Transportation and the Environment


This should be right on point for the “Healthy Connected Neighborhoods” strategy in the Portland Plan:

Portland State University
Center for Transportation Studies
Spring 2011 Transportation Seminar Series

Speaker: Jimmy Kagan, Institute for Natural Resources

Topic: Integrating Transportation and Environmental Planning

Abstract: This seminar describes the results of a recently completed research project for the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP), related to capacity enhancements, as well as ongoing research underway to test the results of this research and to address economic and environmental benefits to progressive approaches to mitigation.

The SHRP 2 CO6 project was designed to provide transportation practitioners with guidance, tools and methods for conducting an integrated transportation planning process – utilizing an ecosystem approach to decision-making that improves and expedites transportation planning and project delivery. To do this, the research team developed a nine-step Integrated Eco-Logical Conservation and Transportation Planning Framework (“the Framework”), that addresses the partnership building as well as the technical and scientific aspects of an this integrated, ecosystem approach to transportation decision making advocated by Eco-Logical: an Ecosystem Approach to Developing Infrastructure Projects, and more recent refinements to watershed permitting and strategic habitat conservation planning.
The seminar will briefly outline the problem statement and the early but critical step of partnership building and process changes. The majority of the talk will focus on utilizing an ecosystem approach to the assessment of cumulative effects and alternatives, changes needed to develop regulatory assurances, and potential methods for developing and implementing progressive mitigation approaches. It will also include a brief discussion of ways to evaluate the economic and ecological outcomes of alternatives approaches, which reflect the costs and benefits of these approaches.

Link to: Eco-Logical: an Ecosystem Approach to Developing Infrastructure Projects

When: Friday, April 22, 2011, 12:00 – 1:00pm

Where: PSU Urban Center Building, SW 6th and Mill, Room 204


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