Transportation engineers, planners, and policy makers are currently faced with the need to incorporate sustainability issues such as energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and overall health impacts into the decision-making process. Life-cycle environmental analysis (LCEA) is one of the evolving tools available to assist in this effort. LCEA differs from traditional environmental analysis in that LCEA takes a more comprehensive look, or global perspective, at the environmental and resource burden of specific management decisions as opposed to traditional environmental analysis, which tends to focus almost exclusively on specific impacts at the activity or in the immediate geographic vicinity of the activity. The results of a study are presented: the computer program Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment Tool for Environmental and Economic Effects (PaLATE) was used to compare the environmental burden of employing cold in-place recycling with the environmental burden of the conventional maintenance options of a 3-in. mill and fill and a 3-in. hot-mix asphalt overlay. The results illustrate the potential of life-cycle environmental models to assist transportation officials in developing 21st century transportation policy as well as the current limitations associated with their use.
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