues: Backgrounder |
Active transportation consists of human-powered forms of travel such as walking, cycling, skating, skiing, and manual wheelchairs. Active transportation provides economic, social, environmental and health benefits. This paper provides background information on active transportation to facilitate discussion at the Canadian Active Transportation Roundtable held in 2003. |
| You CAN Get There From Here; Evaluating Transportation Diversity |
This paper explores the benefits to consumers and society from a transportation system that offers diverse transportation options. It describes practical methods for evaluating transportation diversity. |
| Well Measured: Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning |
This paper provides guidance on the selection of performance indicators for comprehensive and sustainable transportation planning. |
| Reinventing Transportation: Exploring the Paradigm Shift Needed to Reconcile Transportation and Sustainability Objectives |
Sustainability requires more efficient, equitable, and environmentally sensitive transportation systems. This requires changes in the way we think about transport, and how we identify and evaluate solutions to transport problems. This paper discusses these changes and their implications for transport planning. |
| Developing Indicators For Comprehensive And Sustainable Transport Planning |
This paper, published in Transportation Research Record 2017 discusses the selection of indicators for comprehensive and sustainable
transportation planning.
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| Sustainable Transportation Indicators: A Recommended Program To Define A Standard Set of Indicators For Sustainable Transportation Planning |
This paper, developed through a cooperative effort by the Transportation Research Board’s 'Sustainable Transportation Indicators Subcommittee,' identifies a program to develop a standard set of indicators for sustainable transportation evaluation. It discusses sustainable transportation definitions and concepts, describes factors to consider when selecting indictors, recommends specific sustainable transportation indicators, and discusses issues of data quality.
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| Efficient Vehicles Versus Efficient Transportation: Comparing Transportation Energy
Conservation Strategies |
This paper evaluates potential transportation energy conservation and emission reduction strategies. It finds mobility management strategies provide significant additional benefits compared with “clean vehicle” strategies. |
| Appropriate Response to Rising Fuel Prices |
This paper investigates the best public policy response to rising fuel prices. This analysis indicates that efforts to reduce fuel price increases may harm consumers and the economy overall by encouraging long-term inefficiencies.
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| Evaluating Criticism of Transportation Costing |
This paper critiques published reports which attack transportation costing studies and claim that motor vehicles impose minimal external costs. It identifies inaccuracies and misrepresentations in these reports. |
| Socially Optimal Transport Prices and Markets; Principles, Strategies and Impacts |
This paper examines existing market distortions that increase motor vehicle use, market reforms that correct these distortions, and the impacts that such reforms would have on travel patterns. |
| Transportation Market Distortions |
This paper, published in the Berkeley Planning Journal examines various transportation market distortions, including underpricing and biased planning practices, and potential reforms for correcting them. |
| Automobile Dependency and Economic Development |
This paper summarizes research on the economic development impacts of automobile dependency. It indicates that excessive automobile use and inadequate travel options impose a number of costs which reduce overall economic productivity. |
| Generated Traffic: Implications for Transport Planning |
Transportation improvements can encourage more and longer trips, changes in travel
patterns, and land use changes. This is called "generated traffic" or
"induced travel." This report defines various types of generated traffic
and discusses their impacts. |
| Mobility As A Positional Good: Implications for Transport Policy and Planning |
“Positional” (also called “prestige”) goods confer status on their consumers. Positional value increases status to consumers of prestige goods but reduces status to others. This paper investigates how positional value affects transportation decisions (vehicle ownership, travel activity, location decisions, etc.), explores the resulting economic impacts, and discusses implications for transport policy and planning.
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| Transportation Elasticities |
This report investigates the influence that prices have on travel behavior. It summarizes research on various types of transportation elasticities and describes how to use this information to predict the travel impacts of specific price reforms and management strategies.
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| Build for Comfort, Not Just Speed: Valuing Service Quality Impacts In Transport Planning |
This paper describes ways to evaluate qualitative impacts of transportation system changes. Improved travel convenience and comfort reduce unit travel time costs and so are equivalent in value to increased travel speed. Improved analysis of qualitative factors can lead to better planning decisions.
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| Land Use Impacts on Transport: How Land Use Factors Affect Travel Behavior |
This paper examines how various land use factors such as density, regional accessibility, mix and roadway connectivity affect travel behavior. |
| Community Cohesion As A Transport Planning Objective |
This paper describes the concept of “community cohesion,” which refers to the quality of interactions among people in a community, and discusses how it is affected by transport planning decisions. |
| Social Inclusion As A Transport Planning Issue in Canada |
"Social exclusion" refers to constraints that prevent people from participating adequately in society, including education, employment, public services and activities. This paper discusses the concept of social exclusion as it relates to transport, how it is currently incorporated in Canadian transport planning, and the research needed to better address social exclusion. |
| Lessons From Katrina and Rita: What Major Disasters Can Teach Transportation Planners |
This paper examines failures in hurricane Katrina and Rita disaster response and their lessons for transportation planning in other communities. It identifies various policy and planning strategies that can help create more efficient, equitable and resilient transport systems. |
| Evaluating Mobility Management Strategies for Reducing Transportation Emissions in the Fraser River Basin |
This 122-page report evaluates the benefits, costs and feasibility of 24 mobility management (MM) strategies. Each strategy is describe and rated according to various criteria, including energy, emission and congestion reductions, facility cost savings, consumer impacts, safety impacts and implementation requirements. |
| Report Summary |
This 14-page document summarizes the full report, "Evaluating Mobility Management Strategies for Reducing Transportation Emissions in the Fraser River Basin". |
| Mobility Management Evaluation Spreadsheet |
This spreadsheet model was used to evaluate the individual and cumulative impacts of various mobility management strategies on vehicle travel, energy consumption and emissions. |
| Climate Change Emission Valuation for Transportation Economic Analysis |
This paper describes climate change impacts and costs, presents methods for quantifying and monetizing (measuring in monetary units) these impacts, summarizes published unit cost estimates, and explains the values used in the report Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis. |
| Evacuation Station: The Use of Public Transportation in Emergency Management Planning |
This article by Michael Schwartz and Todd Litman examines emergency transportation planning practices and the role that public transit can play. It provides guidance to help transportation professionals better prepare for emergencies. This article was published in the ITE Journal. |
| Socioeconomics of Urban Travel: Evidence from the 2001 NHTS |
This article by John Pucher and John Renne analyzes the 2001 National Household Travel Survey and compares its results with previous personal transportation surveys to identify trends and differences in travel behavior among various socioeconomic groups. It investigates variations in vehicle ownership, mobility trends, travel mode (driving, walking, cycling and public transit), trip purpose and travel schedule. |
| Urban-Rural Differences in Mobility and Mode Choice: Evidence from the 2001 NHTS |
This paper by John Pucher and John Renne uses data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey to compare travel behavior in rural and urban areas of the United States. |
| Transport Policies in Central and Eastern Europe |
This paper by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler compares transportation trends in the formerly socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe since the demise of Communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It discusses these changes, their benefits and costs, and potential ways of dealing with the problems that result.
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| 2009 Urban Transport Performance Spreadsheet |
This spreadsheet contains various urban transportation system performance data, including vehicle travel, mode split, and consumer expenditures for 130 U.S. cities. |
| What’s It Worth?: Lifecycle and Benefit/Cost Analysis for Evaluating Economic
Value |
This paper discussed the application of economic analysis techniques to transportation planning and management. It describes specific techniques including Cost-Effectiveness, Benefit/Cost Analysis, Lifecycle Cost Analysis, and Multiple Accounts Analysis. |
| Macrolevel Collision Prediction Models to Evaluate Road Safety Effects of Mobility Management Strategies: New Empirical Tools to Promote Sustainable Development |
This paper by Gordon Lovegrove and Todd Litman describes how community-based collision prediction models can be used to calculate the road safety effects of specific mobility management strategies. It summarizes analysis of data from 479 urban neighbourhoods. The results suggest that smart growth, congestion pricing and improved mobility options (better walking and cycling conditions, and improved ridesharing and public transit services) can provide significant crash reductions. |
| Induced Travel Bibliography |
This bibliography by Professor Robert Noland provides several dozen references concerning induced vehicle travel and its implications.
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| Review of U.S. and European Regional Modeling Studies of Policies
Intended to Reduce Motorized Travel, Fuel Use, and Emissions |
This paper by Professor Robert Johnston reviews the experience to date in dozens of metropolitan regions and advanced
industrial economies as they have used scenario planning to evaluate an array of pragmatic and feasible policies and investment strategies that are available to help states and regions satisfy this new federal legal requirement.
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| Making the Most of Models: Using Models To Develop More Effective Transport Policies And Strategies |
This paper by by Peter Furnish and Don Wignall discusses how transport models influence transport policies and strategies, and discusses the additional contribution that simplified models could make if they were more widely available.
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