Abstracts
Mobility in the twenty-first century has transformed into a multimodal experience. With goals of reducing impacts on the environment, society, and economy, sustainable transportation systems including trails, bikeways, transit, and even high-speed rail plans are being integrated and adopted within the Boston to Washington, D.C. (BosWash) corridor. Although rail and highway facilities originally formed the spine, the development and expansion of this megaregion requires reliance on non-vehicular mobility. This chapter highlights sustainable transportation systems, specifically non-motorized mobility and transit, using examples within the BosWash corridor. The facilities are explored in terms of their strengths in promoting sustainable mobility as well as future challenges and barriers to shifting away from automobile reliance and toward a more balanced multimodal system.
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Further Reading
The following references are provided as supplementary reading (in addition to the cited references in the next section) in regard to sustainable transportation planning and the BosWash Corridor. They are organized based on the following topics: background on sustainable transportation, non-motorized transportation, transit, and performance measures.
Background on Sustainable Transportation
Hamilton, Booz Allen. 2014. Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies, NCHRP Report 250. Washington DC: Transportation Research Board.
Jeon, C., and A. Amekudzi. 2005. Addressing Sustainability in Transportation Systems: Definitions, Indicators, and Metrics. Journal of Infrastructure Systems 11 (1): 31–50.
Litman, T. (2016). Issues in Sustainable Transportation, Victoria Transport Policy Institute. Available from: http://www.vtpi.org/sus_iss.pdf.
NJDOT and PennDOT. (2008). Smart Transportation Guidebook. Available from: http://www.nj.gov/transportation/community/mobility/pdf/smarttransportationguidebook2008.pdf.
UC Davis. National Center for Sustainable Transportation. Institute of Transportation Studies. Available from: https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/.
Non-motorized Transportation
NACTO. 2013. Urban Street Design Guide. Washington DC: Island Press.
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NYC DOT. (2015). Street Design Manual. Available from: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/streetdesignmanual.shtml.
Transit
AMTRAK. (2012). The AMTRAK Vision for Northeast Corridor-2012 Update. Available from: https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/453/325/Amtrak-Vision-for-the-Northeast-Corridor.pdf.
Litman, T. (2015). Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs. Victoria Transport Policy Institute. Available from: http://www.vtpi.org/tranben.pdf.
U.S. High Speed Rail Association. (2016). Northeast Corridor High Speed Rail. Available from: http://www.ushsr.com/hsr/nec.html.
WMATA. (2016). Metro Sustainability Report 2016. Available from: https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/programs/upload/Metro_Sustainability_Report_2016.pdf.
Performance Measures
FHWA. INVEST-Sustainable Highways Initiative. Available from: https://www.sustainablehighways.dot.gov/.
Greenroads Foundation. (2016). Greenroads Rating System. Available from: www.greenroads.org.
NYSDOT. (2016). GreenLITES. Available from: https://www.dot.ny.gov/programs/greenlites.
Oswald Beiler, M., and Waksmunski, E. (2015). Measuring the Sustainability of Shared-Use Paths: Development of the GreenPaths Rating System. Journal of Transportation Engineering, ASCE 141 (11), 04015026.
Oswald Beiler, M., S. McNeil, D. Ames, and R. Gayley. 2013. Identifying Resiliency Performance Measures for Megaregional Planning: A Case Study of the BosWash Transportation Corridor. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2397: 153–160.
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Oswald Beiler, M.R. (2018). Sustainable Transportation Planning in the BosWash Corridor. In: Brinkmann, R., Garren, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71389-2_43
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