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.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC10 Environmental Analysis in Transportation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Matute, Juan M
  • Chester, Mikhail
  • Eisenstein, William
  • Pincetl, Stephanie
• 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