Curriculum

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Descriptions

PROJ_MGT 481: Transportation Context Sensitive Solutions

Description

Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that involves all stakeholders in providing a transportation facility that fits its contextual urban and natural setting. It is an approach that leads to preserving and enhancing scenic, aesthetic, historic, cultural, community, and environmental resources, while improving or maintaining safety, mobility, and infrastructure conditions (taken from a joint AASHTO and FHWA definition). This course will cover the objectives, parameters, and tools needed for CSS from project planning and design to infrastructure delivery for individual travel modes and multi-modal corridors. Since CSS and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are commonly linked, an introduction, overview, and study of the NEPA process will also be included. Students will view CSS through the lens of multiple stakeholder viewpoints, perspectives and contexts, as well as within the framework of public policy and decision-making. Terms, concepts, challenges of sustainable growth, along with the principles of flexible design that promote sustainable transportation alternatives will also be studied. NEPA and CSS case studies will be included.