Transportation for Communities - Advancing Projects Through Partnerships

Related Research

Congress's charge to the SHRP 2 Capacity program is to: Develop approaches and tools for systematically integrating environmental, economic, and community requirements into the analysis, planning, and design of new highway capacity. The Decision Guide represents the collaborative structure to support practitioner use of the products and outcomes of other SHRP 2 research. The products and outcomes of this future research will be integrated into the Decision Guide to strengthen the basis for decisions about when, where, and how much capacity is needed; what the economic impacts will be; and how to build capacity in ways that enhance communities and the environment. Those products include the following:

• A customizable performance measurement framework
• Guides for integrating into transportation planning and programming: freight demand, greenhouse gas emissions, land use issues, travel time reliability performance measures
• Tools for estimating the economic impact of new capacity; for implementing an ecosystem approach to environmental review and permitting; for determining driver responses to congestion and pricing; for analyzing the effect of operations, technology, and design on highway capacity
• Strategies for linking community vision to transportation decision making; for managing construction at corridor and network levels; and for improving freight demand models and data
• Major advances in travel demand modeling

In addition, there are several NCHRP projects that are recently completed or currently in process that provide additional enhancements for transportation decision making. Topics include:

• Guidance for cost estimation and risk analysis management to control project costs
• Strategies for improving project environmental cost estimating and managing NEPA projects

It is anticipated that other projects will be identified over time to inform and further enhance collaborative decision making. In order to disseminate the results of the research to the broadest possible audience, Transportation for Communities will support access to this research.