Integrating Sustainability into Highway Projects: Sustainability Indicators and Assessment Tool for Michigan Roads

摘要

Studies have shown that nation's conventional highways are unsustainable in many aspects. Highways are facing severe challenges, such as deteriorating condition, congestion, energy supply and shortfall of funding for maintenance and capacity expansion to meet increasing demand. At the same time, they consume huge amount of exhaustible natural minerals and energy, and generate waste and emission which deteriorate global environment contributing to climate changes and reduction of the earth's sustaining capacity. Therefore, sustainable highway construction, maintenance and operations have become a prime concern these days. The study examines various research findings and best management practices in road construction industry including some established rating tools for building and some newly proposed tools for road. Finally, it identifies Indicators for sustainable roads for Michigan and develops a sustainability assessment tool to evaluate those indicators that can be expressed as a single comparable index as an end product.