SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION: CONCEPTUALIZATION AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES

Sustainable transportation (ST) is aimed at addressing economic development, environmental stewardship, and social equity for current and future generations. While many qualitative studies have been conducted on this topic, little quantitative research and/or implementation of ST concepts have been undertaken. The main reasons for this are related to a lack of understanding of ST and of quantified performance measures. To address this problem, a comprehensive definition for ST was developed, as well as a framework on how to identify, quantify, and use performance measures for ST in the transport planning process. The proposed framework was applied to a test bed, comprising 2 freeway corridors in Houston, Texas. Automatic Vehicle Identification and the Transportation Analysis and Simulation System model, as well as other transport environmental impact models, were used to quantify performance measures at various levels of aggregation. The performance measures that were quantified on disaggregate levels were compared to measures that were quantified with traditional aggregate data sets. It was found that traditional approaches are much less accurate due to a loss of detail and the effect of aggregation bias. It was illustrated that performance measures based on disaggregate data can potentially provide different results as compared to aggregate approaches, when used with multi-objective decisionmaking techniques in transportation planning. Lastly, it was shown that the disaggregate approach can be used to allocate responsibility for negative externalities, and assess sustainability as experienced by various user groups.

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