Research Idea Details

The current practice for mitigating environmental impacts of transportation projects is to mitigate only specific impacts on specific resources without consideration of which produces the best environmental result. In many cases, significant funds will be spent by transportation agencies on marginal mitigation projects. Those same funds could be spent to much greater environmental benefit consistent with larger environmental and community goals. By changing to an environmental performance-based mitigation methodology, transportation investments can be used more effectively in achieving both transportation and environmental goals than under current regulatory structures.

To achieve this change in paradigm, acceptable methods for setting regional environmental objectives, measuring environmental impacts, and measuring environmental performance by its contribution towards the identified regional environmental objectives must be developed.

The proposed research is intended to explore methods of optimizing transportation-related environmental investments instead of the current piecemeal responses to mitigating specific project-related impacts. Toward this end, the following tasks should be initiated:

Cost: $500,000

• Task 1: $100,000
• Task 2: $100,000
• Task 3: $100,000
• Task 4: $200,000

Duration: 24 months