This synthesis presents information on current practices used by transportation agencies to complete the transportation development process (TDP). This process involves linking the planning, project development, environmental, design, construction, operations, and maintenance aspects of the overall transportation program. The purpose of the TDP is to implement a "seamless" process in which all these elements come together and in which there is continuous public involvement. This report will be of interest to regional and state transportation, planning, and environmental agencies who participate in the TDP and who are involved in both the development and policy aspects of the TDP. Administrators, engineers, and researchers are continually faced with highway problems on which much information exists, either in the form or in terms of undocumented experience and practice. Unfortunately, this information often is scattered and unevaluated and, as a consequence, in seeking solutions, full information on what has been learned about a problem frequently is not assembled. Costly research findings may go unused, valuable experience may be overlooked, and full consideration may not be given to available practices for solving or alleviating the problem. In an effort to correct this situation, a continuing NCHRP project, carried out by the Transportation Research Board as the research agency, has the objective of reporting on common highway problems and synthesising available information. The synthesis reports from this endeavour constitute an NCHRP publication series in which various forms of relevant information are assembled into single, concise documents pertaining to specific highway problems or sets of closely related problems. This report of the Transportation Research Board describes the history of the transportation development process, as well as the federal requirements that must be met under both transportation, and environmental regulations. This process is made more complex by state and local regulations that must be observed in most jurisdictions. Throughout this process, as carried out by the state transportation agencies and the metropolitan planning organisations, there is continuous public involvement. Other programs, such as the transportation implementation plan, state transportation implementation plan, and environmental programs such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, and requirements of other environmental laws must be integrated into the TDP. The complexities of this process are described, and some unique approaches to meeting its demands are presented. To develop this synthesis in a comprehensive manner and to ensure inclusion of significant knowledge, the Board analysed available information assembled from numerous sources, including a large number of state highway and transportation departments. A topic panel of experts in the subject area was established to guide the research in organising and evaluating the collected data, and to review the final synthesis report. This synthesis is an immediately useful document that records the practices that were acceptable within the limitations of the knowledge available at the time of its preparation. As the processes of advancement continue, new knowledge can be expected to be added to that now at hand. (A)
Abstract