Competitiveness of Alternative Transportation Modes

(PI: Chandra Bhat, CoPIs: Mike Walton & Kara Kockelman)

Because of the potentially considerable economic, environmental and social implications of growing congestion and out-of-kilter (unbalanced) growth in highway traffic, it is essential that TxDOT and metropolitan planning agencies adopt an informed anticipatory (pro-active) role to accommodate future needs in a way that achieves sustainable balanced utilization of alternative modes. To this end, it is desired to develop a decision support framework that lies at the core of a systematic ongoing process of strategic evaluation and planning at the statewide and metropolitan levels. Critical to this framework is the ability to model and forecast the dynamics of competition between modes, for both people and freight, and their interaction with the strategic supply actions of TxDOT and major metropolitan planning organizations. This modeling and decision support capability is the principal focus of the proposed project. This project will determine measures of competitiveness of various modes of transporting people and freight, assess the competitiveness of existing modes, and model identified factors that drive a shift from one mode to another.