Research in Transportation Business & Management 7 (2013) 13

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Research in Transportation Business & Management

Valuing transportation: Measuring what matters for sustainability

For almost half a decade, transportation policies prioritizing mobility and congestion relief have dominated public discourse about the
effectiveness of transportation (Meyer, 2000). Transportation business and management strategies tended to follow this lead, taking as
a given that the objective of transportation policy was to prioritize
or even optimize vehicle mobility (Handy, 2005). Calculations of the
opportunity costs associated with time spent in trafc have repeatedly
been deployed to support the construction of additional lane miles to
mitigate congestion.
Recently there have been signs that after fty years of mobility considerations governing almost all transportation planning decisions
the tide is beginning to turn. This contemporary shift away from
mobility-oriented transport rst took place in cities such as Copenhagen
and Zurich in Europe, Cambridge and Portland in the US, Singapore and
Hong Kong in Asia, and Curitiba and Bogot in South America
(Amekudzi & Meyer, 2006; Cervero, Sarmiento, Jacoby, Gomez, &
Neiman, 2009; Martens, 2007; Rabinovitch, 1996; Shaheen, Guzman, &
Zhang, 2010). The inuence of these pioneering cities has since spread
to places such as London, Paris, and New York. Now, innovative transportation approaches are integral to what denes a global city (Boarnet,
2011).
National governments have been slower to embrace sustainable
transportation planning, but this too is beginning to change (Barrella,
Amekudzi, Meyer, Ross, & Turchetta, 2010; Meyer, 2010; Pei,
Amekudzi, Meyer, Barrella, & Ross, 2010; Schmidt & Meyer, 2009).
One dramatic example of this change is the combined effort of the US
Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban
Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency to work together to focus on the inter-related issues of transportation, land use,
and sustainability. This initiative is noteworthy for two reasons: rst,
because it represents a different understanding of the role of transportation; and second, because it acknowledges for the rst time the
need to address transportation planning in a collaborative manner
that spans academic disciplines and traditional policy domains.
Some have pointed out that the concept of sustainability, as it is
currently posed, is still somewhat nebulous (Bell & Morse, 2005;
Walker, 2005). While true, the fact remains that this discussion of
sustainability signals an important change in focus. To further advance this movement, there is a need for better and more consistent
approaches to measure the broader impacts that are implied by the
terms sustainability and liveability (Black, Paez, & Suthanaya, 2002;
Zheng, Atkinson-Palombo, McCahill, O'Hara, & Garrick, 2011). The
goal is to facilitate the ability of stakeholders to effectively assess
the extent to which transportation is serving society's real interests,
over and above considerations relating to vehicle mobility.
Accordingly, this themed Volume comprises eleven papers, written
with the transportation business and management community in
2210-5395/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2013.04.004

mind, that present the state-of-the-art on valuing transportation

through a sustainability lens. While the papers all address a common
theme Measuring What Matters for Transportation Sustainability,
they can be further grouped according to three sub-themes: those that
focus on quantifying sustainability, those that illustrate sustainability
in practice using case studies, and those that focus on inter-city travel.
The themed Volume begins with a paper by Zheng, Garrick,
Atkinson-Palombo, McCahill, and Marshall that presents a set of guidelines for developing performance metrics for evaluating transportation
sustainability. In this paper, Zheng et al. describe how an interdisciplinary group of scholars conceptualized the Transportation Index for Sustainable Places (TISP), selected variables to populate this index, and
illustrate how various states in the US perform relative to one another
using an example of one element of the index that represents health
and safety. This paper is positioned rst in the Volume since it presents
a broad framework for evaluating transportation from a sustainability
perspective and sets the scene for the content that follows. In the subsequent paper, Haas, Morse, Becker, Young, and Esling describe a model
developed on behalf of the Center for Neighborhood Technology
(CNT) in which they relate spatial and household variables to automobile ownership, automobile use, and transit use. The fundamental idea
underpinning the creation of this model is that housing affordability
has traditionally been considered in isolation from transportation
costs, despite the fact that expenditures on transportation in the United
States are the second highest category of expense that a household incurs. Haas et al. then use the model to estimate how transportation
costs vary across households in metropolitan areas. The most important
nding which is that transportation costs are more strongly tied to
neighborhood than household characteristics underscores the effect
that the composition of the built environment has on various aspects
of transportation sustainability.
Picking up on the theme of infrastructure, Mulley, Tyson, McCue,
Rissel, and Munro argue in their paper that sustainable transportation
investments linked to improve public transport or designed specically to improve walking or cycling networks typically underestimate
the contribution of these active travel modes. They propose a framework designed for use in the context of Australia that includes both
mortality and morbidity changes resulting from a more active lifestyle. While they conclude that quantifying the potential health
costs associated with motorized travel and reduced physical activity
requires further investigation, the framework they present is an important contribution in developing an agreed upon methodology for
evaluating the health costs and benets of active travel. The next
paper by Junge and Levinson focuses on the scal challenges facing
many municipalities where a signicant fraction of land area is covered by private roads. They point out that land devoted to road infrastructure needs costly maintenance but is exempt from property tax.

Valuing transportation: Measuring what matters for sustainability

The opportunity costs associated with having land devoted to roadways are calculated for sample cities in the Twin Cities metropolitan
area. The results show that the opportunity costs are the equivalent
of up to 20% of the overall property tax when just taking into consideration major highways. These opportunity costs rise sharply if all
roads are included. While their analysis stops short of analyzing the
welfare effects to road users that would come with road privatization,
the calculations nevertheless illustrate some of the hidden costs associated with vehicular travel that are not considered in traditional
cost-benet analyses.
This nal paper within the general theme of presenting metrics to
quantify sustainability is by Garceau, Atkinson-Palombo, Garrick,
Outlaw, McCahill, and Ahangari. They quantify selected economic,
social, and environmental costs associated with Vehicle Miles
Traveled (VMT) at the state-wide scale across the US. They nd that
higher percentages of commuting using private vehicles correlate
with higher rates of VMT per capita, higher carbon emissions, and
higher transportation costs at the household level. Rather surprisingly
though, higher VMT per capita also corresponds to higher government
spending, which may reect the expense of maintaining, repairing,
and expanding road networks. Interestingly, none of their calculations
take into account the opportunity costs associated with vehicle travel
uncovered by Junge and Levinson that relate to untaxed land being
used for roadways. Higher automobile-dependency also registered
high levels of social costs in the form of automobile-related fatalities.
Contrary to popular belief, the crash rate is not simply a factor of
VMT, as for example, places with three times the VMT per capita
than other places that had ve times as many fatalities. When the implications of the economic, environmental, and social dimensions are
considered side-by-side, they reveal high costs across all of the various
domains, rather than the trade-offs that are often assumed to take
place. The results create strong evidence about the need to think
about the impact of high levels of VMT in a more holistic manner,
and they provide a foundation for a more open discussion of the potential costs and benets associated with VMT-reduction strategies.
The next set of three papers by Marshall, Aditjandra, and Bose has
been grouped together because they use a case study approach to highlight the issue of valuing transportation sustainability. In Marshall's
paper, his case study based on transit-oriented developments
(TODs) in Denver, Colorado illustrates the use of a quantiable framework to assess transportation performance from a liveability perspective. The results present the performance of the Denver light rail
system and its associated TODs from a broader and more comprehensive perspective that facilitates insight into how transportation goals
can be better understood and realized by transportation managers.
For example, his work shows that if the goal of TOD is to create more
liveable communities rather than to increase ridership or to relieve congestion, the addition of parking at stations is evaluated differently. The
next paper by Aditjandra highlights the challenges that local authorities
face in operationalizing social, economic, and environmental aspects of
transportation sustainability, despite the fact that the concept of sustainability is high on their agenda. The study reveals that in this part
of the United Kingdom where the built environment is much more
mature than it is in, for example, the case study of Denver, Colorado
used by Marshall promoting denser development in the future
would have much less impact on transportation sustainability than addressing people's attitudes towards public versus private transportation. In the next paper, Bose examines the transportation challenges
faced by a unique set of individuals in Vermont refugees. This highly
vulnerable population, where refugees nd themselves located in small
New England towns, face many obstacles in their day-to-day lives such
as getting to work, transporting children to school or day care, and
attending medical appointments. Key informant interviews reveal
sometimes poignant stories such as how shift-workers have to adapt
complex coping strategies to overcome uncooperative bus schedules,
and how women have to work to maintain a delicate balance of

childcare, workday, and other domestic duties in the absence of a reliable and extensive transportation network. While the paper is unique
in many aspects, the generalizations can be extended to other vulnerable populations and the overarching call by the author regarding the
need to incorporate a greater range of user perspectives in transportation planning.
The nal papers have been grouped together by virtue of the fact
that they have focused on inter-city travel. Lane and Sherman assess
rail transit from the cost-benet perspective via the KaldorHicks Tableau, which facilitates the incorporation of sustainability components.
The study by Rangarajan, Long, Tobias, and Keister investigates the impact of stakeholder attitudes and perception on rail infrastructure
planning efforts in Missouri. Their fundamental argument is that any
planning effort to evaluate rail passenger and freight capacity that
promote goals of economic development, sustainability, and liveable
communities is shaped by the degree to which there is consensus
and support among key stakeholders, including the general public.
In the nal paper, Ryley, Burchell, and Davison examine public attitudes towards air transportation and sustainability with the intention
of determining how individuals value sustainability in relation to air
travel. The data, based on surveys conducted in the East Midlands
region of the United Kingdom and the East Coast of the United States,
reveal that although many travelers acknowledge that air travel contributes to climate change, few are willing to either y less or pay
more to offset the negative environment effects of their travel.
Taken together, this suite of papers articulates why society at large
needs to consider transportation from a sustainability and liveability
perspective and extends the discussion about how to operationalize
these concepts with quantiable metrics. A deeper and more critical
understanding of how and why to approach transportation business
and management from a sustainability and liveability perspective
may help us revisit seemingly established mobility-based practices
and standards so that we can then adopt metrics that better align
transportation business and management with societal goals.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the University of Connecticut's
Center for Transportation and Livable Systems for their role in funding
this research.
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Norman Garrick
Carol Atkinson-Palombo
Wesley Marshall
University of Connecticut, Department of Geography,
215 Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT 06269-4148, United States
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 860 486 3023.
E-mail address: carol.atkinson-palombo@uconn.edu
(C. Atkinson-Palombo).