Programmatic Issues of Future System Performance (2022) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 140-188
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140 APPENDIX B: UNIFIED FRAMEWORK INTEREST AREA WHITE PAPERS TRANSFORMATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES Transformational Technologies and Opportunities Transformational technologies and services are evolving rapidly, both those that are used for traveling and those personal/household technologies that aim to make daily living more efficient and comfortable. Changes driven by smart technologies such as connected and automated vehicles (CAVs)
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141 Automated vehicles and connected vehicles when supported by appropriate laws, policies and infrastructure can help meet specific DOT objectives. They can help improve transportation system user and worker safety, reduce congestion, reduce harmful emissions (especially but not exclusively linked to simultaneous fleet electrification)
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142 with advancements in battery technology, electric charging infrastructure, and telecommunications technologies enable advanced air mobility (AAM) options to address congestion, travel time reliability, and efficient goods movement.
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143 Many of these technologies target congestion reduction and environmental impact mitigation, and attenuate the need for major new infrastructure to address capacity shortfalls and bottlenecks. While regional communities as a whole would benefit from these improvements, they could also be used to help disenfranchised communities, many of which are disproportionately impacted by port, distribution, and warehousing center operations and corridors heavily trafficked by trucks.
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144 The challenge with public acceptance is not an understanding of risks and benefits themselves, but rather a lack of willingness to give up control over the risk. Accordingly, societal perception and barriers to automation need greater understanding, and transportation agencies should not just assume that consumers will accept them.
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145 pressures on DOT workforces, and the growing need to maintain staff with data and information communication technologies skillsets. The role of state DOTs will depend on the technology and where the DOT could be involved.
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146 freight sector technology adoption is not fully apparent. Listening session participants agreed that a connected high-tech digital support and physical infrastructure network is needed.
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147 making this a requirement in new construction. Charging while driving technology may be a viable option, and the concept of charging lanes offers a promising solution to battery range and charging infrastructure availability.3 Some listening session participants suggested that many technical and engineering challenges have received significant attention and a greater focus needs to be placed on social, equity, and planning issues to help guide positive impacts and avoid responding to negative ones later.
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148 • Providing the necessary levels of rural broadband connectivity to enable desired or expected telework opportunities at the same level as areas with reliable access. • Ensuring that if personal life technologies enable significant and long-lasting shifts toward remote work and shopping that individuals and communities still requiring regular and easy access to transportation are not left behind by the advancement of the "knowledge economy." Research Gaps The following list of research gaps represents the amalgamation and refinement of those identified through a comprehensive literature review and set of listening sessions focused on the transformational technologies in question.
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149 • What are effective incentives to encourage EV use in disenfranchised, rural, and other communities where there are economic barriers to EV ownership or provision of supporting infrastructure? What barriers to EV adoption -- real or perceived -- should be avoided from a policymaking perspective?
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150 workforce? How does a DOT incorporate skillsets that may have been provided by a collaborating partner (e.g., university)
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151 • What is the appropriate role (or roles as a function of context) for DOTs in managing AV applications along the spectrum from fully engaged to disengaged and passive, and how do are these roles determined?
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152 • Where can agencies derive or maintain influence over CV and AV technology trends that are often driven by the private sector? What should they appropriately regulate, and how should they go about it (e.g., curb space pricing)
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153 SYSTEM PERFORMANCE AND CONDITION Understanding of Critical Issues System performance refers to how well the transportation system is delivering service to road users and the public-at-large, while system condition indicates how well the infrastructure is maintained to provide service at desired levels. Transportation agencies have an intrinsic responsibility to improve system performance and condition over the long-term in an effective, fiscally responsible, and equitable manner.
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154 Constraints and Threats Much of transportation infrastructure was constructed 50 or 60 years ago. While transportation agencies contend with a significant backlog of infrastructure needs, many assets, particularly pavements, bridges, transit facilities, and waterway locks, are aging towards the end of their useful life.
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155 Transportation agencies have been collecting copious amounts of data to aid with decisionmaking; however, many issues are yet to be resolved: persisting data quality issues, high cost of data collection and storage, data siloes within organization, trust deficit with private sector data, lack of data analytical skills, and the gap between state of the art and state of the practice processes and tools. These issues impede the ability of the agencies to leverage data for making data-driven decisions.
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156 making a difference in performance. Developing a holistic and in-depth strategies will help transportation agencies on making decisions relating to what technology deployments would help performance and how to deploy them quickly.
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157 metropolitan areas? How can modally integrated urban mobility be improved using alternative transport, pricing, technology, and other approaches?
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158 • What assessment methodologies and analytical tools are needed to fast track the evaluation of new materials and techniques (even with limited data) and incorporate their effects into infrastructure performance modeling?
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159 What are the approaches to understand, manage, and mitigate adverse public health outcomes from transportation? • What data requirements, analytical methods, and business systems can aid with quantifying health and mobility outcomes?
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160 SYSTEM USE System use includes those factors that influence the use of the transportation system. For example, socio-demographic characteristics of the population have always been an important input into assessing the performance of transportation systems.
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161 increased interest and feasibility of remote work and shopping, and the attendant impacts on the transportation system require understanding. Comprehending the effects of these factors emphasizes the importance of the linkage between land use and transportation system use.
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162 Multimodal Connectivity and System Integration Understanding and Opportunities An important evolutionary characteristic of transportation planning (and to some extent decisionmaking) over the past decades has been the increasing emphasis on improved and enhanced connections among the many different modes and services that are part of the transportation system.5 In the public sector, this has taken the form of a multimodal perspective on the many modes of travel available in a travel market; in the private sector, this is viewed primarily as intermodal connections, that is, the transfer of cargo or goods from one mode to another (such as at a port)
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163 Constraints and Threats System integration will depend heavily on making data available and integrating them across different platforms and bureaucracies at the regional level. Efficient passenger and freight movement, especially at the megaregional scale depends on information availability.
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164 Transformational Technology Opportunities, Constraints and Threats The Transformational Technologies white paper addresses some of the major trends in transportation-related technologies and their importance to transportation agencies. The technologies will potentially have significant influences on system use.
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165 transformational technologies in question. The gaps are organized around the research questions identified in a Unified Framework that characterizes the key areas of interest for transportation agencies over the next 10 to 20 years based on an analysis of the issues and recommendations contained in the TRB Special Report 329: Renewing the National Commitment to the Interstate Highway System: A Foundation for the Future (CIHS)
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166 government and with private firms) of integrating evolving mobility and accessibility concepts into a multimodal systems perspective?
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167 • What are the implications for negative externalities (e.g., increased vehicle miles traveled [VMT] , more accidents)
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168 SYSTEM IMPACTS AND EXTERNALITIES The transportation sector's contribution to community and environmental quality has been the subject of intense study and debate in terms of policy response for decades. The impacts and externalities of facility construction and system operations are arguably the most debated issues surrounding most transportation capital investments.
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169 Progress more generally is bolstered by growing awareness of the seriousness of environmental degradation, especially with respect to climate change, particularly among millennials and GenZs. The new generation is expecting that society can "solve" these problems.
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170 State DOT officials will face more pressure to understand what their agencies can do to help achieve GHG targets and to recommend strategies for doing so. Although many suggest that EVs will be the solution to reducing emissions, there are serious questions about the ability of the transportation and energy infrastructure to support EV use, such as when such technologies will be available in a significant way to affect emissions.
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171 Mitigating Negative Social Outcomes Opportunities, Constraints and Threats Beyond transportation's historic contribution to negative environmental outcomes and opportunities to improve, other negative societal outcomes require consideration, such as income inequality and divided communities. Social equity goals that are not translated into clear objectives that can be measured meaningfully.12 Urban transportation planning, which tends to focus on specific outcomes such as congestion reduction, needs to better account for such objectives more rigorously.
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172 address roadways that contribute significantly to air pollution in urban areas that affect disenfranchised communities is an example of environmental justice activism with unintended paradoxical consequences. Namely, these actions can result in "environmental gentrification" whereby an increase in property values after rerouting an urban highway may end up displacing vulnerable residents, if their needs are not properly prioritized in the first place.17 Land Use Policy and Planning Opportunities, Constraints and Threats A significant, ongoing constraint to improved planning decisions that address transportation impacts is that most state DOTs have little to no control over land use decisions.
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173 During the last administration, FHWA placed increased emphasis on funding rural highway investments through discretionary grant programs. However, investments should be well considered -- that is, not under the guise of economic growth as a response to population loss, which has been shown unlikely to be reversed, but rather in the context of adaptation to "population loss as a form of resiliency" ("rural smart shrinkage")
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174 Highway System: A Foundation for the Future (CIHS) and TRB's Critical Issues in Transportation 2019 (CIT2019)
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175 • What guidance is necessary to compel more rigorous equity analyses in regional planning to meet the intent of civil rights and environmental justice laws? • What ways are there to combat institutional or structural inequities in transportation investment decisions that are "incidental, not deliberate" in affecting disenfranchised groups?
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176 When and how to integrate land use policies and transportation planning for small and nonmetropolitan areas? • What are the impacts of AV market penetration and adoption on land use and transportation policies in exurban and rural regions as people and business shift their location decisions based on AVs' ability to decrease in-vehicle value of time?
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177 ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY AND GOVERNANCE Understanding of Critical Issues The ability of transportation agencies to effectively address issues of future system performance tie directly to two factors: internal capacity of a single agency (e.g., human resources, workforce, equity) , and the relationships among a set of collaborating agencies (e.g., multijurisdictional metropolitan and megaregion planning integration, public and private sector partnerships)
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178 Multi-collaborative partnerships include those relating to planning and developing transportation programs, those necessary to implement such programs, and those relating to establishing the needed financial/funding support. As noted above, successful program implementation often depends on effective multi-partner collaborations.
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179 and restrictive technical credentials, could impede the agencies' ability to attract and retain a diverse workforce. Many newer employees primarily gain their technical skills and expertise through education.
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180 Organizational Capacity Students in non-technical fields, such as humanities and public policy, could be a new resource to the agencies. These students have skills that are attractive to transportation agencies, especially in technology-based communications.
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181 New analytic tools to mine useful information from conversations happening outside the planning process, such as social media would help transportation agencies understand community needs, desires, and goals. Transportation agencies could devise new strategies to reach out to demographic groups who are technologically challenged or lack access to technology.
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182 • How can transportation agencies prepare their workforces through education and retraining in light of an increased role of automation and technology? • What are the best practices to address issues of equity and diversity among underrepresented or disadvantage groups, and how can these practices be evaluated for effectiveness?
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183 EQUITY IN TRANSPORTATION Understanding of Critical Issues Equity refers to fairness in the allocation of investments, distribution of benefits and costs, and representation in the decision-making process among communities with socio-demographic, economic, and geographic diversity. Specifically, equity in transportation relates to (i)
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184 accessibility, mobility, and affordability limitations in the public's ability to access education, employment, medical, public health, and public services. Many factors could be contributing to equity issues in rural and tribal areas: • Declining population in rural areas has contributed to shrinking tax revenues and lower vehicle miles of travel.
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185 depend on public transit for access to employment, education, and health. Similarly, the pandemic has upended the current trends in land use patterns and its lasting impacts on future land use trends are still unknown.
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186 The concept of "equity" is perceived to conflict with productivity-based or performance-based prioritization of investments. In other words, considering equity in funding allocation decisions is perceived to diminish the productivity and cost-efficiency of investments.
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187 NHDOT to distribute funds based on condition, where the agency allocates a portion of funds based on lane-miles but retains a certain percentage of funds to add dollars as necessary based on condition. Many transportation agencies are successfully placing minority staff into leadership positions.
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188 • How can transportation-related equity implications be quantified to evaluate the differences among rural, suburban, and urban regions? • What are the challenges that mobility-impaired and technologically challenged population groups face in accessing distance-based services?
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