Technologies to Improve Consideration of Environmental Concerns in Transportation Decisions

This digest describes eight technologies that can be used by transportation agencies to improve the consideration of environmental concerns in transportation decisions. These technologies have been applied by agencies, using tools developed by the agencies themselves or others, to support their business processes. The digest presents the results of work conducted in the second, final phase of NCHRP Project 25-22, "Technologies to Improve Consideration of Environmental Concerns in Transportation Decisions." The objective of that project was to identify, critique, and showcase current and emerging technologies that support the integration of environmental considerations into transportation planning, design, construction, maintenance, and operations. The underlying purpose of the research is to accelerate innovation by encouraging application of such technologies by transportation agencies. By effectively applying these technologies, departments of transportation can reduce project development time, reduce costs, and enhance environmental quality, by improving the ability to implement transportation decisions, reducing the number of projects in litigation, reducing paperwork, increasing public understanding of the process, and increasing public trust. The digest is organized into four sections and two appendixes. The introduction describes the scope and limitations of the research project. The second section gives brief descriptions of the technologies and their applications, as well as factors leading to their developments. The third section discusses issues involved with implementing these technologies in other applications. The last section summarizes the research team's recommendations on how to achieve broader adoption of these technologies. Appendix A lists resources who can be contacted for more information about the highlighted applications. Appendix B contains the profiles of the 20 more promising applications.