Test cases sought for Cost Effectiveness Tool

Smart Growth America has developed a new tool to help agencies decide which projects are most cost effective, and they are inviting transportation agencies to share past projects to help test this important tool. The tool allows communities to have a more transparent understanding of whether the long-range costs of a transportation project will be recovered via taxes and user fees, both with and without any state or federal subsidies.

New report from SSTI discusses freight transportation demand management strategies

A new report, funded by SSTI with a matching grant from the Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education, identifies and evaluates freight transportation demand management strategies to improve transportation efficiency by reducing the social costs associated with goods movement in urban areas.

Getting the Goods Without the Bads: Freight Transportation Demand Management Strategies to Reduce Urban Impacts (SSTI, 2013)

This project, funded by SSTI with a matching grant from the Center for Freight Infrastructure Research and Education (CFIRE), identifies and evaluates strategies to reduce the social costs associated with goods movement in urban areas by managing freight transportation demand.

Do transportation agencies value time more than travelers do?

Tolled traffic lanes on otherwise unpriced facilities offer a unique opportunity to understand how much people are willing to pay for a faster commute and to truth test the assumptions used by transportation agencies to judge the benefits and costs of potential projects. One of these projects, the high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on Washington’s SR 167, demonstrates the difficulty of accurately predicting how travelers will value reductions in travel time.