01026096

Component

As world tourism expands and global commerce builds, they are accompanied by increases in the number of passengers traveling as well as in the volume of raw materials and manufactured goods moving from place to place. The increase in the movement of people and goods as well as the building of the infrastructure to support it contributes to increases in energy consumption and transportation-related pollution as well as shifts in land use patterns. More than a decade ago, delegates to the United Nations Global Environmental Summit in Rio de Janeiro recognized the challenge of realizing the apparently conflicting goals of maintaining economic development for the world’s current 6 billion inhabitants while protecting the environment for the 10 billion people expected by the middle the century. Tradeoffs are occurring without a comprehensive consideration of consequences. It is time for a fundamental change in the incremental approach to transportation policy. The old stepwise, single-issue planning approach is too narrow to be effective in meeting today’s rising transportation demands. Instead, an integrated systems-based framework is needed, one which allows integration of multiple considerations and concerns while optimizing transportation reliability and system performance. Quantifying the potential economic, environmental and societal consequences of transport mode and route selection is critical, but current approaches to planning do not provide the tools to do this across the national transportation system. Nevertheless, tools and concepts do exist that could allow not only for a better understanding of the key interrelationships but could also provide the template for achieving development in a way that is sustainable overtime. Eco-restructuring and industrial ecology are two potential approaches to address these issues more coherently and comprehensively.

01020180

06-0538

English

13p

2006

Transportation Research Board 85th Annual Meeting

CD-ROM

Figures (1) ; References

Air quality management; City planning; Ecology; Ecosystems; Ecotourism; Globalization; Infrastructure; Raw materials; Restoration ecology; Tourism; Transportation planning

Energy; Environment; Highways; I15: Environment

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2006 Paper #06-0538

TRIS, TRB

Mar 3 2006 10:23AM