Large-scale Transportation Infrastructure Research Articles

Olympic Transport Legacies: Rio de Janeiro’s Bus Rapid Transit System

Since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Olympic Games, large-scale transportation infrastructures have been transforming the city. We examine the transportation planning process and consequences of implementation in the run-up to the 2016 Olympic Games by triangulating qualitative and quantitative methods. We argue that because of the low cost, speed of implementation, best-practice knowledge, existing political coalitions, ease of land acquisition, and flexibility in planning, BRTs emerged as the dominant Olympic transport solution. We find that the transport planning process has undermined the public interest and placed the burdens of implementation disproportionally on the urban poor.

Theory and background of multi-criteria analysis: Toward a policy-led approach to mega transport infrastructure project appraisal

The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, to present a review and critical analysis of the varying forms and functions of Multi-Criteria Analysis presented in the literature, and secondly, drawing from this, to introduce methods and processes by which policy leadership can be introduced into such processes for the appraisal of large-scale transport infrastructure projects to form a policy-led multi-criteria analysis.Following the discussion in the first paper of this Special Issue, ‘Presenting the Case for the Application of Multi-Criteria Analysis to Mega Transport Project Infrastructure Appraisal’, this contribution commences by outlining further the generic features and challenges of multi-criteria analysis approaches to project appraisal whilst emphasizing the difference among various frameworks and attendant processes for such approaches. It also highlights the important role/value of the multi-criteria mapping of stakeholder policies and agendas affecting project decision-making as a means of defining and scoping the boundaries of the project exercise under study and the trade-off decision-spaces for stakeholder dialogues and negotiations in their search to arrive at mutually agreed actions and outcomes. The paper discusses how multi-criteria analysis frameworks can be tailor-designed for particular agencies and stakeholders developed around problems, challenges and issues. This is done in the acknowledgement that such exercises, especially when applied to mega infrastructure project appraisal, typically attract a multiple-institutional response and where ultimately an institutional leader (or partnership of stakeholders) exists/emerges that impose its/their priorities on others. Alternatively, the approach can be tailor-made for specific institutions with its imbedded hierarchy of policies and priorities that frame the stakeholder decision space within which other parties can participate and trade off interests.The first part of the paper highlights the important role of scenarios of policy-making contexts and policy leadership indicating the new risks, uncertainties and opportunities these may offer in multi-criteria analysis exercises, indicating that some/many past processes have been conducted outside of any real reference to such matters. In so doing, such applications have them silently and implicitly adopt scenarios and policy assumptions that are not transparent frequently reflecting, it is alleged, ‘business as usual’ circumstances in contexts when the signs are very much that these trends will not/cannot prevail. The authors contend that without explicit policy leadership there is a danger that certain institutional stakeholder priorities will be imposed over others by the most powerful without adequate dialogue. Understanding that this matters a great deal in contexts when project stakeholder powers shifts occur is very significant. Examples of such circumstances are when national governments become, less or more powerful and economically affluent, when relative legislative and regulation powers become less or more binding and powerful, and when a major private sector investor upon which a project depends goes bankrupt.The second half of the paper builds on these observations to offer a generic multi-criteria analysis framework and attendant processes that imbed policy leadership firmly within multi-stakeholder decision-making (termed Policy-led Multi-criteria Analysis). The framework developed is to be applied to mega transport projects via the use of suitable appraisal criteria in the pursuit of sustainable development goals, which seek to address both quantitative and qualitative dimensions and concerns of multiple stakeholders, with particular emphasis on the processes required to identify and incorporate suitable policy leadership, including feedback between appraisal and policy.

Modeling the impact of large-scale transportation infrastructure development on land cover

Transportation infrastructure and urban development are tightly connected and interact with each other. The objective of this paper is to measure the impact of large-scale transportation infrastructure locations on land cover. Spatial econometric models that link the impact of transportation infrastructure onto the urban evolution have been used with panel data (multiple time points). Land cover information was derived individually from two Landsat TM images (1984 and 2010) by applying a semi-automatic object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach, resulting in six generalized thematic categories. Data from multiple databases have been collected and cross-referenced. The study area is the Athens metropolitan area, Greece, where, during the last few decades, crucial transportation infrastructure has been developed and significant urbanization has been observed. Moreover, a fixed effects model has been developed for a study area, providing additional information for the differences across municipalities. The results of this research provide evidence toward the quantification of the impact of major road transportation infrastructure in urban development and can have applications in other areas that have not been yet fully developed.

A Secure Key Management Scheme for Heterogeneous Secure Vehicular Communication Systems

Abstract Intelligent transportation system (ITS) is proposed as the most effective way to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. However, the future of ITS for large scale transportation infrastructures deployment highly depends on the security level of vehicular communication systems (VCS). Therefore, security key management schemes are considered as a critical research topic for network security. In this paper, we propose a framework for providing secure key management within heterogeneous network. The security managers (SMs ) Play a key role in the framework by retrieving the vehicle departure information, encapsulating block to transport keys and then executing rekeying to vehicles within the same security domain. The first part of this framework is a novel Group Key Management (GKM) scheme basing on (LP) of vehicles to depart current VCS region. Vehicle's LP factor is introduced into GKM scheme to achieve a more efficient rekeying scheme and less rekeying costs. The second component of the framework using the blockchain concept to simplify the distributed key management in Heterogeneous VCS domains. Extensive simulations and analysis are provided to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework: Our GKM results demonstrate that probability-based BR reduces rekeying cost compared to the benchmark scheme, while the blockchain decreases the time cost of key transmission over heterogeneous networks.

The best of times and the worst of times: A new best–worst measure of attitudes toward public transport experiences

Attitudes play an important role in determining individual transit behaviour and the measurement of attitudes is relied on by public transit authorities’ world over. Given their role in behaviour and policy making, the accurate measurement of attitudes is of critical importance. Traditional satisfaction scales are prone to bias and on their own they are only a partial measure of attitudes. Given that satisfaction scales have been used to assist with large scale transport infrastructure investment decisions, to aid policy makers examining reactions to alternative policy changes and reform, and to measure the success of new initiatives, deriving robust satisfaction scales should be of critical importance. This paper introduces a dual version of best–worst scaling as an alternative measure of satisfaction. Best–worst scaling is free of the biases inherent in traditional response scales and is ideal for handling the comparative evaluation of large amount of attributes, particularly those which are inherently qualitative. The paper makes a further innovative contribution by proposing a model structure for the joint estimation of satisfaction and importance. Our model shows a better delineation between the attributes used to measure attitudes towards bus use and a more detailed understanding of the relationship between importance and satisfaction; enabling transport operators to better understand what counts most and assess their performance.

Accessibility and territorial cohesion in a case of transport infrastructure improvements with changing population distributions

In the last decade or so several studies have looked into the impacts of transport infrastructure improvements on decreasing territorial disparities. In those studies population levels are usually assumed static, although future population levels likely change in response to changing accessibility levels as well as to other factors. To test how much accessibility impacts may be affected by changes in population levels, this study explores the effects of foreseeable population changes on the accessibility improvements offered by large scale transport infrastructure investments. In this study we compare accessibility measures from four cases, namely the current situation; one case in which only transport investments are taken into account; and two cases that include transport investments and two scenarios with differing future population distributions that in turn are simulated by the LUISA land-use model. The modelled transport investments are assumed to improve travel times. The study concentrates on accessibility effects in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany and Poland. To provide a reference to the found results, the same computations are repeated with historical population and road network changes. The results indicate that differences in local population levels have a limited effect on average accessibility levels, but may have a large impact on territorial inequalities related to accessibility. The findings in this study underpin the importance of incorporating future local population levels when assessing the impacts of infrastructure investments on territorial disparities.

Land use change emission scenarios: anticipating a forest transition process in the Brazilian Amazon.

Following an intense occupation process that was initiated in the 1960s, deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon have decreased significantly since 2004, stabilizing around 6000 km(2) yr(-1) in the last 5 years. A convergence of conditions contributed to this, including the creation of protected areas, the use of effective monitoring systems, and credit restriction mechanisms. Nevertheless, other threats remain, including the rapidly expanding global markets for agricultural commodities, large-scale transportation and energy infrastructure projects, and weak institutions. We propose three updated qualitative and quantitative land-use scenarios for the Brazilian Amazon, including a normative 'Sustainability' scenario in which we envision major socio-economic, institutional, and environmental achievements in the region. We developed an innovative spatially explicit modelling approach capable of representing alternative pathways of the clear-cut deforestation, secondary vegetation dynamics, and the old-growth forest degradation. We use the computational models to estimate net deforestation-driven carbon emissions for the different scenarios. The region would become a sink of carbon after 2020 in a scenario of residual deforestation (~1000 km(2) yr(-1)) and a change in the current dynamics of the secondary vegetation - in a forest transition scenario. However, our results also show that the continuation of the current situation of relatively low deforestation rates and short life cycle of the secondary vegetation would maintain the region as a source of CO2 - even if a large portion of the deforested area is covered by secondary vegetation. In relation to the old-growth forest degradation process, we estimated average gross emission corresponding to 47% of the clear-cut deforestation from 2007 to 2013 (using the DEGRAD system data), although the aggregate effects of the postdisturbance regeneration can partially offset these emissions. Both processes (secondary vegetation and forest degradation) need to be better understood as they potentially will play a decisive role in the future regional carbon balance.

An econometric evaluation of the management of large-scale transport infrastructure in Spain during the great recession: Lessons for infrastructure bubbles

This paper reviews the way that air, rail, and toll motorways infrastructure have evolved in Spain since the beginning of the century, when all these types of transport have been subjected to a far-reaching economic crisis. Investments made in infrastructure during this time will also be analyzed in relative terms and compared to other countries in the European Union, as will the various policies applied to each of these modes of transport. The methodology applied in this paper is of the bottom-up type, in the sense that a thorough univariate–uniequational analysis is performed before proceeding to more complex, multivariate models. We found that the policy to drop fare prices for the HSR (AVE) has had an almost 14% positive effect on the number of passengers per kilometer for HS and long-distance trains, but it has also had a negative effect of as much as 16.7% on the number of domestic air passengers. The increase in airport taxes has not affected any of the endogenous variables, or major public investments in air terminals and new HSR lines, except for the Madrid–Barcelona AVE and Barcelona's T1. Domestic air transport has been seen to be more sensitive to the economic cycle than the other modes of transport. This paper contains a set of results that justify the need to use full and accurate “economic modeling” in the planning and management of what is generally very costly transport infrastructure.

Evaluating Proposed Transportation Infrastructure Projects in Metro Manila Using the Transport Co-Benefit Analysis

Several large scale transportation infrastructure projects have been proposed, with several already under construction, in Metro Manila by the current Administration such as the elevated expressway above the PNR line also known as the NLEx-SLEx connector, the NAIA expressway, the CALA and Lakeshore expressway projects as well as the proposed light rail transit (LRT) line 1 South Extension, bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, subway, among others. Some of these transportation infrastructure projects are for possible Public-Private Partnership (PPP) funding. Aside from the National Government's proposals, several private groups have also proposed transportation infrastructure projects in Metro Manila. This research analyzed and evaluated the impact of these proposed transport infrastructure projects on urban travel using the Transport Co-Benefit Analysis as developed by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). This research provides a macroscopic analysis regarding which proposed infrastructure projects would be beneficial to the people of Metro Manila.

Debate: Multi-criteria framework needed to assess alternative financing methods for large-scale projects

An historical appraisal of large-scale transport infrastructure projects shows that the choice of financing instrument has rarely been the outcome of a formal and systematic economic appraisal proc...

Experience of public private partnership in highway infrastructure development: an exploratory study of PPP mature countries and scenario in India

Public-private partnership (PPP) in which private sector partners take on increased responsibility for projects design, construction, financing and operation have become popular in various countries around the world as a means of delivering large-scale transportation infrastructure. Britain, Australia, France, Spain, Canada, Italy like PPP mature countries have implemented this model with less public debt and completed in a short span of 20 years. On the other hand, countries like China, Brazil, Malaysia, India, Belgium and Russia are implementing it as per their own requirements. However, PPPs can present more risk sharing to the private sector in design, implement and management. This model should only be considered if it can be demonstrated that they will achieve additional value, compared with traditional public procurement models. It can be an effective implementation structure only if the objectives of all parties can be met within the partnership. PPP is not the only method to deliver projects financing and realisation.

Institutions and the governance of transport infrastructure projects: Some insight from the planning and construction of the CentrePort Canada Way

The paper investigates the dynamics between institutions and the governance of transport infrastructure projects, focusing on the planning and construction process of the CentrePort Canada Way (CCW) project. The CCW is regarded as a pivotal project in helping CentrePort Canada, the major inland port in Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba, to become a major inland transport and logistics hub in catalyzing and promoting international trade between Manitoba, Canada and the world. It focuses on how institutions have caused paradigm shifts in the planning culture of infrastructure projects in Manitoba, notably the Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation (MIT)—how such shifts have transformed its initial idea, financial support, planning and construction of the CCW project. We hypothesize that institutions have influenced in an important manner on the direction of planning and development the CCW project, in both positive and negative ways. The paper offers insight to the roles of institutions on the planning and development process on large-scale transport infrastructure projects.

Estimation of carbon dioxide emission in highway construction: a case study in southwest region of China

The large-scale transportation infrastructure construction in developing countries such as China requires emission estimation method for better project design. This study proposed an empirical method to estimate carbon dioxide (CO2) emission which was generated from highway construction based on four real projects in southwest region of China. The proposed method estimated the total emission from different steps of construction process (raw material production, material transportation and onsite construction) by different project types (e.g. subgrade, pavement, bridge, and tunnels). The results show that in general over 80 percent of the CO2 emission was generated from raw material production; the onsite construction and material transportation only accounted for 10 and 3 percent of the whole CO2 emission, respectively. Moreover, the CO2 emission from bridge and tunnel constructions was much larger than subgrade and pavement construction. The total CO2 emission from road, bridge and tunnel constructions was 5229 kg/m, 35,547 kg/m and 42,302 kg/m, respectively. The empirical estimation method of the CO2 emission proposed in this study can be considered as references for CO2 emission estimation in other regions which are similar as southwest region of China.

Breaking Carbon Lock-In: Path Dependencies in Large-Scale Transportation Infrastructure Projects

The central focus of this paper is to highlight the ways in which path dependencies and increasing returns (network effects) serve to reinforce carbon lock-in in large-scale road transportation infrastructure projects. Breaking carbon lock-in requires drastic changes in the way we plan future transportation infrastructure projects, and documentary evidence presented here from the metropolitan regions of Copenhagen, Denmark and Portland, USA, indicate that there may be a discontinuity in the system of automobility (Urry, 2004), thereby increasing the likelihood that such drastic measures may in fact be successfully realized.

Trade Integration, Market Size, and Industrialization: Evidence from China's National Trunk Highway System

Large-scale transport infrastructure investments connect both large metropolitan centres of production as well as small peripheral regions. Are the resulting trade cost reductions a force for the diffusion of industrial and total economic activity to peripheral regions, or do they reinforce the concentration of production in space? This article exploits China's National Trunk Highway System as a large-scale natural experiment to contribute to our understanding of this question. The network was designed to connect provincial capitals and cities with an urban population above 500,000. As a side effect, a large number of small peripheral counties were connected to large metropolitan agglomerations. To address non-random route placements on the way between targeted city nodes, I propose an instrumental variable strategy based on the construction of least cost path spanning tree networks. The estimation results suggest that network connections have led to a reduction in GDP growth among non-targeted peripheral counties. This effect appears to be driven by a significant reduction in industrial output growth. Additional results present evidence in support of a trade-based channel in the light of falling trade costs between peripheral and metropolitan regions.

A 40-year-old divided highway does not prevent gene flow in the alpine newt Ichthyosaura alpestris

Roads are of major concern in conservation biology, as they are known to restrict animal movements through landscape fragmentation, and may therefore impact genetic patterns in native terrestrial organisms. We assessed the effect of two large-scale transportation infrastructures (LTIs), a 40-year-old highway and a 30 year-old high-speed railway, on the spatial genetic structure of the alpine newt Ichthyosaura alpestris, a highly nomadic amphibian. Genetic data were gathered following a targeted individual-based sampling scheme and analysed using both overlay and correlative methods. While simulations suggested that the highway may be old enough for a significant barrier effect to be detected, LTIs were never detected as barriers to gene flow: inferred genetic boundaries rather coincided with transition zones between major landscape entities. Furthermore, spatial principal component analysis, a method designed to reveal cryptic genetic spatial patterns in high gene flow species, counter-intuitively suggested that the highway may act as a potential dispersal corridor in low-quality habitats, thus challenging traditional hypotheses on road impacts in amphibians. Our study showed that considering local interactions between species, infrastructures and landscape-specific characteristics is essential for better understanding the potential impacts of roads on movement patterns in terrestrial organisms.

Territorial cohesion impacts of high-speed rail under different zoning systems

Large-scale transport infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail (HSR) produce significant effects on the spatial distribution of accessibility. These effects, commonly known as territorial cohesion effects, are receiving increasing attention in the research literature. However, there is little empirical research into the sensitivity of these cohesion results to methodological issues such as the definition of the limits of the study area or the zoning system. In a previous paper (Ortega et al., 2012), we investigated the influence of scale issues, comparing the cohesion results obtained at four different planning levels. This paper makes an additional contribution to our research with the investigation of the influence of zoning issues. We analyze the extent to which changes in the size of the units of analysis influence the measurement of spatial inequalities.The methodology is tested by application to the Galician (north-western) HSR corridor, with a length of nearly 670km, included in the Spanish PEIT (Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan) 2005–2020. We calculated the accessibility indicators for the Galician HSR corridor and assessed their corresponding territorial distribution. We used five alternative zoning systems depending on the method of data representation used (vector or raster), and the level of detail (cartographic accuracy or cell size). Our results suggest that the choice between a vector-based and raster-based system has important implications. The vector system produces a higher mean accessibility value and a more polarized accessibility distribution than raster systems. The increased pixel size of raster-based systems tends to give rise to higher mean accessibility values and a more balanced accessibility distribution. Our findings strongly encourage spatial analysts to acknowledge that the results of their analyses may vary widely according to the definition of the units of analysis.

Multi-entity perspective transportation infrastructure investment decision making

Investment in new large transportation infrastructure is capital-intensive and irreversible in nature. Private sector participation in infrastructure investment has gained popularity in recent times because of scarcity of resources at the public sector, and because of the ability of the private sector to build, operate, maintain such facilities, and share future uncertainties. In such cases, there are multiple entities each with different objectives in the project. Traditional techniques used to determine feasibility of such projects and do not consider two critical elements. These are the need (1) to identify major entities involved in these projects and their individual objectives, and (2) the importance of analyzing measures of effectiveness of each entity in a multi-objective context. A framework is proposed to address these issues along with a set of relaxation policies to reflect the nature and level of participation by the entities.First, the feasibility of each single entity perspective is determined and next, a multi-objective optimization (MOO) is proposed reflecting the perspectives of all entities. The MOO results in pareto-optimal solutions to serve as tradeoff between the participation levels of the multiple entities. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used as a tool to narrow down number of options for decision makers for further consideration. AHP and MOO are integrated to determine the feasibility of strategies from multi-entity perspectives. The framework is examined on the proposed multibillion dollar international river crossing connecting the city of Detroit in the U.S. and the city of Windsor in Canada. This methodology provides a decision making process tool for large-scale transportation infrastructure investment consisting of multiple entities.

A methodology for evaluating environmental co-benefits in the transport sector: application to the Delhi metro

This paper presents a methodology to measure the environmental co-benefits of transport initiatives, defined here as carbon emissions in conjunction with local air pollution. An evaluation tool was developed and then tested on the case of the Delhi metro. The metro is an extensive rail project spanning the Indian capital, which is also the world's first rail based Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project. However, it has also been a flashpoint in urban policy-making in the city in recent years. This analysis identifies the co-benefits based on the current situation as well potential co-benefits based on increased ridership and altering mode share contributions. The paper then discusses the challenges faced in the quantification process and the practical implications of achieving increased co-benefits. The paper highlights issues of data quality as well as data access, whilst identifying that factors peripheral to the project itself can have a critical effect in achieving co-benefits from large scale transport infrastructure projects in developing countries.

Eminent Domain and High-Speed Rail in California: Sustaining Popular Support for Large-scale Transportation Infrastructure in the Aftermath of Kelo v. City of New London

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2012-0025 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2013; 5(4): 731–753 Yishaiya Abosch* Eminent Domain and High-Speed Rail in California: Sustaining Popular Support for Large-scale Transportation Infrastructure in the Aftermath of Kelo v. City of New London Abstract: The Fifth Amendment limits government’s power to take private prop- erty to uses that are “public,” but the US Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to specify any limitation, preferring instead to defer to the judgment of politi- cal authorities on the validity of challenged takings. This paper explores a little noticed implication of judicial deference in relation to the controversy over California’s high-speed rail project: Absent independent audit of the planning process, even normally unobjectionable takings to establish transportation rights of way may appear inequitable, rally opposition, and fatally diminish the popular support required to sustain major infrastructure investments over many years. Keywords: eminent domain; high-speed rail; property. *Corresponding author: Yishaiya Abosch, California State University, Fresno – Political ­Science, 2225 E San Ramon, M/S MF19, Fresno, CA 93740, USA, Tel.: +559-278-8396, e-mail: yabosch@csufresno.edu 1 Introduction Public discussion of California’s high-speed rail project has so far highlighted questions about funding, routing, and profitability. As important as these issues are, however, none directly addresses the most urgent concern for the people most directly affected. Thousands of residents and businesses in California’s Central Valley will lose property, many against their will, and the growing sense that the project as a whole will never be completed strengthens opposition and makes completion even less likely. 1 The government’s ability to take private prop- 1 This study is limited to the issue of justifying takings to establish a right of way in the con- text of a segmented railroad project unlikely ever to be completed. It is agnostic on the many questions pertaining to the general feasibility of high-speed rail. For a taste of the disputes in the latter area compare the entry “Myths vs. Facts” on the Californians for High-Speed Rail blog (http://www.ca4hsr.org/hsr-info-2/myths-vs-facts/) with Joseph Vranich, et al. “The Cali- fornia High-Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report” (http://reason.org/news/show/the- california-high-speed-rail).