TxDOT Research Library - TxDOT Research Project

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Economic Considerations in Transportation System Development and Operations

Project Summary

An essential backbone of regional and national economies, transportation has a myriad of associations and impacts. An understanding of the causal mechanisms behind, and the extent of, these associations and impacts can be vital to defensible and optimal decision-making by budget-constrained transportation agencies. From travel time savings to job creation (both direct and indirect), income growth to property value changes, motor vehicle crashes to air quality and noise impacts, microeconomic choices to macroeconomic shifts, transport policies and investments carry great weight. The notion of trade-offs is fundamental to a solid understanding of economic practice and theory. Salient comparisons include marginal benefits (to travelers and the larger community) versus marginal costs (to suppliers of transport, like TxDOT, as well as those enduring any negative externalized costs). They include maintenance and operations versus new construction, private interests versus social objectives, short-run versus long-term impacts, highways versus transit provision, speeds and flows versus access and connectivity, single-occupant vehicles versus non-motorized modes, trucks versus trains, access to seaports versus airports, local versus regional interests, national versus global interests, and so on. The Encyclopedia, presentations, and reports developed under this project will illuminate all these contexts, in the most straightforward of terms, with meaningful applications to illustrate their value and implications. The first year will be largely devoted to producing a Transportation Economics Encyclopedia (as a practitioner's desktop reference), and the second year will focus on provision of final case study applications, presentation slides by subject, workshops and a webinar series for bringing the subjects alive to TxDOT personnel, and any others TxDOT wishes to include in this educational process.

Project Number

0-6628

Status

Completed

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