Life-Cycle Assessment for Transportation Decision Making
Life-Cycle Assessment is a framework for evaluating products, processes, services, activities, and the complex systems in which they reside, from cradle-to-grave. When Life-Cycle Assessment is applied to transportation infrastructure, the analysis can evaluate the vehicle manufacturing, fuel production, and infrastructure construction phases not accounted for in a typical environmental analysis. Because a Life-Cycle Assessment can produce additional information about an alternative or set of alternatives, some transportation agencies are interested in pursuing such an analysis in their transportation decision-making. This paper provides guidance for agencies seeking to conduct a Life-Cycle Assessment of various transportation infrastructure options to aid in decision-making. The authors organize frameworks and methods by existing processes and decision points in order to ease the integration of Life-Cycle Assessment methods into the current transit planning and operations environment. Guidance to transit agencies wishing to perform Life-Cycle Assessment of new capital projects is presented, with consideration of policy and data trade-offs that an agency will likely encounter when conducting a Life-Cycle Assessment. Possible energy and emissions implications for land use are discussed. The authors found that many agencies lack data to perform a precise Life-Cycle Assessment at any one stage of the capital planning and delivery process, and that existing planning processes preclude detailed assessment and substantive decision-making in the same stage. The paper concludes with recommendations for California and the U.S. Federal Transit Administration to facilitate local Life-Cycle Assessment, such as producing information on life-cycle energy and emissions impacts for transit vehicles and projects.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC10 Environmental Analysis in Transportation.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Matute, Juan M
- Chester, Mikhail
- Eisenstein, William
- Pincetl, Stephanie
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC
- Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
- Date: 2014
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 16p
- Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Decision making; Greenhouse gases; Infrastructure; Land use planning; Life cycle analysis; Public transit
- Identifier Terms: U.S. Federal Transit Administration
- Geographic Terms: California
- Subject Areas: Environment; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I15: Environment; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01515311
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 14-1287
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 21 2014 3:18PM