Multidimensional Data and Model Uncertainties in Comparing Heterogeneous Benefits of Distributed Transportation Projects
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 22, Issue 2
Abstract
Investments in transportation projects are typically justified by diverse potential benefits, including safety, environmental, energy savings, congestion mitigation, and others. There is a need for such benefits to be comparable early in transportation programming, to allocate scarce resources to preliminary engineering. This paper discusses quantitative methods to aid in prioritizing locations of future highway projects. The paper adopts 15 quantitative metrics including crash rate, emergency route access, environmental issues, level of service (LOS), volume-to-capacity ratio, traffic flow, intermodal access, heavy truck usage, unemployment rate, right-of-way use, use of alternative transportation modes, bridge sufficiency rating, and cost effectiveness. This effort contributes to real-world transportation programming and priority setting via analysis of the crash avoidance and other benefits and costs that are expected before project designs are available. The innovation of this paper is in two areas: (1) estimation of broad-spectrum benefits across several categories including crashes avoided, travel time saved, fuel uses avoided, and emissions avoided; and (2) development of a software tool that compares project benefits to prefeasibility estimates of project costs. The developed software represents the uncertainty of the results using numerical intervals. The paper illustrates how project selection is informed with sparse and/or early information on a large number of potential locations and needs. With interval analysis of uncertainty, decision makers might conclude that existing evidence is sufficient to distinguish among competing needs. The methods are demonstrated for 53 project locations ranging in their prefeasibility cost estimates from $2 million to $130 million.
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Acknowledgments
The research described in this paper was supported in part by the Federal Highway Administration, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research. We appreciate the contributions of the steering committee: Kenneth Myers, FHWA; Travis Bridewell, formerly of the VDOT Richmond District; Michael Gray, VDOT, Salem District Planner; Tom Christoffel, Northern Shenandoah Valley Regional Commission; Rob Case, Hampton Roads Planning District Commission (HRPDC); Wayne Ferguson, Virginia Transportation Research Council (VTRC); Matt Grimes, formerly Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research (VCTIR); Chris Detmer, VDOT; Robin Grier, VDOT; Chad Tucker, VDOT; Cheryl Lynn, VCTIR; Young-Jun Kweon, VCTIR; Jami Kennedy, formerly VCTIR; Kim Spence, formerly VDOT; and Kathy Graham, VDOT. We appreciate the effort of Samuel Curling, VDOT, to identify key points of the Virginia 2006 Appropriations Act. This effort was supported in part by the National Science Foundation grant 1541165 ‘Resilience Analytics: A Data-Driven Approach for Enhanced Interdependent Network Resilience.’
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 22 • Issue 2 • June 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 12, 2013
Accepted: Aug 13, 2015
Published online: Oct 19, 2015
Discussion open until: Mar 19, 2016
Published in print: Jun 1, 2016
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