Transportation, Land Use, and Climate Change Scenario Planning Project - The project will inform transportation and land use decision-making in a selected study area by using scenario planning to analyze strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. The goals of the project are to 1) advance climate analysis in scenario planning; 2) develop a transferrable process; 3) build partnerships; and 4) impact decision-making. The project will utilize lessons learned from an earlier study that focused on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Handbook for Estimating GHG Emissions in the Transportation Planning Process- The Handbook will serve as a reference for State DOTs and MPOs by documenting available tools, methods, and data sources that can be used for development of GHG inventories, forecasts, and analyses of GHG plans and mitigation strategies. The Handbook will also present methodologies reflecting good practices related to the evaluation of GHG emissions, and demonstrate how such evaluation may be integrated into the planning process. The project is expected to be completed in late 2012.
Operations Strategies - This research will further investigate the GHG reduction potential of highway operation and management strategies. Building on the information developed for the Moving Cooler report, US DOT's Report to Congress and others, FHWA will model travel behavior changes from operational strategies to identify changes in overall vehicle use and miles traveled, traffic flow, speed, etc. and forecast long term changes in GHG emissions. The project is expected to be completed in late 2012.
Planning-Level Assessment of Construction and Maintenance Emissions - Creation of an analytical framework for developing construction and maintenance GHG emissions at the planning level. One aspect of the project will develop estimates of construction and maintenance emissions for a range of highway and transit project types to be used as an input into the framework, but which also could be used in project-level analyses. The project-level construction and maintenance emissions estimates are expected to be complete in 2012, and the framework is expected to be completed in 2013.
