The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) is firmly committed to a proactive environmental ethic in providing a safe, efficient, balanced, and environmentally sound transportation system in the state of New York. This includes conducting maintenance, equipment management, and construction activities appropriately to prevent and minimize adverse impacts on the environment and to enhance the environment whenever possible. The maintenance and operations at NYSDOT show how the operational capabilities of a department of transportation can be brought to bear on the environmental stewardship responsibilities shared by all governmental organizations.
Expert systems can be useful tools to assist and guide practitioners through particularly difficult and complex decision-making environments. The process of assessing the requirements and conceptualizing an expert system architecture for the New York State Department of Transportation to enhance its environmental analysis functions is described. Using expert system techniques presents a proactive and innovative approach to systematize and improve the environmental process within transportation design. Among the system’s objectives are to treat effectively the logic and inference process associated with the breadth and depth of environmental analysis resource areas, promote compliance with federal and state environmental requirements, enhance project management through estimating staff resources, and be responsive to the needs of multiple user classes to include environmental staff, designers, planners, and managers.
Since 1973, New York City's Route 9A from Battery Park to West 59th Street has undergone a transformation from a crumbling 1930s elevated highway in a derelict postmaritime environment of rotting piers and abandoned buildings to a first-class multimodal, at-grade, tree-lined urban boulevard with a recreational focus. Route 9A connects Lower Manhattan and the west side of Manhattan with Hudson River Park and the waterfront and is a premier example of the economic revitalization that can take place when urban design and community involvement combine with engineering and the environment. The New York State Department of Transportation reconstructed Route 9A in seven segments, bid as seven contracts. As the last contract adjacent to the World Trade Center was winding down, the terrorist events of September 11, 2001 (9/11), occurred. With the devastation came the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan and a new emphasis on people, environment, and coordination in a post-9/11 environment. Route 9A was and continues to be a vital link. This paper describes the process of transformation and how adversity experienced along the way was overcome—beyond Westway and post-9/11 at the World Trade Center—as well as the citizens’ vital role in rebuilding Route 9A.
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