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Abstract
This paper discusses the selection of indicators for comprehensive and sustainable
transportation planning. It discusses the concept of sustainability and the role of
indicators in planning, describes factors to consider when selecting indicators, identifies
potential problems with conventional indicators, describes examples of indicators, and
provides recommendations for selecting indicators for use in a particular situation.
Published as:
“Developing Indicators For Comprehensive And Sustainable Transport Planning,” Transportation
Research Record 2017, TRB (www.trb.org), 2007, pp. 10-15.
Introduction
How things are measured can affect their perceived value. A particular activity or option
may seem desirable and successful when measured one way, but undesirable and
ineffective when measured in another. It is therefore important to understand the
assumptions and implications of different types of measurements.
For example, doctors usually check their patients’ weight during medical exams. But
weight by itself indicates little about health. It would be wrong to assume that everybody
who weighs less than 175 pounds is healthy and everybody who weighs more than 175
pounds is unhealthy. People with different heights and builds have different optimal
weights, so medical professionals must use weight-height tables or body-mass indices to
interpret the health implications of a person’s weight. Weight is relatively easy to
measure, but it is just one health factor. Focusing too much attention on weight may
distract doctors from considering other important but more difficult to measure health
factors, such as whether patients’ diet, fitness activities, and other behaviors.
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
Sustainable Transportation
There is growing interest in sustainability and its implications for transport planning (3).
Sustainability reflects the fundamental human desire to create a better future world and
leave a positive and durable legacy. Sustainability emphasizes the integrated nature of
human activities and therefore the need to coordinate decisions among different sectors,
groups and jurisdictions. Sustainability planning (also called comprehensive planning)
considers society’s overall, long-term goals. It means that local, short-term decisions are
consistent with strategic, regional and global, long-term goals. This contrasts with
reductionist planning, in which problems are assigned to a profession or organization
with narrow responsibilities and goals, which can result in solutions to one problem that
exacerbate other problems facing society (4).
“Sustainability is equity and harmony extended into the future, a careful journey
without an endpoint, a continuous striving for the harmonious co-evolution of
environmental, economic and socio-cultural goals.” (7)
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
These impacts can be defined in terms of goals, objectives, targets and thresholds. For
example, a planning process may involve establishing traffic congestion indicators
(defining how congestion will be measured), goals (the amount of congestion reduction
desired, including factors such as whether reductions are particularly important for
certain trips or vehicles, such as trucks and buses), objectives (shifts in travel time and
mode to reduce congestion) and targets (specific, feasible changes in congestion
impacts or travel behavior that should be achieved), and thresholds (levels beyond
which additional actions will be taken to reduce congestion).
Different types of indicators reflect different perspectives and assumptions. Some focus
on vehicle travel or mobility, but a better perspective considers accessibility (the ability to
reach activities and destinations), taking into account travel options and land use
patterns. For example, roadway level-of-service (LOS) primarily reflects automobile
travel congestion. It indicates little about the quality of other modes or land use
accessibility. A planning process that relies primarily on roadway LOS to evaluate
transport system performance implicitly assumes that automobile travel is the most
important mode and congestion is the most important problem. Two areas can have
equal roadway LOS ratings but very different overall transport system performance due
to differences in transport diversity and the distribution of destinations. Similarly,
measuring impacts per vehicle-mile, per passenger-mile, per capita or per unit of
economic activity reflect different perspectives and assumptions about what is important
and desirable.
Indicators can reflect various levels, as illustrated in Table 2. For example, indicators
may reflect the decision-making process (the quality of planning), responses (travel
patterns), physical impacts (emission and accident rates), effects this has on people and
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
the environment (injuries and deaths, and ecological damages), and their economic
impacts (costs to society due to crashes and environmental degradation). The use of
indicators is just one step in the overall planning process, which includes consulting
stakeholders, defining problems, establishing goals and objectives; identifying and
evaluating options, developing policies and plans, implementing programs, establishing
performance targets and measuring impacts.
Many impacts are best evaluated using relative indicators, such as trends over time,
comparisons between different groups or activities within the jurisdiction, or comparisons
with other jurisdictions. Indicators can reflect whether trends are positive or negative with
respect to objectives. Equity can be evaluated based on how disadvantaged groups
(people with low incomes, physical disabilities or other disadvantages) compare with
other groups in terms of their transport options and impacts. Communities and agencies
can be evaluated by comparing their performance with peers.
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
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Sustainability indicators can be integrated with other types of accounting statistics (12).
Indicator sets should be derived as much as possible from existing accounting data sets,
while existing accounting data should be extended towards sustainable development
requirements.
Hart recommends asking the following questions about potential indicators (13):
• Is it relevant to the community's definition of sustainability? Sustainability in an urban or
suburban area can be quite different from sustainability in a rural town. How well does the
direction the indicator is pointing match the community's vision of sustainability?
• Is it understandable to the community at large? If it is understood only by experts, it will
only be used by experts.
• Is it developed, accepted, and used by the community? How much do people really think
about the indicator? We all know how much money we make every year. How many
people really know how much water they use in a day?
• Does it provide a long-term view of the community? Is there information about where the
community has been as well as where the community should be in 20, 30, or 50 years?
• Does it link the different areas of the community? The areas to link are: culture/social,
economy, education, environment, health, housing, quality of life, politics, population,
public safety, recreation, resource consumption/use, and transportation.
• Is it based on information that is reliable, accessible, timely and accurate?
• Does the indicator focus on local sustainability that is at the expense of global
sustainability? Any indicator that says "we are going to be better off by making someone
else worse off" should not generally be used. This does not mean that one community
cannot be better than another community. There will always be communities that succeed
while others fail; it just means that a community should not try to achieve sustainability at
the expense of another community.
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
This issue can be viewed from an economic efficiency perspective. Current transport
markets are distorted in ways that result in economically excessive motor vehicle travel,
including various forms of road and parking underpricing, uncompensated environmental
impacts, biased transport planning practices (e.g., dedicated highway funding, modeling
that overlooks generated traffic effect, etc.), and land use planning practices that favor
lower-density, automobile-oriented development (e.g., restrictions on density and multi-
family housing, minimum parking supply, pricing that favors urban-fringe locations, etc.)
Some analysis indicates that more than a third of all motor vehicle travel results from
these distortions (15).
To the degree that market distortions increase vehicle travel beyond what is
economically optimal (beyond what consumers would choose in an efficient market), the
additional vehicle travel can be considered unsustainable and policies that correct these
distortions increase sustainability. In this context, vehicle mileage and shifts to non-
automobile modes can be considered sustainability indicators. This may not apply in
some situations, such as in developing countries when vehicle ownership is growing
from low to medium levels, and where transportation markets are efficient.
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
Best Practices
The following principles should be applied when selecting transportation performance
indicators (13, 16):
Comprehensive – Indicators should reflect various economic, social and environmental
impacts, and various transport activities (such as both personal and freight transport).
Data quality – Data collection practices should reflect high standards to insure that
information is accurate and consistent.
Comparable – Data collection should be standardized so the results are suitable for
comparison between various jurisdictions, times and groups. Indicators should be clearly
defined. For example, “Number of people with good access to food shopping” should
specify ‘good access’ and ‘food shopping.’
Easy to understand – Indicators must useful to decision-makers and understandable to
the general public. The more information condensed into a single index the less meaning
it has for specific policy targets (for example, Ecological Footprint analysis incorporates
many factors) and the greater the likelihood of double counting.
Accessible and Transparent – Indicators (and the data they are based on) and analysis
details should be available to all stakeholders.
Cost effective – The suite of indicators should be cost effective to collect. The decision-
making worth of the indicators must outweigh the cost of collecting them.
Net Effects – Indicators should differentiate between net (total) impacts and shifts of
impacts to different locations and times.
Performance targets – select indicators that are suitable for establishing usable
performance targets.
Table 3 lists recommended indicator sets grouped into Most Important (should usually
be used), Helpful (should be used if possible) and Specialized (should be used to reflect
particular needs or objectives).
Much of the data required for these indicators may be available through existing
sources, such as censuses and consumer surveys, travel surveys and other reports.
Some data can be collected during regular planning activities. For example, travel
surveys and traffic counts can be modified to better account for alternative modes, and
to allow comparisons between different groups (e.g., surveys can include questions to
categorize respondents). Some indicators require special data that may require
additional resources to collect.
Some of these indicators overlap. For example, there are several indicators of transport
diversity (quality and quantity of travel options, mode split, quality of nonmotorized
transport, amount of non-motorized transport, etc.), and cost-based pricing (the degree
to which prices reflect full costs) is considered an indicator of both economic efficiency
and equity/fairness. It may be most appropriate to use just one such indicator, or if
several similar indicators are used, give each a smaller weight.
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
Comprehensive, lifecycle analysis should be used, taking into account all costs and
resources used, including production, distribution and disposal. The analysis should
indicate if costs are shifted to other locations, times and groups.
These data can be presented in various ways to show trends, differences between
groups and areas, comparison with peer jurisdictions or agencies, and levels compared
with recognized standards. Overall impacts should generally be evaluated per capita,
rather than per unit of travel (e.g., per vehicle-mile) in order to take into account the
effects of changes in the amount of travel that occurs.
These indicators can be used to establish specific performance targets and contingency-
based plans (for example, a particularly emission reduction policy or program is to be
implemented if pollution levels reach a specific threshold, or a community will receive a
reward for achieving a particular rating or award if it achieves a particular mode shift).
It may be appropriate to use a limited set of indicators which reflect the scale, resources
and responsibilities of a particular sector, jurisdiction or agency. For example, a
transportation agency might only measure transportation impacts involving the modes,
clients and geographic area it serves. Special sustainability analysis and indicators may
be applied to freight or aviation sectors.
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Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable Transport Planning
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Conclusions
Indicators are things we measure to evaluate progress toward goals and objectives.
Such indicators have many uses: they can help identify trends, predict problems, assess
options, set performance targets, and evaluate a particular jurisdiction or organization.
Indicators are equivalent to senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) – they determine
how things are perceived and what receives attention. Which indicators are used can
significantly affect planning decisions. An activity or option may seem good and
desirable when evaluated using one set of indicators, but harmful when evaluated using
another. It is therefore important to carefully select indicators that reflects overall goals.
It is also important to be realistic when selecting indicators, taking into account data
availability, understandability and usefulness in decision-making.
There are currently no standardized indicator sets for comprehensive and sustainable
transport planning. Each jurisdiction or organization must develop its own set based on
needs and abilities. It would be useful for major planning and professional organizations
to establish recommended sustainable transportation indicator sets, data collection
standards, and evaluation best practices in order to improve sustainability planning and
facilitate comparisons between jurisdictions, organizations and time periods.
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Endnotes
1
Todd Litman (2005), Well Measured: Developing Indicators for Comprehensive and Sustainable
Transport Planning, VTPI (www.vtpi.org); at www.vtpi.org/wellmeas.pdf.
2
Henrik Gudmundsson (2001), Indicators and Performance Measures for Transportation, Environment
and Sustainability in North America, National Environmental Research Institute, Roskilde, Denmark
(www.dmu.dk/1_viden/2_Publikationer/3_arbrapporter/default.asp).
3
Todd Litman and David Burwell (2006), “Issues in Sustainable Transportation,” International Journal of
Global Environmental Issues, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 331-347; at www.vtpi.org/sus_iss.pdf.
4
Todd Litman (2003), “Measuring Transportation: Traffic, Mobility and Accessibility,” ITE Journal
(www.ite.org), Vol. 73, No. 10, October 2003, pp. 28-32; at www.vtpi.org/measure.pdf.
5
Timothy Beatley (1995), “The Many Meanings of Sustainability,” Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 9,
No. 4, May, 1995, pp. 339-342.
6
WCED (1987), Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development, Brundtland
Commission (http://ringofpeace.org/environment/brundtland.html).
7
Voula Mega and Jørn Pedersen (1998), Urban Sustainability Indicators, European Foundation For The
Improvement Of Living And Working Conditions (http://eurofound.europa.eu); at
http://eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/1998/07/en/1/ef9807en.pdf.
8
TRB (1997), Committee for a Study on Transportation and a Sustainable Environment, Toward A
Sustainable Future; Addressing the Long-Term Effects of Motor Vehicle Transportation on Climate and
Ecology, National Academy Press (www.trb.org).
9
CST (2005), Sustainable Transportation Performance Indicators, Centre for Sustainable Transportation
(www.cstctd.org); available at http://cst.uwinnipeg.ca/completed.html.
10
MOST (1999), Moving on Sustainable Transportation, Transport Canada
(www.tc.gc.ca/envaffairs/most).
11
Jansson, et al (1994), Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to
Sustainability, International Society for Ecological Economics, Island Press (www.islandpress.org).
12
Federal Statistical Office Germany (2005), Sustainable Development Indicators And Accounting, United
Nations Economic And Social Affairs
(http://unstats.un.org/unsd/envAccounting/ceea/meetings/prelim7.pdf).
13
Maureen Hart (1997), Evaluating Indicators: A Checklist for Communities, Johnson Foundation
(www.johnsonfdn.org/spring97/indicators.html).
14
Brian Dudson (1998), “When Cars are Clean and Clever: A Forward-looking View of Sustainable and
Intelligent Automobile Technologies,” Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 3, Fall 1998, pp. 103-120.
15
Todd Litman (2007), Socially Optimal Transport Prices and Markets, VTPI (www.vtpi.org).
16
Greg Marsden, Charlotte Kelly and Carolyn Snell (2006), Selecting Indicators For Strategic
Performance Management, Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (www.trb.org); available at
www.mdt.mt.gov/research/docs/trb_cd/Files/06-0378.pdf.
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www.vtpi.org/sus_tran_ind.pdf
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