Transportation System Health: Meeting Deficiency Needs and Growth Aspirations Systemically

Abstract

Different concepts of health have been applied to transportation and other built infrastructure systems in the literature and in practice. The 2012 national surface transportation legislation, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, established a performance-based planning framework requiring the development of performance measures and targets with progress reporting by state, metropolitan, and local agencies toward achieving seven national goals. Although performance-based planning offers a formal platform on which to plan systematically to achieve goals, one of the key challenges is how best to manage transportation system performance in nonuniform metropolitan regions and local jurisdictions to achieve uniform statewide and national goals. Motivated by this issue, this study developed the concept of transportation system health (TSH) with a focus on fulfilling both basic needs and beyond-basic needs of the communities that transportation systems serve, with Maslow’s theory of human motivation as a foundation. Potential applications of the TSH framework are discussed, with examples highlighting their significance for multiscale and context-sensitive planning and decision making. This paper is potentially useful to practitioners looking for systematic approaches to support identifying strategic goals, determining priorities, selecting performance measures, and setting targets in nonuniform regions to achieve uniform statewide goals.