AN ENVIRONMENTAL VALUE ENGINEERING (EVE) EMERGY ANALYSIS RUBRIC TO COMPARE HIGH-SPEED PASSENGER RAIL AND INTERSTATE PASSENGER CAR TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES THROUGH A FIXED DISTANCE

An Environmental Value Engineering (EVE) analysis was used to conduct an environmental life cycle assessment of transportation alternatives consisting of high-speed passenger rail and interstate passenger car transportation. This analysis was formulated on the EMERGY inputs of environment, fuel energy, goods, and services (labor). EMERGY input tables were calculated based on subsystem inputs for each mode of transportation. Areas of commonality were identified for analysis exclusion while aspects that showed differentiation were included as viable inputs into the calculation of the total EMERGY for each system. The summation of inputs resulted in an overall EMERGY calculation of the alternatives. Subsequently, the system with the lowest aggregate EMERGY per passenger mile was identified as the one having the least impact on the environment while meeting the need of transporting people. In an effort to further determine if a significant difference existed between these transportation alternatives, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted utilizing aggregate EMERGY values of environment, fuel energy, goods, and services. The following results are specific to this analysis such that the conclusions cannot be extrapolated without a specific evaluation of those conditions. An analysis of the EMERGY per passenger mile results determined that the interstate passenger car alternative met the need of transporting people while having the least impact on the environment. A review of the MANOVA results indicated that there was not a significant difference between the transportation alternatives impact on the environment. Additional environmental variables such as vehicle and locomotive material composition analysis, greenhouse gas emission, ecological footprint and ecological economics were identified as areas of consideration for future research. The variables of interest could be included in the EVE analysis and result in a modified EVE and be defined as a composite environmental return on investment (CE-ROI)

To build or not to build? Megaprojects, resources, and environment: an emergy synthesis for a systemic evaluation of a major highway expansion

Systems thinking and emergy synthesis are applied to transport studies in order to assess the socio-ecological convenience of a civil infrastructure: they are presented as comprehensive evaluation tools to go beyond conventional approaches like cost-benefit analyses, while geobiophysically including the overall resource consumption and the release of pollutants. Focusing on road systems, the massive expansion works on the mountainous section of Italian major highway A1 are chosen as a case study: such recently completed project is compared with the no- build option, considering alternative scenarios ranging from dedicated mobility policies using the old infrastructure to a partial modal shift to rail transport. Results are expressed in terms of total invested emergy, emergy per passenger-kilometer, and per ton-kilometer; data can be easily read also in terms of environmental, physical, and financial units. The convenience of the expansion works results highly questionable: the annually required emergy is shown to significantly increase: +24% for passengers and +51% for freight averagely (i.e., with or without services besides energy and material inputs). A key role is played by saved travelling time (computed as driving labor), able to mitigate but not to reverse the situation while representing a controversial accounting item. Instead, alternative uses and policies for the old infrastructure would all have yielded significant savings. In light of the above, some conclusions are drawn on societal priorities, including a critical reappraisal of time saving as an often unsustainable driver within a still mostly unquestioned 'more and faster' mantra. The need to support ecologically and strategically sustainable societal decision-making in the transportation sector is therefore framed in wider thoughts on economic planning and resource allocation, while envisaging a transformation towards a prosperous and sustainable future