Transportation Infrastructure Project Evaluation: Transforming CBA to Include a Life Cycle Perspective

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015 adopted a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which reveal the need for the integration of the three main dimensions of sustainable development: The economic, social, and environmental. Sustainability is often cited as a reason to build transportation infrastructure such as high-speed rail. A transport CBA that integrates economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits is needed to support these claims. Most transport CBAs ignore or pay little attention to the life cycle costs and benefits over the life of the project. In order to avoid potentially misleading results, the infrastructure project must be examined over the entire life of the project. In transport CBAs, the environmental impacts are only considered during the operation phase. The aim of this research is to account for the environmental impacts for the entire life cycle of the project and better reflecting the costs and benefits of the project throughout its entire life cycle. Transforming CBA to include a life cycle perspective will be accomplished by performing, monetizing, and including a life cycle assessment (LCA) into the CBA finally tying economic, social, and environmental impacts into a single project evaluation tool.