Comparative Assessment of Transportation Sustainability Rating Systems

Abstract

<jats:p>The construction industry contributes a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions to the environment. This highlights the need for this industry to implement sustainable practices to mitigate its negative effects. Sustainability in the construction industry involves considering project development in terms of economic, social, and environmental aspects (triple bottom line). In the transportation sector of the construction industry, several transportation sustainability rating systems (TSRS) have been developed to measure and promote sustainability. However, studies show that these TSRS have not been developed within a consistent “sustainability scope”. This raises the question of the consistency of these TSRS in measuring sustainability of transportation projects. This study assesses three prominent TSRS to determine how each measures sustainability with respect to the triple bottom line. The TSRS that are in the scope of this study are: (i) Envision-a third-party rating system, (ii) INVEST-a self-assessed rating and, (iii) GreenLITES-an in-house developed self-assessed rating system for the New York State DOT. Results show that while these three rating systems provide different levels of credits/points with respect to the triple bottom line, they all place the highest focus on the environmental aspect.</jats:p>

Consistency between Infrastructure Rating Systems in Measuring Sustainability

“…Table 3 presents the high-level results for all five projects run through each of the three rating systems using the methodology described in this paper. Detailed discussion for Projects 2, 3, 4, and 5 (similar to the one presented for Project 1 herein) is available in Reference [19].…”