Green Accessibility: Measuring the Environmental Costs of Space-Time Prisms in Sustainable Transportation Planning

该项目的重点是估算基于交通的无障碍环境成本。 可达性是交通科学、规划和工程的核心概念。 无障碍是指个人利用交通和通信技术在特定地理环境内的潜在流动性和互动性。 交通科学家、规划师和工程师有一套完善的理论和方法来衡量基于交通的可达性：时空棱镜（STP），这是一个人在两个地理位置之间的可能旅行路径的包络，给定可用时间和旅行速度的限制。 STP衡量交通系统提供的移动选项如何将人们连接到他们可能想去的地方。 然而，学者们并没有考虑到这种潜在流动性的环境成本。 估计实际移动性的资源成本涉及监测车辆在地理空间中移动时的资源消耗和/或排放。 然而，计算STP的环境成本是困难的，因为有许多潜在的路径，但实际上只有一条。 这一研究项目将扩大STP，将无障碍环境成本包括在内。 研究人员将通过开发估计棱镜内部潜在路径分布的方法来提高对STP的理论理解。 他们将开发棱柱在连续空间和交通网络中的预期流动成本的实用措施，并将使用经验流动数据评估预期成本措施。 他们将开发地理信息系统（GIS）软件，用于在交通规划和项目评估中应用棱镜效益/成本衡量，包括涉及实践交通规划师的可用性评估。 最后，他们将创建一个框架，用于在联邦政府授权的交通规划文件中部署STP成本/效益措施。该项目将大大推进有关人类可达性的科学知识，这是交通科学、规划和工程以及其他社会和行为科学的基本概念。 这个跨学科项目将把人文科学（无障碍环境）和物理科学与工程（资源消耗和废物排放）的基本概念与现代交通规划实践联系起来，创造新的跨学科机会。 来自地理学，城市规划和交通工程的研究生和本科生将从事与基本科学理解以及关键的现实问题相关的研究。 该项目将对交通以及城市和可持续发展科学和规划产生潜在的变革性影响。将可达性理论扩展到环境科学将挑战交通科学和规划中的假设，即更大的可达性通常对个人和社会都有好处，从而有助于产生更细致入微和复杂的方法来分析，规划和管理复杂的人类物理系统，如交通和城市。

This project focuses on estimating the environmental cost of transportation-based accessibility. Accessibility is a central concept in transportation science, planning, and engineering. Accessibility refers to an individual's potential mobility and interactivity within a given geographic setting using transportation and communications technologies. Transportation scientists, planners, and engineers have a well-developed theory and methodology for measuring transportation-based accessibility: the space-time prism (STP), which is the envelope of an individual's possible travel paths between two geographic locations given limits on available time and travel speeds. The STP measures how well a transportation system provides mobility options that connect people to places they might want to go. Scholars have not considered the environmental costs of this potential mobility, however. Estimating the resource cost of actual mobility involves monitoring the resource consumption and/or emissions of a vehicle as it moves through geographic space. Calculating the environmental costs of a STP is difficult, however, because there are many potential paths, but only one will actually occur. This research project will extend the STP to include the environmental costs of accessibility. The investigators will improve theoretical understanding of the STP by developing methods for estimating the distribution of potential paths within the prism interior. They will develop practical measures of expected mobility costs for prisms in both continuous space and transportation networks, and they will evaluate the expected cost measures using empirical mobility data. They will develop geographic information system (GIS) software for applying prism benefit/cost measures in transportation planning and project evaluation, including a usability evaluation involving practicing transportation planners. Finally, they will create a framework for deploying STP cost/benefit measures in federally mandated transportation planning documents.This project will substantially advance scientific knowledge about human accessibility, a fundamental concept in transportation science, planning, and engineering as well as in other social and behavioral sciences. This interdisciplinary project will link fundamental concepts in the human sciences (accessibility) and physical science and engineering (resource consumption and waste emissions) with modern transportation planning practice, creating new transdisciplinary opportunities. Graduate and undergraduate students from geography, urban planning, and transportation engineering will be engaged in research that is relevant to basic scientific understanding as well as to a critical, real-world problem. The project will have potentially transformative effects on transportation as well as urban and sustainability science and planning. The extension of accessibility theory to environmental science will challenge the assumption in transportation science and planning that greater accessibility is a generally unmitigated benefit to individuals and society, thereby helping generate more nuanced and sophisticated approaches to the analysis, planning, and management of complex human-physical systems like transportation and cities.