Including Equity in Benefit-Cost Analysis

Transportation planning and funding decisions often have significant equity impacts; however, few transportation agencies today integrate equity considerations into their transportation prioritization processes. Most practitioners and decision-makers sincerely want to achieve equity objectives, but transportation equity can be difficult to evaluate because there are various factors such as demographics, income, ability, geographic location, and travel considerations. In 2018, the New Zealand Transport Agency published a robust framework for integrating equity considerations into benefit-cost-analysis (BCA). This included a discussion of the full-spectrum of measures and implementation methodologies that could be used to include these measures in benefit-cost analyses. It also discussed methods to geospatially analyze how costs and benefits of each measure are distributed through the population. In this way the New Zealand government could better address how a proposed transportation project affects social equity. Building from New Zealand's example, the purpose of this research is to establish user-friendly approaches to integrate equity into North Carolina Department of Transportation's (NCDOT's) BCA processes. This will involve the development of two cross-modal measures: air quality and physical health that can be included into NCDOT's strategic planning and prioritization processes. As a key component of this research, cross-modal measures will be validated through three hypothetical project prioritization scenarios. These scenarios will discuss the potential changes in transportation project scoring outcomes, based on the benefits and costs selected for analysis.​

• Record URL:
  https://connect.ncdot.gov/projects/research/Pages/ProjDetails.aspx?ProjectID=2022-17

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $194010
• Contract Numbers:

  FHWA/NC/2022-17

• Sponsor Organizations:

  North Carolina Department of Transportation

  Research and Development
  1549 Mail Service Center
  Raleigh, NC  United States  27699-1549
• Managing Organizations:

  North Carolina Department of Transportation

  Research and Development
  1549 Mail Service Center
  Raleigh, NC  United States  27699-1549
• Project Managers:

  Bradley, Curtis

• Performing Organizations:

  North Carolina State University, Raleigh

  Institute for Transportation Research and Education
  Campus Box 8601
  Raleigh, NC  United States  27695-8601
• Principal Investigators:

  Huntsinger, Leta

• Start Date: 20210801
• Expected Completion Date: 20230731
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality; Benefit cost analysis; Equity; Health; Strategic planning
• Identifier Terms: New Zealand Transport Agency
• Geographic Terms: New Zealand
• Subject Areas: Environment; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; Society; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01778639
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: North Carolina Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: FHWA/NC/2022-17
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Aug 4 2021 9:26AM