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Emissions of Criteria Pollutants, Toxic Air Pollutants, and Greenhouse Gases, From the Use of Alternative Transportation Modes and Fuels
- Author(s): Delucchi, Mark
- et al.
Abstract
Policy makers in transportation often make investment decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars. Typically they evaluate a wide range of alternatives -- from expanding highway capacity to managing existing demand to building a new rail line -- with respect to a broad array of seemingly incommensurable criteria. In theory, a policy maker can evaluate alternatives by cost-benefit analysis, in which one quantifies and monetizes all of the costs and benefits to society, and picks the alternative that yields the greatest net present-value of benefits. In this report, we quantify a key component of the social-cost part of cost-benefit analysis: emissions of air pollutants from different transportation modes.