NCDOT Managers and their staff are invited to consult appropriate faculty at any UNC system university or at Duke University for technical assistance. Discussion with the faculty member should involve defining the scope of the assistance needed and estimating the time required to complete the assignment.

To initiate the work, the NCDOT business should fill out the scope of work, consulting faculty information, and receive verbal Division/Manager approval. R&D will review and process this request form with ITRE.  A technical assistance project should be limited to activities requiring no more than 120 hours (15 work-days) of individual consultation and may include the use of research assistants, temporary labor, travel or laboratory equipment rentals.

Any technical assistance request that is not completed within ninety days of the start date shown below will be canceled. One extension can be granted upon request by the PI to the ITRE project administrator.

Payment by ITRE will be made upon completion of the work and delivery of a satisfactory summary report or other documents as required by the scope of work outlined below.

Submit this document in MS Word format to R&D. R&D will initiate the signature process through DocuSign.

Nature and Scope of Work – Be detailed and specific. Include estimated work hours required per task

Title:

Refining Primary and Secondary Cost-Benefit Accounting Across Arterial Investment Options[J1] 

Start Date:

2/15/2024

Completion Date:

5/16/2024[J2] 

Description of Work (box will expand as needed):

What is Needed?  NCDOT’s State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), which follows the SPOT process for funding prioritization, may not be accounting for the true cost savings of seemingly expensive placemaking projects that focus on aesthetic enhancements, alternative modes, and catalyzing walkable development. This TAR will focus on investigating the potential direct and indirect benefits of such projects.

Placemaking projects can provide opportunities for communities and the infrastructure that supports them to [J3] grow inward and upward rather than outward.  When successful, these projects can offset many miles of general infrastructure that otherwise would have “sprawled” outward. This can result in long-term net savings for the larger region and state that can offset the immediate cost of the project. By contrast, arterial segments where motorists drive 45-60 mph between signals, regardless of speed limit, tend to accelerate low-density development.  Such arterial segments are often cheaper per mile compared to projects that invest in peacemaking, but if it also spurs an excess of secondary infrastructure, was the project truly cost-effective?  For example, if an arterial segment plays a role in catalyzing “a hundred cul-de-sacs,” then overall costs may be substantially higher than an “expensive” placemaking segment that catalyzes more walkable neighborhoods.  This TAR will explore the extent to which research may be warranted for addressing secondary costs and benefits when funding decisions are made. 

As an additional consideration, these “cheaper per mile” arterial projects can lead to unintentional systemic inequities. Arterial designs that support sprawl over placemaking can led to blighted land uses along the arterial.  This may cause a “flight to the fringe” by those with the resources to leave. Their leaving can result in “Greyfields” – parking lots and buildings that are dormant or underutilized. In addition to deepening transportation and land use inequities, these situations can be expensive for NCDOT because they often result in the need for duplicative infrastructure: 1) new miles of roads, utilities, and other services that wouldn’t have been needed if not for the flight to the fringe, and 2) older roads, utilities, transit, etc., that must still be maintained for those left behind.

This graphic from NCHRP’s Rightsizing Guide (Report 917) helps to illustrate the problem.  Blue areas are higher density and  often poverty stricken, yet they still generate more revenue for infrastructure than they consume.  Red are low density areas that consume more than they contribute, even though they are often in affluent areas.  Most American cities have more red than blue. 

Many placemaking projects are designed to catalyze “pockets of blue” – revenue producing mixed-use nodes within the sea of revenue consuming red suburbs.  Such blue nodes help create a more socially balanced and fiscally sustainable situation.  But they also tend to rank lower when prioritization formulas are applied because the amenities that will turn red into blue spaces are deemed too expensive compared to other projects. In reality, the long term cost to maintain the facilities in the red zones is often not cost effective.

NCDOT may benefit from an investigation into this phenomenon. There is an opportunity to determine if placemaking projects in North Carolina may offer benefits that are not currently calculated when funding decisions are made. There is also opportunity to identify how to account for both primary and secondary costs and benefits more comprehensively during project funding decisions.

Addressing these items could significantly improve the NCDOT’s ability assess both long-term benefits and costs of projects, which could lead to better decision making across the state. Such efforts may also help NCDOT better understand and address issues associated with equity, climate change, safety, public health, and affordable housing.  Additionally, the transportation and land use planning communities would have better information about the benefits of alternative mode components and traffic calming they could use to make more informed decisions earlier in the project planning processes. As such, this TAR will be focused on accomplishing the following.

Action Items: Research assistance is needed to determine how well the STIP program currently accounts for secondary costs, benefits, and equity issues associated with various types of arterial investments. 

• Explore how the prioritization process may be inadvertently contributing to the over-construction of general infrastructure (when accounting for secondary effects). 

• Identify how projects that are “cheaper per mile” (a measure that ignores density and the number of miles) are scoring compared to projects that are “cheaper per capita,” (which accounts for density, and is a better measure of long-term infrastructure affordability).  [J4] 

• Produce a tech memo highlighting the extent to which further research may be warranted to discover appropriate ways of accounting for both primary and secondary costs and benefits across a wide range of potential project development strategies.   

 

frame this the better.