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Sustainability and livability in transportation, as the concepts referring to the capability to maintain the well being of transportation systems, have been widely accepted as the critical principles to quality of life and health of communities.
The natural gas extraction method, High-Volume Horizontal Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF), has a significant transportation component that impacts transport infrastructure and rural communities in both positive and negative ways. Estimates provided by the US Energy Information Administration put natural gas reserves of the entire Marcellus Shale formation, our area of interest, at 410.3 trillion cubic feet.
Fostering sustainable mobility for secure and livable communities is key to address the current environmental and energy crises. There are successful examples of cities for which cycling is playing a major role in their paths toward sustainability. For example, 5.8% of commuters in Portland cycle to work. The percentage in New York City is only 0.6%, despite 345 miles of bicycle routes being added in the last decade. To encourage the use of non-motorized alternatives we need to better understand the motives underlying demand.
The first decade of the 21st Century has witnessed the explosion of wireless communications and highspeed internet. New forms of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, among others have emerged and quickly gained popularity. As history has clearly shown, major technological advances usually transform some of the way people and society behave and interact (e.g., online shopping enabled by Internet).
A paradox of industrialized society is the overreliance on unsustainable fossil fuel energy for transportation and insufficient use of sustainable bodily energy for more physically active modes of transport. Preference for sedentary travel mode such as car driving over physically active travel modes such as walking, biking and public transit which often involves walking has contributed to air pollution and the epidemic of obesity.
The Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University has developed, in collaboration with NJ DOT and NJ Transit, a tool that allows engineers to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with specific transportation construction practices for both highway and rail projects. This includes estimating emissions from material inputs, construction equipment activity, life-cycle maintenance, project staging inputs (including emissions due to road closures during construction) over the lifetime of a project.
The United States is facing severe infrastructure financing problems. Revenues from fossil-fuel based taxes are declining as vehicles become more fuel efficient and as annual vehicle miles traveled declines. Many states and localities are increasing the role of private investors through public-private partnerships, and 31 states have now passed PPP enabling legislation. These concerns are particularly salient in the Northeastern part of the United States. Meanwhile, traffic safety, although improving, remains a critical concern in all regions.
The objective of this project is to develop a model that assesses the importance of different transportation facilities using travel time as a measure of performance. This model will have potential applications in incident management and contingency planning of road works, and the impact of reduced capacity on links due to factors such as lane closures, accidents and external threats. It is anticipated that such a tool will be beneficial for government agencies such as NYSDOT, NYMTC and other private agencies.
