Citation

Tupper LL, Chowdhury MA, Klotz L, Fries RN. Int. J. Sustain. Transp. 2012; 6(5): 282-297.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15568318.2011.597910

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The research presented in this paper compares the direct emissions and fuel consumption savings of five different strategies for greener roads. Specifically, savings from an incident management strategy using an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) application, traffic cameras, is compared to savings from strategies focused on the construction phase including; using regionally provided materials, reducing fossil fuel use, reusing pavement, and using warm-mix asphalt. The comparison used lifecycle assessment to evaluate a 10-mile segment of a key urban interstate in South Carolina. The results revealed that within the first year of operations, implementing the selected ITS strategy would provide a fuel savings that is over 3 times greater than the combined savings that could be realized by implementing all 4 construction-phase strategies together. For an 8-year repaving schedule, the ITS strategy provides fuel savings over 30 times larger than all the construction phase strategies combined, and reduces carbon-dioxide emissions over 5 times more than any one of the construction-phase strategies. The article highlights ITS's effectiveness as a sustainability tool by comparing emissions and fuel use reductions to sustainable construction strategies. These results suggest that policies and rating systems for more sustainable roads should weigh ITS strategies considerably more than individual construction-phase strategies. The results also highlight the need for transportation policy to evaluate the benefits of all potential sustainable strategies to encourage implementation of the most effective ones.