TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Research Results Digest 78: Managing Capital Costs of Major Federally Funded Public Transportation Projects examines strategies, tools, and techniques to better manage major transit capital projects over 100 million. The report also examines various estimation, project-management, and cost-containment approaches that were applied to 14 case studies. The contractor's final report for this project is published as TCRP Web-Only Document 31.
Throughout the world, the use of some kind of a formal transportation project evaluation procedure is a requirement. Yet, by and large, these are partial; in fact, much weight is often placed on the initial -pre-engineering -phases of the planning process, when vital information, such as accurate costs and demand projections, is largely missing. Moreover, many of these procedures neglect to consider key issues such as project’s risks, capital costs financing, latent demand, market imperfections, labor force availability and various incompatibilities between trip rates, travel times and activity location. As a result, projects, which are judged as viable under such deficient evaluation schemes, may have had a significantly different projection of capital costs and demand should a well-founded, thorough, and efficient evaluation process be used. Against this background, this book’s main objective is to construct a comprehensive and methodical economic, planning and decision-making framework for the evaluation of proposed transportation infrastructure investment projects. Such a framework is founded on four key principles. It is based on well-established economic, transportation and policy-analysis theoretical principles; it is comprehensive enough to encompass all relevant evaluation issues; it is applicable to a wide range of transportation investment projects; and it is amenable to empirical application including a sensitivity analysis and alternative scenarios regarding urban, regional and national developments.
The North American Tunneling Conference is the premier forum to discuss new trends and developments in underground construction in North America. With every conference, the number of attendees and breadth of topics grows. North American Tunneling: 2014 Proceedings reflects the theme for the 2014 conference, “Mission Possible.” The authors share new theories, novel innovations, and the latest tools that make what once may have been perceived as impossible, now possible. The authors of 128 papers share the latest case histories, expertise, lessons learned, and real-world applications from around the globe on a wide range of topics. They cover the successes and failures of challenging construction projects. Read about challenging design issues, fresh approaches on performance, future projects, and industry trends as well as ground movement and support, structure analysis, risk and cost management, rock tunnels, caverns and shafts, TBM technology and selection, and water and wastewater conveyance.
