Enriching Sustainable Transport Decisions: Inputs from Operations Research and the Management Sciences

Findings from the 2008-2009 Transport Canada project, Methodologies for Identifying and Ranking Sustainable Transport Practices in Urban Regions (Wellar, 2008d) reveal that the research methodologies, methods, and techniques from a number of disciplines apply to the process of making decisions about sustainable transport practices. Evidence in that regard is provided by: 1) the results of keyword-based literature searches; 2) the responses of municipal governments to a survey on the methodologies, methods, and techniques that are used; and 3), the commentaries of experts on the methods and techniques that could be used. The findings are presented in eleven project reports which can be accessed at: http://www.wellarconsulting.com/. This presentation first outlines the major elements and findings of the Transport Canada project. We then suggest how the Operations Research or Operational Research, and Management Sciences (OR/MS) fields could build on that project to enhance the OR/MS contribution to the body of methods and techniques used by municipal governments in making decisions about identifying, adopting, and implementing sustainable transport (ST) practices. The third part of the presentation introduces several OR/MS-based initiatives that we believe could significantly expand the research agenda that has been initiated by the Transport Canada project. Our emphasis in this regard is on drawing attention to what we perceive to be fundamental needs that arise as a result of the empirical lessons learned from the Transport Canada project.