TRB Pubsindex
Text Size:
x

« Prev Next »

Return to Results | New Search

Bookmark and Share

Title:

Assessing Sustainability for Urban Transportation Modes: Conceptual Framework

Accession Number:

01155155

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

There are multiple view points for assessing modes of transportation due to their important and pervasive impacts to society and economy, both positive and negative. However, a long-term sustainability-based comprehensive framework for the assessment of the impacts of any urban transportation mode does not exist. Our research efforts attempt to close this void in the state of the art starting with a framework that has its foundations in the over-arching principle of sustainability. The proposed sustainability framework acts as a filter that decomposes the elements of a transportation mode to reveal its sustainability dimensions. The sustainability filter is composed of four layers (environment, technology, energy, and economy), and three controllers (users, legal framework, and local restrictions). These sustainability dimensions form a Sustainability Decomposition Prism through which the fundamental components of vehicle and infrastructure are decomposed: manufacture of vehicles, construction of infrastructure, and energy (fuels and power), operation and maintenance for both vehicles and infrastructure. Sustainability analysis presents a number of advantages that include the comprehensive understanding of a system, the assessment of areas where changes can provide improvements, the identifications of weak areas that hamper sustainability and may necessitate technological research or policy intervention, and comparisons along standardized indicators of performance and impacts across competing modes, some of them available in a virtual stage of development.

Monograph Accession #:

01147878

Report/Paper Numbers:

10-2832

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Mitropoulos, Lambros
Prevedouros, Panos D
Nathanail, Eftihia G

Pagination:

21p

Publication Date:

2010

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2010-1-10 to 2010-1-14
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

DVD

Features:

Figures (3) ; References (21) ; Tables (3)

Uncontrolled Terms:

Transportation infrastructure

Subject Areas:

Economics; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-2832

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Jan 25 2010 11:23AM