Transportation Planning Term Papers

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The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) 1969 behooves Federal agencies to compose an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for any major activity they endeavor that may have substantial impacts on human health and the natural environment.

The transportation system of any area may or may not consist of roadways, freeways, freight railroads, and bus transit. However, the primary means of travel to work in the region is by single occupant vehicles. The number of people using public transportation is comparatively high. In the California region, the transportation system consists of major conduits and local streets supported by the freeway system. Some conduits carry high volumes of traffic and experience frequent congestion.

Residential growth has effected in increasing travel demand along major roadways, and major conduits. Present roadway improvements have not kept gait with traffic magnitude increases on the major radial roadways, resulting in invariably increasing congestion. Traffic congestion affect schedule adherence for bus routes, resulting in discrepant or unsure transit service. Facilities for non-motorized travel, in addition to pedestrian and bicycle, are inadequate. Some major roadways in area are identified by operational and safety problems due to inferior design for merging and weaving operations.

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There is a need for improved transportation system. Denizen areas need to have quicker, more prompt access and extra travel options to major public residential areas. Supplementary transportation capacity is required for travel in addition to the improved internal circulation. Increased and extended service hours for transport service, especially on cross-town routes is required to improve motility for the transit contingent population and attract new riders. There is also a need for major radial roadways operational and safety improvements. Transportation alternatives are required that bypass congestion and augment access to transit service, that is provided by all potential access modes, including pedestrian, bicycle, and automobile. The strongest rider ship is on local routes.

Impacts of rail transit system
In fact the rail transit system increases the reliability of transit service by providing a fastidious guide way that would connect to the existing light rail transit system (LRT) resulting in increased mobility to origins and destinations throughout the service area. An effective transit system would increase rider ship, passenger miles, and passenger hours.

In the absence of the LRT the bus network to transfer riders to and from the LRT system would be used. The bus transit system on the existing roadways under mixed-traffic travel conditions would be in use. Hence, the bus system would be contingent to like travel speeds and delays resulting from peak hour congestion on the roadways. The effective LRT would not be subjected to traffic and signal delays.

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The LRT have beneficial impacts as its helps to reduce vehicle miles of travel (VMT) as compared to the bus transport system, reducing energy consumption. But the congestion would, in some places increase due to LRT gates increasing emissions. The LRT, park-and-ride lots, and feeder bus network provides for commuters to use transit and, decrease auto travel.
The LRT would improve safety primarily by improving pedestrian access to transit. The high transit rider ship remains under served by pedestrian infrastructure. Pedestrian enhancements at LRT stations includes signalized crosswalks, signage, lighting, and sidewalks

The overall requirement of the public transport in relation to performance measures Secure, effective and affordable transportation is essential to economic prosperity and quality of life, but the benefits of transportation systems is attained at a cost measured in terms of principles for human health and environmental protection. Transportation systems must become more endurable. Air, water and soil pollution and the transport sector's consumption of resources, together with land challenge economic and social as well as environmental sustainability.

Though, there have been improvements to the environmental sustainability of transportation systems, there is a requirement for equally a safer, more efficient and affordable transportation system that will reduce the transportation sector's consumption of human, renewable and non-renewable and capital resources. Reduced allowances to inter-city transportation, infrastructure rationalization and moves toward fuller cost pricing contribute to sustainable development and reflect a trend towards a balance in the satisfaction of economic, environmental and social goals. Meeting the current legislative standards is important, but there are other questions to answer, like the adequacy of these standards and measures to ensure sustainable transportation operations for the long term. The effectiveness of the transport system to contribute towards a sustainable energy economy and the life cycle of transportation equipment from vehicle manufacture to disposal impairment sustainability must be considered for performance measurement of a transport system. Also, the impediments to developing or re-developing cities to enable service by more efficient and less polluting transportation and the preparation of public and freight shippers to changing demands for transportation services.

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Maintaining standards and measuring the effects requires an approach to public policy that is comprehensive, integrated, open and accountable, and embodies a commitment to uninterrupted improvements. The adherence of environmental considerations into decision making from the beginning is a starting point for structuring a sustainable transport development program.
The performance measurers takes into account the effective utilization of natural, manufactured and social capital, respect for ecological integrity and environmental management by all decision makers. A good system shall have an optimized infrastructure, labor, and capital, operating costs, for example for fuel, and logistics costs and benefits, in economic terms. In terms of social safety it will have decreased noise, reduced accidents, including the environmental impacts of transportation accidents, decreased time and the equivalent stress and frustration arising from congestion. It will be available and will be developed in a sound manner.

In environmental terms, reduced and or expunged air, land, and water pollution, reduce, reuse and recycle strategies to decrease waste, and mixed use of high density urban land-use. The region policies should implement the development of transportation systems, which give an optimal symmetry between peoples' and freight shippers' needs for mobility, healthy communities, and more sustainable transportation services. Defining the sustainable transportation system, it is one, which provides affordable access to freight and passenger services and does so in an environmentally sound and equitable manner.

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A safe system attempts not only at impeding spills and assuring that all results, including environmental are addressed through the condition of emergency responses in the event of spills. Where as an efficient transportation system strives to decrease operational costs and consequently conserve human and all-renewable and non-renewable resources. The state performance measures must be compatible with national measures. One of the performance measures is the reduction to the economic, environmental and social costs of transportation accidents. This includes numbers of fatalities and injuries per million passengers and/or ton kilometers by mode and root cause e. g. personal injury, highway and other spills.

Other environmental impact is the sustainable use of fossil (carbon based) fuels. These includes fuel consumption by mode and by type of fuel; standard fuel efficiency by mode for new vehicles and all vehicles; amount of energy consumption, and the incorporation of measures of energy sector measures for sustainable energy use. Reducing consumption, along with the improved waste management of other mineral and capital resources in transportation equipment and infrastructure. This include amount of specified minerals used in equipment and infrastructure development and average cost of capital mode, that is vehicles and infrastructure.

The indicators for harmful air emissions include "greenhouse gas", principally carbon dioxide emissions; ozone depleting substances; nitrogen oxides (NOx) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs); Sulphur Dioxide; Carbon Monoxide and particulate. Small and Kazimi calculates Southern California motor vehicle air pollution costs of human abnormality and mortality from tailpipe particulate and ozone emissions. Their average estimate for gasoline cars was 3.3¢ per VMT (vehicle mile travel). Heavy diesel trucks costs were estimated to averaging 53¢ per VMT. Emissions costs in other urban regions were calculated to average about 1/3 of these values. The study omitted CO and non-tailpipe particulate emissions that cause significant medical problems. Also, it omitted effects on people without acute medical symptoms and ecological and aesthetic impacts, including global warming, ozone depletion, crops and wildlife damages, and reduced visibility. They further emphasize that road dust may add 4.3¢ per VMT, and global warming costs may be substantial.

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Indicators for decreasing land and water pollution includes the number of transportation related government agencies and industries registering a toxic substances management plan and the ratio of the like analyzed in the National Pollution Release Inventory (NPRI). An important element is the survival and safety of wild life habitat and bio-diversity.
environment.

Works Cited

Erik Verhoef, “External Effects and Social Costs of Road Transport,” Transportation Research, 1994

Barnet Hastings Benefit Cost Analysis, BC Ministry of Transportation and Highways (Victoria), 1994.

From Pearce and Markandya, Environmental Policy Benefits: Monetary Valuation, OECD (Paris), 1989.

Based on Weatherall 1988; Quinet 1990; and Steeting 1990 as cited in BTCE & EPA, “The Costing and Costs of Transport Externalities: A Review,” Victorian Transport Externalities Study, Vol. 1, Environment Protection Authority (Melbourne), 1994.
 

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M. Modra, Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Application of Traffic Noise Insulation Measures to Existing Houses, EPA (Melbourne), 1984, cited in Poldy, 1993.

Gordon Bagby, “Effects of Traffic Flow on Residential Property Values,” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 46, No. 1, January 1980, pp. 88-94. Also see William

Hughes and C.F. Sirmans, “Traffic Externalities and Single-Family House Prices,” Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 32, No. 4, 1992, pp. 487-500.

Indicators of the Environmental Impacts of Transportation, Office of Policy and Planning, USEPA (Washington DC; www.itre.ncsu.edu/cte), 1999.

BTCE & EPA, “The Costing and Costs of Transport Externalities: A Review,” Victorian Transport Externalities Study, Vol. 1, Environment Protection Authority (Melbourne, Australia), 1994.
 

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Environmental Policies for Cities in the 1990s, OECD (Paris), 1990, cited in Poldy, p.29.

MacKenzie, Dower & Chen, The Going Rate, World Resources Institute (www.wri.org), 1992, p. 21.

Homberger, Kell and Perkins, Fundamentals of Traffic Engineering, 13th Edition, Institute of Transportation Studies, UCB (Berkeley), 1992, p.31-3.

The Greening of Planet Earth and other publications by the Western Fuels Association (www.westernfuels.org),

Green Earth Society
(www.greeningearthsociety.org).

Climate Change and Greenhouse Gases, American Geophysical Union (www.agu.org), 1998.

Global Environmental Outlook, UNEP (www.unep.org/geo2000/ov-e/0012.htm), 1999.
 

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USEPA, Indicators of the Environmental Impacts of Transportation, USEPA (www.itre.ncsu.edu/cte), 1999; ORNL, Transportation Energy Data Book ORNL, (www.ott.doe.gov), 2000.

Mobility and Access, Transportation Statistics Annual Report 1997, BTS (www.bts.gov), p. 109-110.

Seaton, et al., “Particulate Air Pollution and Acute Health Effects,” The Lancet, Vol. 345, Jan. 21, 1995, pp. 176-178.

Ken Small and Camilla Kazimi, “On the Costs of Air Pollution from Motor Vehicles,” Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, January 1995, pp. 7-32.

 

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