Comprehensive Transport Planning

Creating a Comprehensive Framework for Transportation Planning and Policy Analysis

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TDM Encyclopedia

Victoria Transport Policy Institute

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Updated 18 July 2017


This chapter describes planning reforms for more comprehensive and accurate transportation decision-making. Conventional planning tends to favor mobility over accessibility and automobile travel over alternative modes. More comprehensive planning is particularly important when evaluating TDM and alternative modes. This chapter summarizes the report Comprehensive Transport Planning Framework: Best Practices For Evaluating All Options And Impacts at www.vtpi.org/comprehensive.pdf

 

 

Index

Introduction.. 2

Individual Factors. 4

Selection of Alternatives. 4

Investment Practices. 5

Underpricing. 7

Modeling Practices. 8

Measuring Transportation. 9

Uncoordinated Decisions. 10

Generated Traffic Impacts. 11

Downstream Congestion. 12

Consumer Impacts Analysis. 13

Parking Expenses. 14

Vehicle Costs. 14

Construction Impacts. 15

Nonmotorized Transport Evaluation and Planning. 16

Impacts on Transportation Diversity. 17

Environmental and Livability Impacts. 17

Strategic Land Use Objectives. 18

Economic Development Impacts. 19

Equity Analysis. 19

Safety and Health Impacts. 20

Resilience Evaluation. 21

Summary: Comparing Conventional and Comprehensive Planning. 24

Reductionist Analysis. 25

Monetizing Costs. 28

Examples. 29

School Transportation Solutions. 29

Business Parking Problems. 31

Conclusions. 32

Best Practices. 34

Related Chapters. 36

Examples and Case Studies. 36

Collaborative Planning Mandates. 36

References And Resources For More Information. 36

 

 

Wit and Humor

“The most insidious form of ignorance is misplaced certainty”

-Robert Costanza

 

 

Introduction

When shopping for an automobile, consumers need accurate and comprehensive information about the vehicles they might purchase. Some information, such as a vehicle’s purchase price, design features and performance, is easily obtained from vehicle manufactures and dealers. But smart buyers want additional information that requires more research, such as each vehicle’s long-term operating costs, maintenance and repair costs, insurance costs, and future resale value. They should investigate whether a vehicle is particularly dangerous, unreliable, or vulnerable to theft. It is also important to consider whether a vehicle is suitable for the full range of uses it may need to serve, including its ability to accommodate people with diverse physical needs (large, small and disabled), carry various loads (luggage, sports equipment and lumber), and operate under a wide range of conditions (rough roads, extreme weather, steep inclines). These additional factors can be important. Often, a vehicle that seems best based on dealer data (lowest price, fastest, best sound system) is not the most suitable when all factors are considered.

 

Similarly, a community wants comprehensive information when making transportation decisions. Decision-makers need to know more than just construction cost and traffic performance, the factors that are easiest to measure and given the most attention in conventional transportation planning. They also need information on long-term and indirect impacts, its ability to serve diverse needs and operate under variable conditions. Often, a transportation decision that seems most effective at solving a particular problem is not the best approach when all factors are considered.

 

Conventional transportation planning and investment Models evaluate potential transportation improvements by comparing direct project financial costs with projected savings in travel time, vehicle operating cost, and crash costs (TTI 1999; World Bank 2000). For example, they predict whether a million-dollar roadway investment or transit service improvement will provide an estimated million dollars worth of travel time, vehicle cost and safety benefits over its lifetime. This type of analysis may be adequate when comparing options that are similar, such as alternative highway routes, but more comprehensive framework is needed when comparing options that involve alternative modes or TDM strategies, because such decisions have a broader range of impacts.

 

Decisions that affect the range of transportation options that will be available, or the total amount of vehicle travel that occurs in an area, should take into account additional factors. This chapter describes important factors that should be considered in transportation planning, which are often overlooked or undervalued. It describes these values, examines how they are treated under current planning practices, and identifies changes needed to make transportation planning more comprehensive and objective.

 

More comprehensive planning takes into account additional costs that often result from increased roadway capacity and the additional vehicle traffic it produces, and it takes into account additional benefits provided by TDM strategies that improve transport options and encourage more efficient use of existing transportation system capacity. These additional factors justify policy and planning decisions that emphasize increased transportation system diversity and efficiency.

 

This analysis indicates that current transport planning practices tend to be biased in various ways that overvalue highway capacity expansion and undervalue alternative solutions to transportation problems. Although individually these distortions may appear modest, often affecting just 5-10% of decisions, their effects are cumulative, and so together can significantly shift policy and planning decisions to favor automobile transport and reduce support for alternative modes and TDM solutions. These distortions result in economically excessive automobile travel (more automobile travel than would occur in a more efficient transportation market), which harms consumers and the economy overall.

 

Critics might argue that an equal number of distortions favor alternative modes, but there is little evidence that this is true. The only planning bias favoring alternative modes generally identified by critics is the claim that transit and non-motorized travel sometimes receive more than a proportional share of transport resources. For example, transit might carry only 3% of passenger trips in a region, but receives 20% of capital investments, or walking may only represent only 5% of commute trips, but 10% of roadway cross-section is devoted to sidewalks. Such claims tend to be based on selective analysis (for example, considering only certain transportation budgets, or certain geographic areas), and ignore various factors that justify additional public investment in these modes: transit and walking provide Basic Mobility and so are justified for equity and option value; these modes tend to be most cost effective on congested urban corridors where roadway capacity expansion costs are particularly high; and automobile travel involves additional public costs, such as parking facilities, congestion and pollution, that should also be considered when determining what constitutes a “fair” share of public expenditures (see discussion in Transit Evaluation). Such claims also reflect biases in how transportation is Measured, such as undercounting of non-motorized travel.

 

Systems Approach To Transportation Planning

Many experts are increasingly aware of the value of studying whole systems, rather than simply examining a system’s components individually. This requires more comprehensive research methods, but provides more useful information.

 

For example, in the past, agricultural biologists studied individual insect species, perhaps to determine which pesticide is most effective at controlling their infestations. But ecologists tend to consider additional issues, such as the effects a insecticide has on other, non-target insect species; whether it bioaccumulates and therefore threatens the insect’s predators; and how changes in insect populations might affect other plants and animals. Not only can ecologists predict potential problems that may result from pesticide use, they may also be able to identify other ways to control insect infestations, perhaps by stimulating the growth of natural enemies.

 

Other disciplines also taking a more comprehensive approach to problem solving. A psychologist deals with individuals’ problems, while social workers tend to deal with families and communities. A medical specialist deals with a particular organ or disease, while a general practitioner deals with the whole patient.

 

Transportation planning is currently at a relatively crude level of development. We still tend to use a narrow perspective when evaluating problems and solutions, and as a result, we sometimes implement solutions to one problem that exacerbate other problems, and fail to consider more integrated solutions that provide multiple benefits.

 

For example, most local traffic agencies set generous minimum parking requirements in order to prevent parking problems, although this tends to exacerbate traffic congestion, sprawl and housing inaffordability, but few of these agencies have implemented Parking Management programs or established Transportation Management Associations which can help reduce parking problems and address other community objectives, because traffic agencies focus on a narrow set of problems.

 

There are many other TDM strategies that help achieve multiple community objectives. However, these solutions tend to face various barriers. When potential benefits are considered individually, they often do not seem worth the effort, except where a particular problem is extreme. A broader perspective is needed to perceive the full benefits of these strategies, therefore justifying their broader implementation.

 

 

Individual Factors

This section describes specific factors required for comprehensive transportation planning.

 

Selection of Alternatives

The Issue

Comprehensive planning should consider a wider range of potential solutions to transportation problems, including alternative modes, demand management strategies, and integrated programs that involve a combination of strategies. For example, roadway projects (such as new highway lanes) can be more efficient and fair if funded through direct user charges, rather than indirect or general taxes, and transit projects may become more cost effective if implemented with TDM strategies that encourage transit use and create more transit-oriented land use patterns.

 

Current Practices

Current transportation planning and funding tends to be biased in favor of automobile transportation, and often overlooks other modes and management solutions to transportation problems. Automobile and air travel tend to be considered prestigious, and most transportation decision makers have more personal experience with driving than with alternative modes. Highway improvements are often justified on the grounds that they serve freight transport and therefore support economic development, even though they are actually used primarily for private travel, and alternative strategies (such as Freight Transport Management or Road Pricing) could improve freight transport for less cost. More technical resources are available for Evaluating automobile-oriented improvements than for other solutions.

 

Transportation planning often ignores TDM altogether, or only considers a few individual strategies which are familiar to the individuals involved. Innovative strategies, such as pricing reforms and land use management strategies, are often ignored. It is uncommon to include an integrated TDM program that includes a combination of complementary TDM strategies.

 

Recommended Practices

When developing alternatives, consider a variety of modes and demand management options. This can include pure TDM programs, and TDM programs integrated with road or transit projects. For example, a bridge or road project may be more cost effective if implemented with demand management strategies that reduce the project’s size requirements, or defers construction for several years. Innovative strategies, such as pricing reforms and land use management strategies, should be included even if they are unlikely to be implemented in the short-term, because they may become more acceptable in the future.

 

 

Investment Practices

The Issue

More funding tends to be available for roadway improvements than for alternatives. Highways are considered interregional and multi-modal facilities which serve long-distance travel and trucks and buss as well as automobile, and so are considered to deserve state/provincial and federal funding despite the fact that much of their traffic is local; while walking, cycling and public transit are considered local services that only provide passenger transport. As a result, more funding is available to accommodate local trips made by automobile than for local trips made by other modes.

 

Projects that involve a ribbon-cutting ceremony (e.g., new highways and transit services) tend to attract more political support, because they are considered more exciting and visible. As a result, investment practices often favor expenditures on large, new capital investments over operations and smaller, more incremental projects, operations (maintenance and management), even when they are most cost effective. In many situations, new transportation facilities are built while other facilities deteriorate due to inadequate maintenance, or service quality declines, due to inadequate operating funds.

 

Current Practices

A significant portion of U.S. federal and state highway funds are dedicated to roadway expenditures, and cannot be used for other investments, even if they are more cost effective. Some jurisdictions limit fuel tax revenues and other vehicle user fees to highway projects, while simultaneously using general taxes to also fund roadway facilities, resulting in cross-subsidies to driving (Puentes and Prince, 2003). In many cases, local or regional governments can obtain funding for roadway improvements, but not for other types of transportation improvements. This encourages local officials to define their transportation problems as traffic problems, rather than mobility problems or accessibility problems (Measuring Transportation). For example, a local government might be able to convince state or provincial governments to spend millions of dollars to build a highway off ramp to serve a school or commercial park, but would not obtain the same funds to run a shuttle service, subsidize a transportation management program, or relocate the school or stores closer to residential areas.

 

Current transportation planning and investment practices tend to favor expenditures on major capital projects over operations, maintenance and management activities, without consideration of which provides the greatest overall benefits (Meyer, 2001; Sussman, 2001). Many jurisdictions invest a large portion of their transportation budgets on new capacity, even though they have inadequate funds to maintain existing facilities or implement management programs that improve transportation services. A major portion of federal and state transportation funds can only be used for capital expansion. These practices result in poor maintenance of existing facilities, increased long-run costs, and they discourage management strategies that result in more efficient use of existing capacity.

 

This type of dedicated funding encourages local governments to choose highway projects over alternative solutions to transportation problems. For example, if local officials know that state and federal governments have money for highways, or offer greater matching grants for highways than for other types of projects, they will tend to define their transportation problems as highway problems, and will have less incentive to consider transit investments, road pricing or other TDM strategies.

 

Recommended Practices

Transportation planning and funding practices should give priority to maintenance and operations over capacity expansion, and apply Least Cost Planning principles, so that management strategies and incremental projects can be implemented whenever they are most cost effective overall. In general, preventive maintenance and management activities that result in more efficient use of existing capacity should receive priority over expenditures on new capacity. Traffic Operations programs, which improve roadway system performance, should receive support comparable to system expansion. A good policy, called fix-it-first, is to avoid expanding a transportation system if there is inadequate funding to maintain existing facilities and services.

 

 

Underpricing

The Issue

Market distortions that underprice transport activity results in economically excessive travel demand (more than what would occur in an efficient market). Attempting to meet this demand results in economically excessive capacity, inefficient resource use, and exacerbates transport problems (Market Principles). It is akin to asking how many seats a restaurant would need if its prices ranged from fifty cents to a dollar per meal.

 

Current Practices

Automobile use is underpriced. Motor vehicles are expensive to own, but cheap to drive because most costs of motor vehicle use are either fixed or external (Transportation Costs). Although these price distortions may individually appear modest, their cumulative impacts are substantial. More efficient pricing of Parking, Roadway Use, Vehicle Insurance, and Environmental Costs would each reduce vehicle travel by 5-20%. In total, more than a third of motor vehicle use results from market distortions that underprice driving (Litman, 2001).

 

Conventional transportation planning attempts to meet this travel demand with little consideration of these price distortions. For example, ITE parking demand surveys are mostly performed at sites where parking is unpriced. These surveys are then used to establish minimum parking standards that are widely adopted into zoning codes and development requirements. This results in generous parking supply, low-density land use patterns unsuitable for walking and transit access, and makes it difficult to charge users directly for parking. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of increased road and parking capacity, more Automobile Dependent transportation and land use patterns, leading to more road and parking demand, which justifies continual increases in road and parking capacity (illustrated below). Because of the increasing vehicle travel demand, congestion and parking problems are never solved, and other problems increase.

 

Recommended Practices

Transportation planning should consider the effects of market distortions on travel demand, identify the effects of specific forms of underpricing, and use pricing reforms to help solve problems. Where efficient pricing is not feasible, other TDM strategies should be used, as much as possible, as a second-best approach to encourage more efficient transportation and land use patterns.

 

 

Modeling Practices

The Issue

Regional transportation Models, which are used to predict how changes to the transportation system impact travel conditions (e.g., how a new highway or transit service will affect traffic congestion and mobility) can significantly impact transport planning decisions. Such models are designed primarily to evaluate motor vehicle traffic, and tend to be inaccurate when evaluating alternative modes, demand management strategies, and small-scale projects. Yet, they are often used to evaluate a wide range of transportation alternatives. This often overstates the potential benefits of roadway improvements and understates the benefits of demand management strategies.

 

Current Practices

Transportation Models are frequently used to predict future travel conditions and evaluate different types of transportation improvements, including alternative modes and TDM strategies, although they are not sensitive to the effects of generated traffic, changes in travel options, transit service quality, price change, marketing incentives or land use factors (such as neighborhood walking conditions), and so are not very effective at evaluating alternative modes and other demand management strategies.

 

Many current models lack “feedback” (that is, they do not recognize that increased traffic congestion tends to limit further growth in traffic, and increased roadway capacity can generate additional peak-period travel). Such models essentially extrapolate past trends, assuming that vehicle travel demand will grow at historical rates regardless of what policies are implemented or the degree of traffic congestion that develops. Transportation modelers often treat travel demand as a fixed factor with only one or two variables (that is, they assume that a certain number of people will travel along a corridor), rather than a highly variable function that can be affected by many factors including roadway congestion, the quality of travel options, price, walkability, land use patterns and community attitudes.

 

The transit elasticity values commonly used in transportation models are largely based on studies of short- and medium-run impacts, performed decades ago when real incomes where lower and a larger portion of the population was transit dependent. The resulting elasticity values are probably lower by about half than what would accurately predict medium and long-run changes under current conditions. As a result, most transportation models significantly understate the potential of transit fare reductions and service improvements to reduce problems such as traffic congestion and vehicle pollution, and they understate the long-term negative impacts that fare increases and service cuts can have on transit ridership, transit revenue, traffic congestion and pollution emissions.

 

As a result, they tend to overestimate future traffic congestion problems, overestimate the benefits of roadway capacity expansion, and underestimate the potential benefits of transit improvements and other TDM strategies.

 

Recommended Practices

Use an advanced transportation Model that incorporates feedback and is sensitive to pricing, mode choice and micro-scale land use factors. If such a model is not available, insure that decision-makers are aware of the limitations of any predictions from the model, such as any tendencies to overestimate future traffic congestion problems, and undervalue TDM strategies. Future models may be able to evaluate accessibility rather than mobility, allowing more accurate analysis of travel impacts.

 

Transportation planners should not report travel demand as a fixed value (“traffic volumes will grow 20% over the next decade”), but rather as a variable (“traffic volumes will grow 20% over the next decade if current policies continue, 10% if a parking fee averaging $1.00 per day is implemented, and 0% if a $3.00 per day average parking fee is implemented.”) This helps decision-makers understand how travel patterns can be affected by public policy decisions.

 

Measuring Transportation

The Issue

How transportation is defined and Measured can affect which solutions are considered best. A particular policy or project may appear worthwhile when transportation system performance is measured in one way, but undesirable when it is measured another way. The ultimate goal of most transportation is Accessibility, the ability to reach desired goods, services and activities. Many transport projects improve accessibility by some modes, but degrade it for others. For example, increasing roadway capacity and traffic speeds tends to improve access by automobile but reduces it by other modes, such as walking, cycling and transit.

 

Current Practices

Vehicle traffic is relatively easy to measure, so transportation system quality tends to be evaluated based largely on automobile travel conditions (e.g., average traffic speeds, roadway Level-of-Service, vehicle congestion delay, vehicle operating costs, parking supply), while ignoring other accessibility impacts, including impacts on Transit Service Quality, Nonmotorized Transport and land use Accessibility. This tends to favor automobile-oriented solutions, and undervalues alternative solutions to transportation problems.

 

Recommended Practices

Since access is the ultimate goal of most transportation activity, it is important to develop ways to Evaluate Accessibility. Access should be evaluated from various perspectives, including those of different modes (driving, transit, walking), and different geographic and demographic groups (children, commuters, parents, elders) groups. Below are some suitable Performance Indicators:

·         Multi-Modal Level of Service ratings.

·         Average door-to-door commute times for residents.

·         Average annual transportation expenditures per capita.

·         Freight transportation delivery speeds and costs.

·         Quality of Transportation Options.

·         Quality of transportation options for non-drivers and lower-income people.

·         Quality of the pedestrian and cycling environments.

·         Land use Accessibility (e.g., number of jobs and public services within walking distance of residents).

·         Crashes and crash fatalities per capita.

·         User satisfaction survey results (for motorists, transit users, pedestrian facility users, etc.).

·         Results of user surveys identifying access barriers and problems.

 

 

Uncoordinated Decisions

The Issue

Countless decisions, large and small, made by a variety of public and private organizations affect transportation systems. Although strategic planning can affect some of these decisions, many are made without consideration of their indirect and long-term effects. The result can be a “tyranny of small decisions,” in which problems are exacerbated by a lack of coordination.

 

Jurisdictions within a region often compete for new development (particularly commercial taxes), resulting in decisions that contradict overall planning objectives. For example, urban fringe communities may offer tax discounts and lax environmental standards to attract retail businesses and industry, although it creates more automobile-dependent land use patterns.

 

In practice, this often gives large, new “masterplanned” communities an advantage over existing communities. Such communities are able to coordinate land uses, transportation facilities and facility design better than existing communities can. The result is degradation of older, accessible urban neighborhoods, while new masterplanned communities, often located in less accessible exurban areas, are able to provide more amenities that attract higher-income residents and successful businesses.

 

Current Practices

Current planning processes are often unable to coordinate smaller-scale individual decisions. There is often no mechanism to develop strategic objectives, prioritize transportation planning decisions among different jurisdictions and agencies, or enforce their implementation.

 

Recommended Practices

Establish strategic regional vision, goals and objectives that apply to transportation planning. Prioritize transportation decisions among different jurisdictions and agencies. Implement Smart Growth Policy Reforms as needed to encourage individual jurisdictions, agencies and businesses to support these goals and objectives in their decisions, both large and small. Create planning and enforcement mechanisms that allow existing communities too development quality comparable to what exists in new, masterplanned communities.

 

 

Generated Traffic Impacts

The Issue

Urban traffic congestion tends to maintain a self-limiting equilibrium: traffic grows until congestion discourages additional peak-period vehicle travel. People shift their travel time, route, mode and destination to avoid congestion. If roadway capacity increases, they will take additional peak-period trips, including some that represent an overall increase in vehicle mileage (as opposed to simply shifts in travel time and route).

 

Generated traffic is a name for this additional vehicle travel that occurs when roadway capacity increases (Rebound Effects). This consists of a combination of diverted travel (vehicle trips shifted from other times and routes), and induced travel (travel shifted from other modes and destinations, and increased vehicle trip making). Under typical urban conditions, more than half of added capacity is filled within five years of project completion by generated traffic, with additional but slower growth in later years. Generated traffic has significant implications for transportation planning:

 

1.       Generated traffic tends to reduce the predicted congestion reduction benefits of increased road capacity.

 

2.       Induced travel increases external costs, including downstream congestion, parking costs, crashes, pollution, and other environmental impacts, particularly if it leads to more automobile dependent transport systems and land use patterns. These external costs can be quite significant, often exceeding the magnitude of congestion reduction benefits.

 

3.       The additional travel that is generated provides relatively modest user benefits, since it consists of marginal value trips (travel that consumers are most willing to forego).

 

 

This is not to suggest that increasing road capacity provides no benefits, but generated traffic affects the nature of these benefits. It means that road project benefits consist more of increased mobility and less of reduced traffic congestion. Failing to consider generated traffic impacts can significantly reduce the accuracy of transportation policy and project evaluation. Modeling and planning practices that ignore these impacts tend to exaggerate the benefits of highway projects and understate the benefits of alternative modes and TDM solutions. Ignoring generated traffic impacts overstates the benefits of urban roadway capacity expansion project by 50% or more (Williams and Yamashita, 1992).

 

Current Practices

Most current traffic Models account for changes in routes and modes, and some account for changes from off-peak to peak periods that result from roadway improvements. However, few account for long-term changes in trips destinations, trip frequency, transportation diversity and land use patterns. As a result, they cannot account for a significant portion of generated traffic and the majority of induced travel that results from increasing the capacity of congested urban highways.

 

Current models also tend to ignore the demand-limiting effect of congestion. They often extrapolate past traffic growth rates to predict extreme levels of future congestion if roadway capacity does not increase, sometimes implying that the road system will reach “gridlock” This is almost never true. Traffic congestion will usually discourage further growth in peak-period travel demand, resulting in moderate, but never extreme levels of congestion on urban roads.

 

For these reasons, most current models overestimate future congestion costs, and the potential congestion reduction benefits of increased highway capacity. They also tend to ignore or underestimate the additional downstream congestion and parking problems, consumer costs, pollution emissions and sprawl that results from highway capacity expansion.

 

Recommended Practices

Traffic Models can be upgraded to predict the amount of vehicle traffic that would be generated by a highway project (Harvey and Deakin, 1993; Loudon, Parameswaran and Gardner, 1997). Such models can provide more realistic predictions of future congestion problems and the congestion reduction benefits of increased roadway capacity. They can also indicate the amount of additional vehicle travel that will be induced, allowing the incremental external costs to be estimated.

 

 

Downstream Congestion

The Issue

Solving a traffic bottleneck at one location may increase traffic congestion problems elsewhere in the road network. For example, increasing the capacity of a major highway may increase congestion problems on surface streets, particularly if it generates additional peak-period vehicle trips. On the other hand, a Transit Improvement or TDM strategy that reduces total vehicle traffic on the corridor avoids this impact, providing additional benefits by reducing congestion on surface streets.

 

Current Practices

Roadway capacity expansion projects are often evaluated based only on impacts on that particular link, without consideration of congestion impacts on other roads or in other jurisdictions. If a regional traffic Model is used but does not account for induced traffic (described above), it too will understate downstream congestion impacts. These practices tend to overstate the benefits of roadway capacity expansion, and the potential benefits of TDM alternatives.

 

Recommended Practices

Transportation projects should be evaluated using a comprehensive regional traffic model that incorporates generated traffic impacts, or simply by estimating the portion of additional roadway capacity that will be filled with generated and induced travel, and assigning this additional traffic congestion cost value.

 

For example, a highway capacity expansion project is projected to result in 1,000 additional peak-period vehicle trips each weekday, these trips are estimated to involve an average of 2-miles of travel on surface streets, and surface street peak-period congestion costs are estimated to average 15¢ per mile, this downstream congestion would impose annual costs of $150,000 (1,000 trips X 2 miles/trip X 2 trips/workday X 250 days/year X 15¢/mile). This is the additional annual cost assigned to the highway capacity expansion option that would be avoided by transit improvements, rideshare programs and other TDM strategies that avoid generating additional surface street traffic.

 

 

Consumer Impacts Analysis

The Issue

Transportation planning decisions can affect consumers in many ways, including the travel options, speed, comfort, safety and prices they face. Yet, existing evaluation practices tend to focus on just one or two impacts, particularly vehicle traffic speed, and ignore other factors that may be of equal or greater importance to users. Such practices tend to favor transportation improvements that increase mobility while undervaluing other types of improvements.

 

Current Practices

Existing transportation Models tend to focus primarily on travel speed when Evaluating transportation planning options. They assume that any increase in travel time increases consumer costs, and any reduction in travel time provides consumer benefits. They tend to undervalue or ignore altogether other factors, such as transportation system Diversity, comfort, safety and physical activity.

 

These models ignore the possibility that travelers may sometimes prefer slower modes. For example, many people enjoy walking and cycling and will chose them for some trips even if they are slower. Consumers sometimes consider time spent walking and cycling a benefit rather than a cost as indicated by the popularity of recreational strolling and cycling. Similarly, some people prefer ridesharing or transit because they find it less stressful than driving.

 

The assumption that any mode shift increases consumer costs is clearly incorrect for strategies that rely on positive incentives. With such incentives, travelers who continue driving are no worse off, but they have improved transportation options or financial rewards for using alternative modes. As a result, travelers only change mode if they are directly better off overall.

 

Treating any increase in travel time as a consumer cost tend to favor transport improvements that increase vehicle mobility, and undervalues TDM strategies that increase access or improves transportation options.

 

Recommended Practices

Consumer impacts should be Evaluated using consumer surplus analysis. This is particularly important when evaluating alternative modes, Land Use Management and Pricing Policies. Evaluation practices must recognize the benefits to consumers from strategies that improve consumer options or use positive incentives, even if they result in slower travel or reduced mobility.

 

 

Parking Expenses

The Issue

Parking is one of the largest costs of motor vehicle use. A typical parking space has an annualized value of several hundred dollars a year (Parking Evaluation). Roadway projects that generate additional vehicle trips can increase parking problems or requiring additional expenditures on parking facilities. Alternative modes and TDM strategies that reduce total automobile trips can provide parking cost savings. Failing to consider parking impacts tend to understate the costs of roadway projects and understate the full benefits of alternative modes and TDM projects that reduce vehicle trips.

 

Current Practices

Conventional transportation project evaluation often ignores parking costs altogether, or only considers parking costs paid directly by users. For example, when comparing a highway capacity expansion project with a transit improvement or TDM program, the additional parking costs to businesses and local governments that result from the highway project, and the avoided parking costs from the transit or TDM alternative, are often not considered in economic evaluation.

 

Recommended Practices

Parking costs should be considered when evaluating transportation policies and projects that affect the number and location of vehicle trips. Parking cost savings should be recognized from alternative modes and TDM strategies that reduce total vehicle trips.

 

 

Vehicle Costs

The Issue

Transportation investment Models calculate consumer costs and benefits based primarily on short-term vehicle operating costs. The total cost of driving is actually much greater, and so the total potential vehicle cost savings from alternative modes are greater than most models indicate.

 

Current Practices

Most conventional transportation evaluation models only consider short-term, out-of-pocket Vehicle Costs (fuel, oil and tire wear) and ignore other types of vehicle costs when evaluating motor vehicle costs, and potential consumer cost savings that result from alternative modes. For a typical car, short-term costs average about 10¢ per mile. But some vehicle generally classified as “fixed” are actually partly variable. Driving a vehicle increases depreciation, lease fees, repair costs, crash risk and traffic violations. These costs are significant, averaging 5-15¢ per vehicle-mile. In other words, the real cost of driving is about twice what economic models usually assume.

 

Alternative modes can provide other consumer benefits that are generally not recognized by transportation economic models. Improved transportation options can allow some households reduce their vehicle ownership. Even a small reduction in per household vehicle ownership can provide significant savings. For example, if a transit improvement allows just 10% of households that use the service to avoid purchasing an extra car, the savings could average $200-400 annually per user (assuming an average car has $2,000 to $4,000 in annual ownership costs), averaging 4-8¢ per mile of transit travel (assuming an average of 20 miles of transit travel a day, 250 days per year).

 

Because of these additional factors, the true potential vehicle cost savings to consumers from travel reductions and mode shifts is much larger than indicated by conventional models.

 

Recommended Practices

Transportation project Benefit-Cost Models should incorporate more comprehensive estimates of vehicle costs, including:

 

·         Distance-based depreciation (reduced vehicle resale value and operating life).

·         Increased repair frequency.

·         Increased insurance premiums, crash damages and traffic violations.

·         Opportunity costs if a vehicle could otherwise be used by another household member.

·         Increased vehicle ownership costs if increased automobile travel increases the average number of vehicles a household owns.

 

Reductions in these costs should be considered when evaluating projects that improve alternative modes and reduce vehicle use.

 

 

Construction Impacts

The Issue

Transportation projects often cause delays and crash risk to motorized and non-motorized traffic during construction periods. These delays and risk offset a significant portion of the project benefits (McCann, et al, 1999; Daniels, Stockton and Hundley, 2000; Young, Wolffing and Tomasini, 2005). In addition, transportation construction projects sometimes displace residents or reduce nearby business activity. Construction projects produce environmental impacts such as air, noise and water pollution, habitat loss and increased impervious surface, and wildlife barriers. Although these impacts are often “mitigated”, there are usually residual, uncompensated costs.

 

Current Practices

Transportation project evaluation often fails to consider the full costs of delays, crash risk, community impacts, business losses, and environmental impacts. There is often an assumption that mitigation and compensation will offset all losses. Uncompensated, residual costs are often ignored.

 

Failing to consider construction impacts tends to understate the full costs of roadway projects and understate the full benefits of alternative modes and TDM projects that avoid or defer the need for capacity expansion.

 

Recommended Practices

The evaluation of transportation projects should incorporate:

·         Traffic delays and crash risk to both motorized and non-motorized traffic.

·         Uncompensated community impacts.

·         Uncompensated business losses.

·         Residual environmental impacts.

 

 

Nonmotorized Transport Evaluation and Planning

The Issue

Transportation policies and projects can have major impacts on the mobility, comfort and safety of nonmotorized modes (Evaluating Nonmotorized Transport). Increased road width, and vehicle traffic volumes and speeds, tends to degrade nonmotorized travel. Nonmotorized modes are important travel modes in their own right, and they support other alternative modes, particularly public transit. As a result, degradation to pedestrian and cycling conditions can impose significant costs on society.

 

Current Practices

Transportation planners and economists have many techniques for Measuring vehicle travel conditions, such as roadway Level of Service ratings and traffic speeds. Travel time savings to motorists are usually the main benefit of roadway projects. Few models incorporate Multi-Modal Level of Service ratings, so delays and discomfort to cyclists and pedestrians are not usually measured in the same way, and so impacts on nonmotorized travel tends to be given less weight in transport Models and economic evaluation. Failing to consider these impacts tends to understate the full costs of roadway projects and understate the full benefits of alternative modes and TDM projects that reduce the size of roads, and vehicle traffic volumes and speeds.

 

Recommended Practices

Multi-Modal Level of Service can evaluate traffic impacts on nonmotorized travel (Evaluating Nonmotorized Transport). These costs increase with road width, vehicle traffic volumes and speeds, and reduced space for sidewalks and bike lanes.

 

 

Impacts on Transportation Diversity

The Issue

The quality of Transportation Diversity (Transportation Options or Transportation Choice) is an important factor in the overall benefits provided by the transportation system. Even people who do not currently use a particular mode may benefit from its existence if it reduces traffic congestion, parking problems or crash risk, or for possible use in the future. Transportation planning decisions that increase Automobile Dependency tend to reduce transportation diversity.

 

Current Practices

Many communities have goals and objectives related to developing more balanced transportation systems and improving transportation options for people who are transportation disadvantaged. Most communities make major investments in special programs and services to provide mobility for non-drivers, and many have explicit transportation planning objectives to improve transportation options.

 

However, transportation modeling generally does not include factors that reflect whether an option improves or reduces travel choice. Ignoring transportation diversity in modeling tends to understate the costs of projects that increase automobile dependency, and understate the full benefits of alternative modes and TDM projects that improve transportation options.

 

Recommended Practices

If a community has established objectives to improve transportation diversity and mobility options for transportation disadvantaged people, transportation project evaluation should assign a “transportation diversity” weight factor to each option which indicates whether it supports or contradicts these objectives. The magnitude of this weight factor can be developed by a technical advisory committee, or based on analysis of compensation required to off-set negative impacts, such as the cost of providing transit or taxi service that would guarantee a certain level of mobility and access for non-drivers.

 

 

Environmental and Livability Impacts

The Issue

Motor vehicle transportation tends to impose a variety of environmental impacts, including air, noise and water pollution, consumption of non-renewable resources, waste disposal, hydrologic impacts (i.e., increased impervious surfaces), habitat loss, road kills, and aesthetic degradation (Delucchi, 2000). These impacts can reduce community Livability.

 

These impacts are cumulative (MacDonald and Lidov, 2005). Individual transportation decisions often appear to cause minimal problems, but each contributes to overall trends that are significant overall. Some of these impacts are indirect. For example, a highway project that generates vehicle traffic or encourages lower-density development may “leverage” an increase in parking facilities and automobile use that occurs far beyond the physical boundaries of the project.

 

Failing to consider environmental impacts tends to understate the full costs of roadway projects, particularly if they generate increased vehicle traffic, and understate the full benefits of alternative modes and TDM projects that reduce motor vehicle use (Emission Reduction Strategies).

 

Current Practices

Some transportation evaluation models incorporate vehicle tailpipe emission factors, but other types of pollution (non-criteria pollutants, noise and water pollution) and other types of environmental and community livability impacts (e.g., wildlife habitat loss) are generally ignored. Models that cannot predict induced travel cannot predict the full incremental pollution impacts of roadway projects

 

Recommended Practices

Transportation project evaluation should consider environmental impacts, including cumulative and indirect impacts. If detailed modeling of environmental impacts is not feasible, an “environmental impact” cost value can be assigned to vehicle traffic that is generated by a transportation project. Cost values of 2-5¢ per rural vehicle-mile, and 5-10¢ per urban vehicle-mile can be applied to all induced travel (Transportation Costs).

 

 

Strategic Land Use Objectives

The Issue

Many communities have specific Land Use development objectives. For example, many communities want to encourage more Clustered, infill development, preserve greenspace and cultural resources, create more walkable communities, and implementation of other Smart Growth policies. Roadway capacity expansion tends to contradict these objectives by increasing the portion of land required for roads and parking facilities, and encouraging more dispersed, sprawl development. On the other hand, transit and nonmotorized transportation improvements, and other TDM strategies, tend to encourage more efficient development patterns.

 

Current Practices

Most conventional transportation evaluation models recognize Land Use Impacts on Travel, but most do not recognize the impacts that transportation decisions have on Land Use patterns. Conventional transport planning seldom recognizes the benefits of inaccessibility and the costs that increased accessibility may impose on residents or visitors who desire those attributes. Failing to consider strategic land use impacts tends to understate the full costs of roadway projects and understate the full benefits of alternative modes and TDM projects that result in more efficient development patterns.

 

Recommended Practices

If a community has established land use objectives, such as more clustered and infill development, transportation evaluation models should indicate whether an option supports or contradicts these objectives. Smart Growth Market Reforms may be used to help integrate transportation and land use objectives.

 

 

Economic Development Impacts

The Issue

Roadway projects are often justified on the grounds that they will stimulate economic development. But once a region has a basic paved road system, marginal increases in roadway capacity generally do little to increase regional economic development (Boarnet, 1997). New approaches are needed to better evaluate the economic development impacts of transportation planning decisions (Sussman and Conklin, 2001). TDM strategies that encourage more efficient use of existing transportation resources tend to provide greater economic development benefits than expenditures on additional highway capacity (TDM and Economic Development).

 

Current Practices

Highway project evaluation often exaggerates economic benefits by treating economic transfers as economic growth, treating project employment as new jobs, and ignoring the additional costs to consumers, businesses and governments of increased automobile dependency and urban sprawl.

 

Recommended Practices

Avoid exaggerating the benefits of highway projects. Do not count economic transfers (such as shifting business activity or employment from one location to another) or jobs created by tax expenditures as net economic gains (Weisbrod and Treyz, 1998). Consider the economic costs to consumers and businesses of increased automobile dependency, and the economic development benefits of a more balanced transportation system.

 

 

Equity Analysis

The Issue

Transportation decisions can have significant equity impacts, including issues of basic fairness (e.g., whether users bear the costs they impose, unless a subsidy is specifically justified), and benefits and opportunities to people who are economically, physically and socially disadvantaged.

 

Current Practices

Transportation planning often incorporates some equity analysis, but this is often limited to one or two indicators of impacts on lower income or physically-disabled groups.

 

Recommended Practices

A number of specific techniques can be used to evaluate the equity impacts of a transportation project or program (FHWA, 2000; Forkenbrock and Weisbrod, 2001). Comprehensive transportation planning can incorporate several equity indicators, such as the following:

 

·         Impacts on automobile underpricing and subsidies (including roadway costs, parking costs and non-market externalities).

·         Distribution of benefits and costs between different geographic area.

·         Impacts on mobility for non-drivers.

·         Impacts on mobility for people with disabilities.

·         Impacts on low-income households and communities.

 

 

Safety and Health Impacts

The Issue

Transportation projects can have a variety of impacts on public Safety and Health. Many roadway widening projects are justified on the grounds that they reduce crash risk per vehicle-mile, but such safety benefits may be offset if they increase total vehicle traffic volumes and speeds. Transport planning decisions can affect the amount of nonmotorized travel occurring in an area, affecting physical fitness and health. Some TDM strategies provide safety and health benefits.

 

Current Practices

Most transportation evaluation models only consider direct safety benefits from roadway and vehicle improvements (e.g., wider roads, higher design speeds, airbags), measured in terms of crash rates per vehicle-mile, assuming that traffic speeds, volumes and per capita annual vehicle mileage are held constant. They do not usually recognize additional crashes associated with induced travel, or the increased fatality risks associated with higher traffic speeds (Rebound Effects). Health impacts from changes in physically active travel are not usually considered explicitly in transportation planning.

 

Many TDM strategies tend to improve safety and health by reducing traffic speeds, reducing per capita annual vehicle mileage, improving safety for nonmotorized modes, addressing specific risks (e.g., Address Security Concerns), and encouraging physical activity. Yet, safety and health benefits tend to be ignored in conventional TDM evaluation, although they may be greater in value than the congestion and emission reduction benefits that are considered.

 

Failing to recognize the additional fatality risk that result from increased traffic speeds, he additional crashes that result from induced vehicle travel, and health impacts of sedentary travel habits tends to overstate the benefits of highway projects and vehicle improvements, and understates the benefits of alternative modes and TDM strategies.

 

Recommended Practices

Transportation evaluation models should recognize both the safety benefits and the increased crash costs that can result from roadway improvements, including increased fatalities associated with increased traffic speeds, and increased crashes resulting from induced vehicle travel. External crash costs average 8-12¢ per vehicle mile (Transportation Costs). Models should also reflect the additional public safety, security and health benefits that can result from TDM strategies.

 

 

Resilience Evaluation

The Issue

Resilience refers to a system’s ability to function under variable and unpredictable conditions, or simply “the ability to accommodate change gracefully.” This can be important for dealing with extreme and unexpected events (such as disasters), and to prepare a system for long term changes in demographics, travel demand, resource markets, etc.

 

Resilience tends to increase with diversity, redundancy, efficiency, autonomy and strength in a system’s critical components. This allows the system to continue functioning if a link is broken, if a particular resource becomes scarce, if a particular person or organization is unavailable, etc. Resilience is affected by a system’s ability to identify and correct problems, and to perform repairs.

 

Responsive Planning

Responsive planning refers to the idea that the planning process must be able to change over time in response to future needs. This involves the following steps:

  1. Identify objectives (general things that you want to achieve) and targets (specific things that you want to achieve).
  2. Identify various strategies that can help achieve the objectives and targets. These can include both projects that increase capacity and demand management strategies.
  3. Evaluate the costs and benefits of each strategy (including indirect impacts, if any), and rank them according to cost-effectiveness or benefit/cost ratios.
  4. Implement the most cost-effective strategies as needed to achieve the stated targets.
  5. After they are implemented, evaluate the programs and strategies with regard to various performance measures, to insure that they are effective.
  6. Evaluate overall results with regard to targets to determine if and when additional strategies should be implemented.

 

This contingency-based planning addresses uncertainty by deploying solutions on an as-needed basis. For example, a transportation plan may identify 5 strategies to implement immediately, another 4 to implement in two years if stated targets are not achieved, and another 3 can be implemented further in the future if needed. This tends to be cost effective and flexible, because strategies are only deployed if they are needed, and additional strategies can be ready for quick implementation if unexpected changes create additional needs. This approach is ideal for medium and long-range transport and land use planning.

 

 

Current Practices

Transportation planning generally maintains high standards for the construction of critical physical components such as bridges and roads, so they can withstand extreme events (earthquakes, floods, storms, etc). Some transportation planning explicitly incorporate contingency and disaster planning. Many public officials and citizens intuitively understand the value of diversity, redundancy, efficiency, autonomy and strength in order to accommodate variability and change. However, most transportation planning does not include explicit consideration of overall system resilience, and decisions often fail to account for uncertainty concerning future conditions and needs.

 

Recommended Practices

Transportation planning can incorporate consideration of system resilience. This involves identifying the critical functions of the system (what types of transportation activities are important to society), vulnerabilities (ways that a system’s critical components could fail or become inefficient), and opportunities to incorporate resilience principles in system planning. It uses contingency-based planning that identifies a wide range of potential solutions and implements the most cost-effective strategies justified at each point in time, with additional strategies available for quick deployment if needed in the future.

 

Bias In Transportation Decision-Making

It is simple human nature that people tend to be more concerned with problems they personally face, or that they hear about from family members and friends, than with more distant problems.

 

Most transportation decision-makers (planners, engineers, economists, elected officials, etc.) are physically-able, middle-class professionals with demanding jobs and active lifestyles. They tend to rely heavily on automobile travel, and are seldom forced to depend on other modes due to physical disabilities or financial constraints. Most of their colleagues and friends, and other influential members of a community, have similar travel patterns. As a result, transportation decision-makers tend to be most concerned about the problems facing motorists and are less concerned about problems facing non-drivers, or put differently, they see the automobile transportation system more vividly than the non-automotive transportation system.

 

From this perspective, transportation problems are defined primarily in terms of difficulties facing motorists. Transportation affordability is defined in terms of costs to motorists. Accessibility is defined in terms of the time and money it takes for motorists to reach a destination. Transportation equity is defined in terms of motorists getting their fair share of public resources. Critics call this a “windshield” perspective, referring to people who mostly experience a community from inside a car. Many of the previously described factors that favor automobile travel in transportation planning and funding decisions reflect this perspective.

 

This is not to suggest that transportation professionals are insensitive to the needs of non-drivers. Most have friends or family members who cannot drive, or depended on alternative modes in their younger days. Many transportation professionals demonstrate a sincere commitment to helping transportation disadvantaged people, for example, by supporting special services and programs to improve mobility for people with disabilities. They may even be criticized as being “anti-automobile” for innovations such as Traffic Calming, HOV Priority and Parking Pricing.

 

But these tend to focus on narrowly defined problems and solutions. Few transportation decision-makers perceive anything fundamentally wrong with policies and practices that incrementally increase Automobile Dependency, provided that they implement special programs to mitigate the most obvious problems that result. For example, transportation decision-makers will often support highway “improvements” that increase urban traffic volumes, although this creates barriers to nonmotorized travel. Their response is to include a few pedestrian crossings in the project. Similarly, transportation decision-makers tend to support generous parking requirements, which represent a subsidy to motorists, provided that the community also subsidies public transit services. They are less likely to emphasize mobility management solutions that encourage alternative modes and discourage automobile travel, that is, a fundamental shift to create a more balanced transportation system.

 

Because of their personal experience, transportation decision-makers may be unaware of many factors that can significantly impact non-drivers, such as the ease of carrying packages on public transit, the existence of direct pedestrian connections within a commercial district or neighborhood, the level of security and comfort transit users experience while waiting for a bus or train, or having a safe and dry place to park a bicycle at work. They may be unaware of the effects that a modest price change may have on low-income people. As a result, they tend to overlook and undervalue many effective and low-cost ways of improving the non-automotive transportation system using small enhancements in coordination, information, comfort, security and affordability.

 

It is not easy to overcome this sort of ingrained bias. It is like asking fish to describe water: it is so ubiquitous that we are seldom aware of it. Below are some suggestions to help make transportation decision-making more sensitive to other perspectives and solutions.

 

  • Transportation decision-makers should spend at least two weeks each year without driving a car. This should not be during a vacation: it should consist of typical working weeks that involve normal professional and personal responsibilities, getting work and meetings on schedule, carry shopping and other packages, and participating in professional and social activities. This is an opportunity to experience the practical problems facing non-drivers, and identify opportunities to improve the non-automotive transportation system.

 

  • A transportation planning process should include real opportunities for public participation, including non-drivers and other people with special transportation needs. This should consist of more than simply holding public hearings at the end of a transportation planning process; it should include opportunities for public participation at various stages, what solicits input on the problems and concerns that various types of users encounter, and information on the trade-offs involved in various transportation improvement options.

 

  • Education programs for transportation professionals should include more consideration of the negative impacts that can result from increased automobile dependency, and practical ways to increase transportation system diversity, including planning for alternative modes, and mobility management strategies.

 

 

Summary: Comparing Conventional and Comprehensive Planning

Conventional transportation planning tends to ignore or undervalue many impacts, resulting in inaccurate results. Table 1 compares conventional and comprehensive planning.

 

Table 1            Comparing Conventional and Comprehensive Planning (Litman 2007)

 

Description

Conventional

Comprehensive

Options Considered

Range of solutions considered, including various alternative modes and TDM solutions.

Often ignores TDM options

Includes TDM options

Investment Practices

How funding is allocated, and the flexibility with which it can be used for the best overall option.

Favors roadway investments

Applies least-cost planning

Market Distortions

Degree to which market distortions that increase travel demand are considered in economic evaluation.

Ignored

Considered

Modeling Practices

Whether transport modeling uses current best practices to predict travel and economic impacts.

Generally limited

More comprehensive

Measuring Transportation

Whether transportation is measured based on vehicle traffic, mobility or accessibility.

Vehicle traffic

Accessibility

Planning Coordination

Whether transport and land use decisions are coordinated to support strategic regional objectives.

Not coordinated

Coordinated

Generated Traffic & Induced Travel

Whether planning accounts for generated traffic and induced travel impacts.

Incomplete analysis

Comprehensive analysis

Downstream Congestion

Additional congestion on surface streets that results from increased highway capacity.

Ignores for individual projects

Includes

Consumer Impacts

How the consumer impacts of changes in the transport system are evaluated.

Only considers travel time changes

Uses consumer surplus analysis

 

Vehicle Costs

 

Which vehicle costs are considered.

Operating costs only

Comprehensive analysis

Parking Costs

Which parking costs are considered (to motorists, businesses and governments).

Only motorists’ costs

All parking costs

Construction Impacts

Whether construction period congestion delays are considered.

Ignores

Includes

Nonmotorized Travel Impacts

Whether accessibility, convenience, safety, comfort and cost of walking and cycling are considered.

Very limited analysis

Comprehensive analysis

Transportation Diversity

Whether any value is assigned to transportation diversity impacts (the value of having diverse mobility options).

Limited analysis

Comprehensive analysis

Environmental Impacts

Range and detail of environmental impacts considered in analysis.

Limited analysis

Comprehensive analysis

Community Livability

Impacts on community livability, including neighborhood walkability and affordability.

Limited analysis

Comprehensive analysis

Equity Impacts

The degree to which each option supports or contradicts community equity objectives.

Limited analysis

Comprehensive analysis

Safety and Health Impacts

How safety and health risks are measured.

Per vehicle-mile crash risks

Per-capita health risks

This table summarizes differences between conventional and comprehensive transportation evaluation.

 

 

Reductionist Analysis

Conventional transportation planning tends to use a reductionist evaluation model, that is, the planning process often focuses on just one or two problems and objectives at a time. For example, one government agency may be responsible just for traffic congestion problems and mobility improvement objectives. Another agency may be responsible just for traffic safety. Other agencies are responsible for emission reductions, energy conservation, security, mobility for non-drivers, land use planning, affordable housing, economic development, and the development of public facilities (such as schools).

 

This reductionist approach can result in solutions to one problem that exacerbate other problems, and it undervalues policies that provide multiple but most benefits. For example, a local government may increase minimum parking requirements, to facilitate parking convenience, although this exacerbates traffic congestion, sprawl and housing inaffordability problems. Conversely, a school district may perceive little incentive to locate a new school within residential areas, where land prices are higher but improved accessibility will reduce traffic congestion and improve accessibility for people who are transportation disadvantaged, rather than locating the school at the urban fringe where land prices are lower, but transportation costs will increase.

 

This is not to say that local governments should never increase parking requirements or that new schools should never be located at the urban fringe. In some situations the incremental benefits exceed the incremental costs, even when all impacts are considered. However, there are often other ways to solve transportation problems, such as implementing parking management programs, and building two-story schools that require less land. Although these alternatives may seem more costly when evaluated from a narrow perspective, they may turn out to be the best option when all impacts are considered. A comprehensive planning framework is needed to accurately evaluate such options.

 

Table 2 illustrates this point. It lists various transportation problems and the solutions that are typically considered in transportation planning. It also lists the broader transportation and land use impacts of these solutions. In various ways, conventional solutions increase other problems.

 

Table 2            Travel and Land Use Impacts of Conventional Solutions

Problem

Conventional Solution

Travel and Land Use Impacts

Traffic Congestion

Road capacity expansion.

Increased vehicle travel and sprawl.

Parking Problems

Subsidized parking facility expansion.

Increased vehicle travel and sprawl.

Unaffordable Mobility (to consumers)

Underpricing and subsidies for vehicles, parking, roads, fares, etc.

Increased vehicle travel and sprawl.

Inadequate Mobility for Nondrivers

Increase and subsidize public transit services.

Increased transit vehicle traffic/Reduced automobile traffic if it attracts motorists.

Traffic Crashes

Larger vehicles with increased crash protection (e.g., airbags).

Reduced risk to occupants/Increased risk to other road users.

Energy Consumption

Fuel efficiency standards and incentives.

Increased vehicle travel and sprawl.

It shows how conventional solutions to common transportation problems often increase vehicle traffic and sprawl, creating new problems.

 

 

Table 3 continues this analysis, showing how various solutions affect other transportation problems. For example, road capacity expansion reduces traffic congestion problems, but by increasing total vehicle trips and sprawl it increases parking problems, consumer mobility costs, reduces mobility options for non-drivers, increases crashes and energy consumption. Similarly, subsidized parking facility expansion can reduce parking problems, but by increasing vehicle trips and sprawl it increases traffic congestion, consumer mobility costs, reduces mobility options for non-drivers, increases crashes and energy consumption. In nearly every case, conventional solutions tend to exacerbate other transportation problems.

 

Table 3            Comprehensive Analysis of Impacts

 

Congestion Problems

Parking Problems

Unaffordable Mobility

Non-drivers Mobility

Crash Risk

Energy Use

Road capacity expansion.

+

-

-

-

-

-

Subsidized parking facility expansion.

-

+

-

-

0

-

Driving underpricing and subsidies.

-

-

+

-

-

-

Increase public transit services.

-/+

-/+

+

+

-/+

-/+

Larger vehicles.

-

-

-

0

+/-

-

Fuel efficiency incentives.

-

-

0

0

-

+

A plus sign (+) indicates that a strategy tends to help solve a particular problem, a minus (-) sign indicates that it makes a problem worse, a zero (0) indicates no significant impact. This table illustrates how solutions to one problem often exacerbate other problems.

 

 

But transportation planning is not as hopeless as this implies. Most TDM strategies provide multiple benefits and avoid making other problems worse, because they reduce total vehicle travel and encouraging more efficient land use patterns, as illustrated in Table 4. Of course, the range and magnitude of these benefits depends on the specific circumstances. An ineffective TDM project may provide few benefits and increase total costs. However, TDM strategies usually do provide multiple benefits, and all of these benefits should be considered in transportation planning and policy analysis. Conventional planning, which ignores any of these impacts, tends to overvalue automobile-oriented improvements, and undervalues TDM alternatives. Sustainable planning and economics often refer to the triple bottom line, meaning consideration of economic, social and environmental impacts. A number of analysis tools are now available to help quantify the value people place on non-market goods such as safety, livability and environmental quality (Litman, 2003).

 

Table 4            Comprehensive Analysis of Impacts

 

Congestion Problems

Parking Problems

Unaffordable Mobility

Non-drivers Mobility

Crash Risk

Energy Use

Road Pricing

+

+

+

+

+

+

Parking Management

+

+

+

+

+

+

Commute Trip Reduction Programs

+

+

+

+

+

+

Public Transit Improvements

+

+

+

+

+

+

Walking and Cycling Improvements

+

+

+

+

0

+

Smart Growth

0

-

+

+

+

+

A plus sign (+) indicates that a strategy tends to help solve a particular problem, a minus (-) sign indicates that it makes a problem worse, a zero (0) indicates no significant impact. This table illustrates how solutions to one problem often exacerbate other problems.

 

 

Monetizing Costs

Transportation benefits and costs are sometimes monetized (measured in monetary units) for Economic Evaluation. Such analysis must be comprehensive to be accurate.

 

For example, Table 5 compares the estimated costs of a 20-mile automobile commute based on Conventional and Comprehensive transportation evaluation models. The Conventional model ignores several important costs and so tends to favor highway solutions. A Comprehensive model considers more impacts, and recognizes more benefits from demand management strategies that reduce total vehicle travel.

 

Table 5            Estimated Costs of 20-mile Round-Trip Automobile Commute

 

Conventional

Comprehensive

Vehicle Costs

$3.60

$7.50

Congestion

$4.50

$4.50

Parking Costs

$0

$5.00

Impacts on Nonmotorized Travel

$0

$0.30

Transportation Diversity Impacts

$0

$0.60

Environmental Impacts

$0

$1.50

Land Use Impacts

$0

$1.50

External Crash Costs

$0

$2.40

Total

$8.10

$23.30

A Conventional model incorporates relatively few costs associated with motor vehicle use, and so recognizes relatively few benefits from alternative modes and TDM programs that reduce total vehicle travel. See the Transportation Cost chapter for information on how these impacts are measured.

 

 

Although individually these omissions and errors may appear modest, their effects are cumulative. Most of these problems tend to skew analysis results in the same direction: toward overstating the benefits of roadway capacity expansion and understating the benefits of alternative modes and TDM strategies that encourage more efficient use of existing roadway capacity.

 

Some of these impacts are relatively difficult to measure, either because they are inherently difficult to quantify or because there has been little research on them. Excluding or using low estimates of relatively uncertain costs is often defended as being “conservative,” implying that this approach is cautious. Use of the word conservative in this context is confusing because it actually results in the opposite of what is implied. Low cost estimates undervalue damages and risks, which is less cautious and conservative than would be higher cost estimates. In practice, low estimates of indirect and non-market costs can lead to increased social and environmental damages. For example, low estimates of pollution costs reduce the justification for control measures, resulting in more emissions.

 

Wit and Humor

A farmer sitting on his front porch patiently watches a city slicker driving his sports car down the dirt road, throwing up a tail of dust. A little latter he watches the same car zoom pass the other direction, and later still the car passes by again, then screeches to a stop, engulfing car, yard and porch in a dust cloud. The driver, clearly exasperated at being lost, rolls down his window and yells to the farmer, “How do I get to Midville?”

 

The farmer thinks it over, and after the dust begins to settle finally replies, “Well, I sure wouldn’t start from here!”

 

 

Examples

This section illustrates how more comprehensive analysis affects transport planning decisions.

 

Urban Mobility Plans (SUTP 2014)

Urban mobility plans are comprehensive plans that identify urban transportation problems and support development of integrated solutions. They are increasingly used as a policy instrument and planning tool to guide the efficient development of integrated transport systems . Many countries require urban regions to have such plans in place in order to qualify for national government funds for urban transport projects. The report, Urban Mobility Plans – National Approaches and Local Practice, Sustainable Urban Transportation Project describes specific policies and planning practices that can maximize urban transport system efficiency.

 

 

School Transportation Solutions

Imagine that a typical school faces traffic and parking problems when parents drop off and pick up their children.

 

Conventional Planning Approach

A conventional planning analysis assumes that this problem reflects inadequate road and parking facility capacity, perhaps confirmed by consulting the minimum roadway and parking facility standards established by official organizations such as the Institute of Transportation Engineers Traffic Generation and Parking Generation reports. The planning objective is therefore simply to identify the cheapest approach to increase roadway and parking capacity, perhaps by adding traffic lanes, redesigning intersections and paving more land for parking facilities.

 

More Comprehensive Planning Approach

A more comprehensive planning approach assumes that this problem may reflect a combination of inadequate roadway and parking facility capacity, or from inefficient use of existing capacity. It identifies a wide range of possible solutions, including increased roadway and parking facility capacity, and various School Transport Management strategies, such as:

·         Walking and Cycling Improvements (including “Walking School Buses,” in which a parent walks a group of students to and from school).

·         Promoting Ridesharing by parents and staff.

·         Encouraging use of Public Transit (including discounted transit passes for students and staff).

·         Parking Management.

·         Encouraging parents who drive to park away from the school and walk with their children the last few blocks (this reduces congestion and parking problems at the school, and provides some exercise).

·         Traffic Calming, Speed Reductions and neighborhood traffic management around schools.

·         Organizing field trips, off-campus activities and Special Events in ways that minimize driving (e.g., ridesharing, chartering buses, etc.).

·         Locating schools to maximize Accessibility (for example, preserve older schools and develop new schools within residential neighborhoods, where they can be reached by walking and cycling, rather than at urban fringe locations).

 

It considers the costs and benefits of each option, using Least-Cost Planning principles. Demand management strategies should be implemented whenever they reduce the need for a peak-period automobile trip at a lower total cost than accommodating an additional automobile trip, taking into account the incremental cost of providing roads and parking capacity, and taking into account other impacts. For example, if increasing road and parking facility capacity to accommodate 50 additional vehicles would cost $400,000, representing an annualized value of about $20,000, then a School Transport Management program can be justified if it costs $20,000 annually or less, and reduces an average of 50 automobile trips each day, or about $1 per vehicle trip avoided (assuming two trips a day, 200 days a year).

 

In fact, the TDM solution may be justified even if it costs somewhat more, because of the additional economic, social and environmental benefits it tends to provide. Table 6 compares these two approaches in terms of comprehensive planning objectives. In almost every case, capacity expansion contradicts these objectives while TDM solutions help achieve them. This suggests that the TDM solutions should often be implemented even if they cost more in direct financial costs than the capacity expansion alternative.

 

Table 6            Comparing Capacity Expansion and TDM Solutions

 

Capacity Expansion

TDM Solutions

Downstream Congestion

Increases traffic on other roads.

Reduces traffic on other roads.

Consumer Impacts

May increase consumer costs if parents have little alternative than driving their children to school.

Can reduce consumer costs by giving parents and students better alternatives to driving.

Vehicle Costs

Tends to increase vehicle ownership and operating costs.

Can reduce vehicle ownership and operating costs.

Parking Costs

Increased total parking costs.

Can reduce total parking costs.

Construction Impacts

Tends to cause negative impacts during construction periods.

Usually avoids construction impacts.

Impacts on Nonmotorized Travel

Tends to reduce the convenience and safety of walking and cycling.

Tends to improve the convenience and safety of walking and cycling.

Impacts on Transport Diversity

Does little to improve transportation diversity

Can significantly improve transportation diversity

Environmental Impacts

Tends to increase air, noise and water pollution, and increases pavement area.

Reduces pollution emissions, and avoids the need for additional pavement.

Impacts on Land Use

Tends to contradict strategic land use objectives.

Tends to support strategic land use objectives.

Equity Impacts

Does little to increase equity. May reduce travel options for non-drivers.

Tends to support equity objectives particularly by improving travel options for non-drivers.

Safety and Health Impacts

Tends to increase total crash risk and does nothing to encourage physical fitness.

Tends to reduce total crash risk and increase physical fitness.

This table compares capacity expansion and TDM solutions in terms of various objectives that are included in comprehensive transportation planning, but are often ignored in conventional transportation planning. These additional objectives justify favoring TDM solutions, even if they appear more costly in terms of direct financial costs.

 

 

Unfortunately, current planning and investment practices tend to favor automobile facility capacity expansion over demand management solutions in various ways described in this chapter. Public officials often have funding that can be used on road and parking facility projects that cannot be used for demand management projects, and many of the indirect benefits of the TDM solution are not easily measured, and tend to be ignored by local transportation and school officials.

 

 

Business Parking Problems

A business is construction a new building and needs to determine how much parking to provide.

 

Conventional Planning Approach

The conventional planning approach is to build the amount of parking required in zoning codes, or recommended in ITE’s Parking Generation for that type of land use, with a few extra spaces added to insure adequacy. The assumption made by local planning officials and business managers is that more parking is always better. The only constraints are the amount of land available, and financial costs to the business.

 

More Comprehensive Planning Approach

A more comprehensive planning process will consider the full financial, environmental and land use impacts of abundant parking, and will consider a variety of Parking Management strategies that encourage more efficient use of parking facilities, allowing parking needs to be met with fewer total spaces. These might include:

 

An individual business may find it difficult to implement some of these parking management strategies, because they require special planning and administration. However, such tasks can be handled efficiently by a Transportation Management Association, that provides parking and transportation services to businesses within a commercial district.

 

This approach can provide substantial savings to developers and businesses, while also helping to support community transportation objectives (reduced traffic congestion, more walkable commercial centers, improved mobility for non-drivers) and environmental protection (reduced pavement area, greenspace preservation, more attractive urban landscape). Of course, reducing the parking supply at a single facility will have little overall impact, but if these approaches are applied widely throughout a community, they can provide significant benefits.

 

 

Wit and Humor

“Every entity is only to be understood in terms of the way in which it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.”    -Alfred North Whitehead

 

 

Conclusions

To be useful, transportation planning must be accurate and comprehensive. Conventional transportation planning practices tend to focus on a relatively limited set of impacts and options, as illustrated in Table 7. This may be sufficient for evaluating similar options, such as selecting a highway route, but is inadequate for evaluating alternatives that affect the range of transportation options that are available, total vehicle travel, or land use patterns.

 

Table 7            Scope of Impacts and Modes

 

Physical fitness

Seldom

Seldom

Sometimes

Seldom

Seldom

Increased

Community cohesion

Seldom

Seldom

Seldom

Seldom

Seldom

Scope

Non-drivers Mobility

Seldom

Seldom

Sometimes

Seldom

Seldom

Of

Pollution

Sometimes

Sometimes

Sometimes

Seldom

Seldom

Impacts

Energy conservation

Sometimes

Sometimes

Sometimes

Seldom

Seldom

Considered

Economic development

Usually

Usually

Seldom

Seldom

Seldom

 

Parking problems

Usually

Usually

Seldom

Seldom

Seldom

 

Traffic congestion

Always

Usually

Seldom

Seldom

Seldom

 

 

 

Automobile

Public Transit

Walking & Cycling

Pricing Reforms

TDM Programs

 

Increased scope of

solutions considered

 

 

Conventional transport planning tends to focus on a limited set of impacts and solutions. More comprehensive planning expands both, which leads to better overall solutions.

 

 

In a number of small but important ways, conventional transportation planning practices tend to overstate the benefits of roadway improvements and understate the benefits provided by alternative modes. For example, conventional planning estimates the congestion reduction benefits of highway capacity expansion, but often ignores the tendency of these benefits to decline significantly over a few years due to generated traffic, and ignores additional costs to society that result from increased motor vehicle traffic, such as increased crashes and environmental impacts, and reduced mobility for non-drivers. Conventional transportation planning practices also tend to undercount non-motorized travel, and undervalue many of the benefits of a more diverse transportation system and more accessible land use pattern.

 

Roadway and parking capacity expansion tend to make society better off in the short-run, but worse off over the long-run. Other solutions that result in more efficient use of existing roadway capacity tend to provide greater long-term benefits. Current planning practices seem to reflect wishful thinking by transportation decision-makers who want to believe that their efforts to improve vehicle traffic provide tremendous benefits to society, although net benefits are actually much smaller than projected, and the range of alternative solutions is much broader.

 

If you ask people, “Are transportation improvements important to you personally and for economic development?” most would probably say “yes.” If you ask, “Do you support devoting significant public resources to create a modern, efficient transportation system?” most would probably agree. If you ask them, “Should we invest resources to solving the traffic congestion, parking and crash risk problems you face every day?” a majority is likely to say yes. These are the questions asked by conventional transportation planning.

 

However, if you ask, “Should we devote significant public resources to increasing roadway capacity, although this will only provide a few year’s reduction in traffic congestion and parking problems, and over the long run will create more automobile-dependent transportation and land use patterns that reduce transport options and increases total tax and consumer costs, crashes and environmental impacts, and contradicts economic development and equity objectives, or would you favor implementing a set of integrated TDM strategies that encourage more efficient use of the existing transportation system, helps achieve a variety of economic, social and environmental objectives, the preference for highway capacity expansion is likely to disappear.

 

Many transportation professionals are skeptical that TDM can be effective because it requires consumers to change their travel behavior. They assume that Americans (or Canadians, British, French, etc.) have a love affair with their cars, and so will not voluntarily reduce their driving. As a result, they favor technological solutions (e.g., wider roads, increased parking capacity, vehicle design improvements) over TDM strategies. However, such assumptions have often been proven wrong. Given suitable options and incentives, people are often willing to change their consumption patterns. Traffic safety programs, smoking reduction and consumer recycling are examples of successful programs that depend on changes in consumer behavior to achieve community objectives. Technical solutions alone (more crashworthy vehicles, less harmful cigarettes, larger garbage pits) are less effective, less cost effective, and tend to create additional problems (Gladwell, 2001).

 

TDM does not require that motorists completely give up their cars; rather, it requires modest changes under certain conditions, often resulting from positive incentives which rewards people who change modes, while those who drive are no worse off. There is plenty of evidence that at the margin, many consumers would prefer to drive somewhat less than they do now. Even people who enjoy driving are sometimes willing to use alternatives, particularly if there is a comfortable, convenient, affordable alternative to driving on congested roadways.

 

Optimization

Optimization refers to solutions that provide the best balance between multiple, conflicting objectives. Transport planning is sometimes reductionist (evaluation that considers just one or two objectives), which can result in non-optimal solutions that may make society worse overall. For example, decision-makers overwhelmed by the perceived complexity of considering multiple planning objectives sometimes ask planners to focus on just one or two problems. This can result in decisions that address certain problems (such as congestion or pollution) which exacerbate other problems (such as accidents and inadequate mobility for non-drivers), and tends to undervalue solutions that provide multiple benefits. More comprehensive optimization tends to be best for society overall.

 

 

Best Practices

Best practices for comprehensive transportation evaluation are listed below.

 

1.       Consider a wide range of possible solutions to transportation problems, including various combinations of transportation demand management programs.

 

2.       Use Performance Indicators that reflect access and personal mobility, rather than measuring transportation system quality only in terms of motor vehicle traffic. Develop indices that reflect access from various perspectives.

 

3.       Correct planning and investment practices that favor large, capital investments over operations, maintenance and management expenditures, or which favor one mode over others. Use Least-Cost Planning principles that allow the most cost-effective solutions to be selected.

 

4.       Use an up-to-date travel model that can forecast the traffic generated by increased roadway capacity and the effects this will have on downstream congestion and roadway costs, parking costs, and pollution and sprawl.

 

5.       Use consumer surplus analysis to evaluate consumer impacts, rather than simply measuring changes in travel time.

 

6.       Consider all costs to consumers of owning and operating motor vehicles, and potential consumer savings that can result from transportation alternatives that reduce vehicle ownership and use.

 

7.       Consider all construction impacts, including traffic congestion delays, crash risks and lost business activity that occur during construction, and uncompensated losses to residents and businesses that are displaced by projects.

 

8.       Consider impacts on nonmotorized travel, including reduced pedestrian access from inadequate walking facilities, wider streets, increased vehicle traffic speeds and volumes, and more dispersed destinations.

 

9.       Consider equity impacts, including cross-subsidies and impacts on people who are economically, socially and physically disadvantaged.

 

10.   Consider environmental and community livability impacts.

 

11.   Consider impacts that transportation planning decisions can have on land-use patterns, including loss of greenspace from increased pavement, and higher public service costs from increased urban sprawl.

 

12.   Avoid exaggerating the economic development benefits of highway capacity expansion. Consider the economic costs to consumers and businesses of increased automobile dependency, and the economic development benefits of a more balanced transportation system.

 

13.   Evaluate the full safety, security and health impacts of transportation options, including additional benefits from some TDM strategies.

 

 

Wit and Humor

A farmer bought a new mule. When he got it home he could not get it in the barn because the mules ears were so long they hit above the door. The farmer got some chalk and a saw, drew the outline of the ears on the lintel above the door, and started to saw them out. At this point the farmer’s neighbor drove into the barnyard and asked the farmer what he was doing.

When the farmer explained about the long ears the neighbor said, “You darn fool, why don't you get a shovel and dig out under the door?”

The farmer replied, “You're the darn fool, not me.”

“Why is that?” inquired the neighbor.

“Because it’s his ears that are too long, not his legs.”

 

 

Related Chapters

For more information on the concepts and techniques discussed in this chapter see TDM Evaluation, TDM Planning, Measuring Transportation, Data Collection, Evaluating Pricing Strategies, Evaluating Transportation Options, and Social Benefits of Public Transit.

 

 

Examples and Case Studies

 

Integrated Transport Assessment Guidelines (www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/research/reports/422)

The Land Transport New Zealand Integrated Transport Assessment Guidelines (Abley, Durdin and Douglass 2010) provide national guidelines for integrated transport assessment (ITA) of traffic and local environmental and social impacts, based on an extensive review of international best practices. The document recommends that local and regional transport authorities adopt an ITA approach when assessing transportation policies and projects. It includes guidelines on how site trip generation analysis, scope of local impact analysis and community consultation, some relevant case law and a discussion of the permitted baseline.

 

 

Collaborative Planning Mandates

Taylor and Schweitzer (2005) evaluate the effectiveness of U.S. federally-mandated metropolitan-scale planning, based on surveys of agency staff. The study concludes that this type of planning has only modest direct impacts, but does help increase interagency cooperation in some situations, particularly for dealing with environmental problems, to implement locally unpopular policies, and to take advantage of institutional economies of scale.

 

 

References And Resources For More Information

 

Steve Abley, Paul Durdin and Malcolm Douglass (2010), Integrated Transport Assessment Guidelines, Report 422, Land Transport New Zealand (www.nzta.govt.nz); at www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/research/reports/422.

 

Austroads (2005) Guide to Project Evaluation Part 5: Impact on National and Regional Economies, Austroads (www.onlinepublications.austroads.com.au/items/AGPE); at www.onlinepublications.austroads.com.au/collections/agpe/guides.

 

Brian Blaser, et al (2004), GIS-Based Cumulative Effects Assessment, Colorado Dept. of Transportation, Report No. CDOT-DTD-R-2004-6 (www.dot.state.co.us/publications/PDFFiles/cumulativeeffects.pdf).

 

Booz Allen (2012), Integrating Australia’s Transport Systems: A Strategy For An Efficient Transport Future, Infrastructure Partnership Australia (www.infrastructure.org.au); at www.infrastructure.org.au/DisplayFile.aspx?FileID=812.

 

CTE (Center for Transportation and the Environment) (2008), Improved Methods For Assessing Social, Cultural, And Economic Effects Of Transportation Projects, NCHRP Project 08-36, Task 66, Transportation Research Board (www.trb.org), American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO); at www.statewideplanning.org/_resources/234_NCHRP-8-36-66.pdf.

 

DFID (2003), Social Benefits in Transport Planning, UK Department for International Development  (www.transport-links.org); available at (www.transport-links.org/transport_links/projects/projects_document_page.asp?projectid=322), describes methodologies for more comprehensive transportation project evaluation.

 

DfT (2006), Transport Analysis Guidance, Integrated Transport Economics and Appraisal, Department for Transport (www.dft.gov.uk/webtag). This website provides comprehensive guidance on how to identify problems, establish objectives, develop potential solutions, create a transport model for the appraisal of the alternative solutions, how to model highway and public transport, and how to conduct economic appraisal studies that meet DoT requirements.

 

Richard Dowling, et al. (2008), Multimodal Level Of Service Analysis For Urban Streets, NCHRP Report 616, Transportation Research Board (www.trb.org); at http://trb.org/news/blurb_detail.asp?id=9470; User Guide at http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_w128.pdf.

 

ECONorthwest and PBQD (2002), Estimating the Benefits and Costs of Public Transit Projects, TCRP Report 78, Transportation Research Board (www.trb.org); available at http://gulliver.trb.org/publications/tcrp/tcrp78/index.htm.

 

FHWA (2000), Highway Economic Requirements System: Technical Report, Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation (www.dot.state.oh.us/gasb34/FHWAAsset_Management+GASB_34/eei%20team/hers_st/documentation/HERS%20Tech%20printready.pdf).

 

FHWA, National Dialogue on Transportation Operations (www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/nat_dialogue.htm), discusses institutional changes needed to implement more efficient transportation.

 

GIZ (2003), Sustainable Transportation: A Sourcebook for Policy-Makers in Developing Countries, (www.sutp.org), by the Sustainable Urban Transport Project – Asia (www.sutp-asia.org) and Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (www.giz.de). Many of these documents are now available in various languages including Spanish, French, Chinese, Indonesian, Romanian, Thai and Vietnamese. The Mobility Management module is at the VTPI website (www.vtpi.org/gtz_module.pdf). Preserving and Expanding the Role of Non-motorized Transport: Sustainable Transportation is at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy website (www.itdp.org/STe/STe4/readSTe4/NMT.PDF).

 

Malcolm Gladwell (2001), “Wrong Turn; How the Fight to make America's Highways Safer Went Off Course,” The New Yorker, June 11, 2001, pp. 50-61.

 

Ian Ker (2001), “Deconstructing the Future: Assessing New Initiatives in Transport, Including Demand Management and Walking,” World Transport Policy and Practice, Vol. 7, No. 4

(www.ecoplan.org/wtpp).

 

Matthew Holian and Ralph McLaughlin (2016), Benefit-Cost Analysis for Transportation Planning and Public Policy: Towards Multimodal Demand Modeling, Mineta Transportation Institute (http://transweb.sjsu.edu) for the California Department of Transportation; at http://bit.ly/2bYJ0Zj.

 

Walter Hook (2003), Appraising The Social Costs And Benefits Of Road Projects, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (www.itdp.org/read/Social%20Benefits.pdf).

 

John LaPlante (2010), “The Challenge of Multimodalism; Theodore M. Matson Memorial Award,” ITE Journal (www.ite.org), Vol. 80, No. 10, October, pp. 20-23; at www.ite.org/membersonly/itejournal/pdf/2010/JB10JA20.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2001), What’s It Worth? Life Cycle and Benefit/Cost Analysis for Evaluating Economic Value, Presented at Internet Symposium on Benefit-Cost Analysis, Transportation Association of Canada (www.tac-atc.ca); available at www.vtpi.org/worth.pdf

 

Todd Litman (2002), Transit Price Elasticities and Cross-Elasticities For Urban Transportation Demand Modeling, Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org/tranelas.pdf).

 

Todd Litman (2005), Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs, VTPI (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/tranben.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2006), Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis Guidebook, Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/tca.

 

Todd Litman (2006), Planning Principles and Practices, Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/planning.pdf. This paper summarizes key principles and practices for effective land use and transportation planning.

 

Todd Litman (2006), “Transportation Market Distortions,” Berkeley Planning Journal: Sustainable Transport in the United States: From Rhetoric to Reality?) Volume 19, 2006, pp. 19-36; at www-dcrp.ced.berkeley.edu/bpj.

 

Todd Litman (2007), Comprehensive Transport Planning Framework: Best Practices For Evaluating All Options And Impacts, Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/comprehensive.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2008), Multi-Modal Transport Planning, Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/multimodal_planning.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2009), Rethinking Malahat Solutions: Or, Why Spend A Billion Dollars If A Five-Million Dollar Solution Is Better Overall?, VTPI (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/malahat.pdf

 

Todd Litman (2009), Are Vehicle Travel Reduction Targets Justified? Evaluating Mobility Management Policy Objectives Such As Targets To Reduce VMT And Increase Use Of Alternative Modes, Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/vmt_red.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2012), Toward More Comprehensive and Multi-modal Transport Evaluation, VTPI (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/comp_evaluation.pdf; summarized in JOURNEYS, September 2013, pp. 50-58; at www.lta.gov.sg/ltaacademy/doc/13Sep050-Litman_ComprehensiveAndMultimodal.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2013), “The New Transportation Planning Paradigm,” ITE Journal (www.ite.org), Vo. 83, No. 6, pp. 20-28; at http://digitaleditions.sheridan.com/publication/?i=161624.

 

Todd Litman (2014), The Mobility-Productivity Paradox: Exploring the Negative Relationships Between Mobility and Economic Productivity, presented at the International Transportation Economic Development Conference, 9-11 April 2014, Dallas, Texas (https://tti.tamu.edu/conferences/ited2014); at www.vtpi.org/ITED_paradox.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2014), Congestion Evaluation Best Practices, Paper 12, International Transportation Economic Development Conference, 9-11 April 2014, Dallas, Texas (https://tti.tamu.edu/conferences/ited2014); at www.vtpi.org/ITED_congestion.pdf.

 

Todd Litman (2014), Economically Optimal Transport Prices and Markets: What Would Happen If Rational Policies Prevailed?, presented at the International Transportation Economic Development Conference, 9-11 April 2014, Dallas, Texas (https://tti.tamu.edu/conferences/ited2014); at www.vtpi.org/ITED_optimal.pdf.

 

Ian M. Lockwood (2004), Transportation Prescription For Healthy Cities, Glatting Jackson Transportation Urban Design Studio, for presentation and Common Ground www.glatting.com/PDF/IML_RWJF_Paper2004.pdf.

 

David Luskin (1999), Facts and Furphies in Benefit-Cost Analysis: Transport, Bureau of Transport Economics (www.bitre.gov.au); at www.bitre.gov.au/publications/24/Files/r100.pdf.

 

Tracey MacDonald and Phil Lidov (2005), Strategic Transportation, Environmental and Planning Process for Urbanizing Places (STEP UP); Phase I Report, Colorado Dept. of Transportation, Report, CDOT-DTD-2005-03, (www.dot.state.co.us/publications/PDFFiles/stepup.pdf).

 

Michael Meyer (2001), Measuring System Performance: The Key to Establishing Operations as a Core Agency Mission, National Dialogue on Transportation Operations

(www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/Speech%20Files/FHWAPerformancemeasures.doc).

 

NZTA (2010), Economic Evaluation Manual, Volumes 1 and 2, New Zealand Transport Agency (www.nzta.govt.nz); at www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/economic-evaluation-manual/volume-1/index.html and www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/economic-evaluation-manual/volume-2/docs/eem2-july-2010.pdf.

 

John Poorman (2005), “A Holistic Transportation Planning Framework For Management And Operations,” ITE Journal, Vol. 75, No. 5 (www.ite.org), May 2005, pp. 28-32; at www.ite.org/membersonly/itejournal/pdf/2005/JB05EA28.pdf.

 

Prospects (2003), Decision-Makers Guidebook; Developing Sustainable Urban Land Use and Transport Strategies, European Commission (http://www.ivv.tuwien.ac.at/projects/prospects.html).

 

Inger-Anne Ravlum and Morten Stenstadvold (2001), Strategic and Comprehensive Decision-making, Norwegian Center for Transport Research (www.toi.no), Report 543/2001

(www.toi.no/toi_Data/Attachments/824/Summary.pdf).

 

Joseph M. Sussman (2001), Transportation Operations: An Organizational And Institutional Perspective, National Dialogue on Transportation Operations (www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/Speech%20Files/Sussman1.doc).

 

SUTP (2014), Urban Mobility Plans – National Approaches and Local Practice, Sustainable Urban Transportation (www.sutp.org); at www.sutp.org/files/TD13_UMP_final.pdf.

 

TAC (1994), A Primer on Investment and Economic Development, Transportation Association of Canada (www.tac-atc.ca/resource/briefs.htm).

 

Brian D. Taylor and Lisa Schweitzer (2005), “Assessing the Experience of Mandated Collaborative Inter-Jurisdictional Transport Planning in the United States,” Transport Policy, Vol. 12, No. 6 (www.elsevier.com/locate/transpol), Nov. 2005, pp. 500-511.

 

TRB (2010), Highway Capacity Manual, Transportation Research Board (www.trb.org); at http://sjnavarro.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/highway_capacital_manual.pdf.

 

TRL, Strategic Environmental Assessment Newsletter, Transportation Research Laboratory (www.trl.co.uk/env_sea_newsletter.htm) provides information on international efforts to develop more integrated transportation planning.

 

UITP (2012), Better Urban Mobility in Developing Countries: Problems, Solutions and Good Practices, International Association of Public Transport (www.uitp.org); at www.uitp.org/publications/brochures/Dev-Countries-uk.pdf.


This Encyclopedia is produced by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute to help improve understanding of Transportation Demand Management. It is an ongoing project. Please send us your comments and suggestions for improvement.

 

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