Objectives: Review existing case studies, increase awareness, and fill gaps by supporting new analytical case studies, demonstrations, pilots, and evaluation of innovative transportation, land development, and other strategies that make communities more sustainable, in particular with respect to potentially irreversible environmental effects.
Discussion: This initiative will begin with a review of existing case studies and a strategy for increasing awareness and adapting them to local needs. This initiative will then apply research to demonstrate and evaluate how innovative approaches to transportation systems and land development can help build sustainable communities. Following an analysis of gaps in the existing base of pilot programs, ideas to be tested will be initiated by local partners benefiting from the research component of this Plan. These efforts will allow evaluation of hypotheses about how a range of innovative transportation and land development strategies can promote sustainability through improving the balance between economic, environmental, and social equity goals.
New pilot projects will include evaluations of the ability to produce broad sustainability effects. This initiative will develop and apply a rigorous, broad-based, but flexible, methodology, developed in cooperation with states, MPOs and other stakeholders, to evaluate the results of selected pilot projects. This initiative will also seek to leverage additional state, regional, local, and private funding for evaluation and mainstreaming of current pilot programs, and complementary Federal programs, including the TCSP.
Outputs:
Increased awareness of existing strategies and applicable case studies, and better adaptation of those strategies to local needs.
Development of a flexible multi-disciplinary methodology for evaluating the potential sustainability effects of various transportation and land development strategies.
Case studies of a broad range of innovative community, regional, and state transportation and land development innovations to meet sustainability goals.
Outcomes: By drawing upon the knowledge base generated by new and existing case studies, local, regional, state, and Federal transportation decisions, investments, and strategies contribute to measurable increases in sustainability. Related decision making processes and documents make direct reference to such studies.
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