Jamie Montague Fischer

Quality of Life, Sustainable Civil Infrastructure, and Sustainable Development: Strategically Expanding Choice

As sustainable development becomes a more important objective in civil infrastructure planning and policymaking, quality of life (QOL) is an increasingly important measure to understand, characterize, and apply effectively in the search for and development of appropriate infrastructure solutions for sustainable development. This paper reviews the role of QOL in civil infrastructure decision making. It provides an overview and critique of methodological approaches to defining QOL and explains the significance of QOL in infrastructure decision making for sustainable development. Examples are used to demonstrate how infrastructure can be strategically developed or redeveloped to improve regional QOL and economic competitiveness while preserving or enhancing the natural environment. Based on the theoretical review and examination of infrastructure development examples, the writers suggest that a new paradigm that views infrastructure development as part of a sociotechnical system be considered. Such a paradigm would encourage strategic infrastructure designs and policies that expand choice and achieve multiple objectives for sustainable development.

Impact of Environmental Justice on Transportation: Applying Environmental Justice Maturation Model to Benchmark Progress

Presidential Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice (EJ) was signed in 1994, and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued regulatory guidelines for addressing EJ in transportation in 1997. Transportation agencies have since adopted a range of policies, programs, and activities to identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects of their policies, programs, and activities on minority and low-income populations. On the basis of the relevant literature and structured interviews, this paper assesses how state DOTs are addressing EJ issues in their decision-making processes and identifies common and effective practices. The results show that several state DOTs have implemented public involvement programs and other procedures to assess the burdens of transportation investment. However, fewer agencies assess the equity of benefits, fewer assess outcomes of EJ actions, and fewer still link EJ analysis outcomes with future funding and policy decisions. On the basis of existing practices and regulatory guidelines, the researchers formulated a performance-based, maturity-scale model that agencies can use to benchmark the effectiveness of their external and internal EJ activities in achieving EJ outcomes in transportation. The model was applied anonymously to selected agencies to demonstrate different maturity levels in addressing EJ.

Transportation System Health: Meeting Deficiency Needs and Growth Aspirations Systemically

Different concepts of health have been applied to transportation and other built infrastructure systems in the literature and in practice. The 2012 national surface transportation legislation, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, established a performance-based planning framework requiring the development of performance measures and targets with progress reporting by state, metropolitan, and local agencies toward achieving seven national goals. Although performance-based planning offers a formal platform on which to plan systematically to achieve goals, one of the key challenges is how best to manage transportation system performance in nonuniform metropolitan regions and local jurisdictions to achieve uniform statewide and national goals. Motivated by this issue, this study developed the concept of transportation system health (TSH) with a focus on fulfilling both basic needs and beyond-basic needs of the communities that transportation systems serve, with Maslow’s theory of human motivation as a foundation. Potential applications of the TSH framework are discussed, with examples highlighting their significance for multiscale and context-sensitive planning and decision making. This paper is potentially useful to practitioners looking for systematic approaches to support identifying strategic goals, determining priorities, selecting performance measures, and setting targets in nonuniform regions to achieve uniform statewide goals.

Why and How to Use Customer Opinions: A Quality-of-Life and Customer Satisfaction-Oriented Foundation for Performance-Based Decision-Making

Abstract The concepts of ‘customer satisfaction’ (CS) and ‘quality of life’ (QOL) have both been used, on a limited basis, in strategic planning and performance measurement at state departments of transportation. However, the meanings and usefulness of these concepts are still unclear or evolving to many practitioners. Based on a review of the literature and customer opinion data collected for various transportation studies in the USA and Europe, this paper offers two important contributions to the transportation literature. The paper clarifies the relationship between the CS and QOL concepts, placing CS in the broader context of customer opinions and subjective well-being. The paper then identifies six categories of survey tools for collecting customer opinions, describing how each can be used within a performance management framework to reveal the QOL impacts of transportation decisions. Agencies can use the definitions, conceptual relationships, performance measures, and decision-making processes discussed in this paper to refine their performance management programs, to better understand customer and public perceptions, and to make systematic progress toward their QOL oriented goals.

Evidence-Based Decision Making for Transportation Asset Management

Recent emphasis on performance-based approaches, reflected, for example, in the mandates of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, provides opportunities for more rigorous approaches to collecting and using “evidence” in transportation asset management (TAM). A strong evidence-based approach was founded on well-documented studies demonstrating failure or success following the implementation of an intervention. This study explored the use of evidence in TAM and performance-based decision making. The studys methodology included a review of evidence-based approaches from various fields, an “evidence exchange” between transportation practitioners, and case studies providing examples of evidence in TAM. The study identified attributes of evidence-based approaches that could lend themselves to enhancing AASHTOs existing framework for TAM program advancement and asset management decision making. These attributes were used to (a) develop a formal hierarchy of evidence to be used in evidence-based decision making for TAM and (b) develop a documentation framework for TAM that can be applied at the project and program levels to ensure evidence-based decisions. The results of this work demonstrate for TAM practitioners what constitutes quality evidence, how it is gathered, and how it can be interpreted and used.