Transportation and Economic Development

Priority Research Areas

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Climate Change Mitigation and Carbon Pricing Effects on Transportation Investment and Sustainable Economic Development

• Analyze the effects of carbon pricing via either cap/trade or carbon tax on fuel substitution effects; modal substitution effects, long-term co-location of industrial suppliers with original equipment suppliers on emission reductions.

• Test implicit lower carbon burden claims of smart growth paradigm with simulation studies based on existing case studies of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and other smart growth development throughout the nation.

• Assess whether there are relevant applications of the smart growth paradigm to non-metro and rural areas for transportation and economic development.

• Would carbon pricing drive import substitution of alternative fuels and technology for oil and reduce the merchandise trade deficit in the US and trade imbalances globally?

• Would carbon pricing also reduce the trade and transportation volume of certain commodities groups and lead to more indigenous production?

 

Economic Development Implications of Transportation Disinvestment: Macroeconomic Effects, Intermodal Tradeoffs, and Methods for Managing Disinvestment Decision making in an Era of Constrained Resources

• Benefit-cost analysis and economic impact analysis have traditionally been applied to project evaluation and decision making in an era of growth. Now in a period of constrained resources these tools can be deployed to address a range of transportation decisions about minimizing the repercussions on economic growth, as well as optimizing development.

• Develop strategies and tools to integrate economic analysis with asset management to optimize system integrity for disinvestment scenarios.

• Determine how disinvestment affects intermodal tradeoffs.

• Alternative evaluation methods of disinvestment impacts on critical infrastructure using BCA and EIA tools.

• Evaluating system integrity arising from transportation disinvestment in infrastructure for non-metro areas vs. metro areas.

• Distributional asymmetries of disinvestment economic development impacts.

• Network effects and path dependencies in disinvestment scenarios.

 

Economic Impact Analysis (EIA) into Project Selection Processes at the Federal, State, Regional Level

• Explore recently developed methods and systems for EIA related to prioritization of transportation projects. Analysis tools should be evaluated and improved to aid federal, state, and regional agencies with setting priorities in state and regional transportation plans and for distributing scarce transportation funding.

• Explore USDOT -TIGER use of EIA processes for inclusion in the analysis of transportation projects. See Bipartisan Policy Center Report By Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Martin Wachs

• Evaluate data gathered for the ARRA/TIGER project funding process on economic impacts

• Evaluate the use of benefit cost analysis of ARRA/TIGER projects (perhaps a joint effort with Transportation Economics Committee)

 

Economic Impacts of Public Transportation, Transit Oriented Development and High Speed Rail

• Assessment of the “bottom up”/land use analysis with regional economic models for assessing development impacts.

• Explore the linkage between TOD economic development estimates and value capture financing strategies.

• Examine the economic impacts of public transportation investments from a historical perspective to determine actual impacts rather than prospective impacts.

• Examine the European, Japanese and Chinese experiences with economic growth resulting from development of high-speed rail investments, perhaps looking at historical changes/results.

 

Benefits Analysis of Investments in Transport Systems (Freight, Transit, Highways, other modes)

• Develop quantitative analysis frameworks to measure business and non-business benefits.

• Conduct benefit analysis of increased transport access - where and when does it make sense?

• Energing issues in benefit quantification

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Economic Development Effects of Agglomeration – Revisited

• Analyze the competitive effects on industrial clusters of performance of changes due to intermodal investments.

• Analyze the transportation efficiency benefits of the original Toyota regionally centered production system of suppliers as compared to the global supplier chains based on just-in-time integrated production systems. http://twi-institute.com/pdfs/article_DecodingToyotaProductionSystem.pdf

• Evaluate the inclusion of economic development benefits of agglomeration/productivity into benefit-cost analysis, building on the UK and European experiences.

 

Prospective Research Areas

 

Economic Development Implications of Efficiency gains in Cross Border Intermodal Transportation Investments

• Identification of cross‐border processes that would expedite clearance procedures, and lead to trade flow increases and higher economic impacts.

• Identify intelligent and random (smarter and more efficient) screening procedures versus physical inspections and their impacts.

• Identify opportunities for closer collaboration among different modal groups (e.g., highway, rail, marine, and aviation) and geographies to achieve greater efficiencies and development benefits.

 

Economic Development Implications of Innovative Finance Arrangements

• Explore methods for hedging public sector revenue risks in public-private tolled infrastructure contracts so that long term benefits can be shared to optimize economic development from transportation investments.

• Further implications of economic development impacts under public-private sector agreements on regional and local stakeholders.

• Explore obstacles to public-private partnerships in developing countries including privatization experiences in countries with highly developed state economic controls.(via case studies of China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Malaysia)

• Explore value capture taxing strategies between private sector developers and transport agency.

 

 

Methods and Techniques for Communicating Economic Development Impacts to the Public and Policy Makers

• Work is needed to improve communication strategies for conveying information to public and policy makers about economic analysis methods and results.

 

Explore the Use of Integrating Asset Management and Travel Demand Models into Economic Development Analysis

 

Tools and Techniques for Economic Impact Analysis of Transportation Technology improvements

• How does the recent development and implementation of ITS technologies affect economic development and how do practitioners model these impacts?

• Conduct economic development impact analysis of ITS and integrate with benefit/costs of ITS.

 

Roadway Maintenance and Operations Performance Trends and Economic Performance

• Past studies have indicated that roadway surface conditions have had an impact on economic performance, as has congestion. More detailed statistical analyses are needed to enhance understanding of these relationships and to inform future policy making on the importance of fully funding transportation systems.