Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions
As road conditions worsen, users experience an increase in fuel consumption and vehicle wear and tear. This increases the costs incurred by the drivers, and also increases the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that vehicles emit. Pavement condition can be improved through rehabilitation activities (...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2014-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/104020 |
| _version_ | 1797747986364628992 |
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| author | Darren Reger Samer Madanat Arpad Horvath |
| author_facet | Darren Reger Samer Madanat Arpad Horvath |
| author_sort | Darren Reger |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | As road conditions worsen, users experience an increase in fuel consumption and vehicle wear and tear. This increases the costs incurred by the drivers, and also increases the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that vehicles emit. Pavement condition can be improved through rehabilitation activities (resurfacing) to reduce the effects on users, but these activities also have significant cost and GHG emission impacts. The objective of pavement management is to minimize total societal (user and agency) costs. However, the environmental impacts associated with the cost-minimizing policy are not currently accounted for. We show that there exists a range of potentially optimal decisions, known as the Pareto frontier, in which it is not possible to decrease total emissions without increasing total costs and vice versa. This research explores these tradeoffs for a system of pavement segments. For a case study, a network was created from a subset of California’s highways using available traffic data. It was shown that the current resurfacing strategy used by the state’s transportation agency, Caltrans, does not fall on the Pareto frontier, meaning that significant savings in both total costs and total emissions can be achieved by switching to one of the optimal policies. The methods presented in this paper also allow the decision maker to evaluate the impact of other policies, such as reduced vehicle kilometers traveled or better construction standards. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:58:28Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-48f794bc05e6410195f90081e08be058 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:58:28Z |
| publishDate | 2014-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-48f794bc05e6410195f90081e08be0582023-08-09T14:43:37ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262014-01-0191010402010.1088/1748-9326/9/10/104020Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissionsDarren Reger0Samer Madanat1Arpad Horvath2Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California , Berkeley, 116 McLaughlin Hall #1720, Berkeley, CA 94720, USADepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California , Berkeley, 109 McLaughlin Hall #1720, Berkeley, CA 94720, USADepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California , Berkeley, 215 McLaughlin Hall #1720, Berkeley, CA 94720, USAAs road conditions worsen, users experience an increase in fuel consumption and vehicle wear and tear. This increases the costs incurred by the drivers, and also increases the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that vehicles emit. Pavement condition can be improved through rehabilitation activities (resurfacing) to reduce the effects on users, but these activities also have significant cost and GHG emission impacts. The objective of pavement management is to minimize total societal (user and agency) costs. However, the environmental impacts associated with the cost-minimizing policy are not currently accounted for. We show that there exists a range of potentially optimal decisions, known as the Pareto frontier, in which it is not possible to decrease total emissions without increasing total costs and vice versa. This research explores these tradeoffs for a system of pavement segments. For a case study, a network was created from a subset of California’s highways using available traffic data. It was shown that the current resurfacing strategy used by the state’s transportation agency, Caltrans, does not fall on the Pareto frontier, meaning that significant savings in both total costs and total emissions can be achieved by switching to one of the optimal policies. The methods presented in this paper also allow the decision maker to evaluate the impact of other policies, such as reduced vehicle kilometers traveled or better construction standards.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/104020transportationoptimizationpavementasphaltParetoLCCA |
| spellingShingle | Darren Reger Samer Madanat Arpad Horvath Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions Environmental Research Letters transportation optimization pavement asphalt Pareto LCCA |
| title | Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions |
| title_full | Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions |
| title_fullStr | Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions |
| title_short | Economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing: tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions |
| title_sort | economically and environmentally informed policy for road resurfacing tradeoffs between costs and greenhouse gas emissions |
| topic | transportation optimization pavement asphalt Pareto LCCA |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/104020 |
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