Multimodal transportation planning tool for rural areas in Georgia

A process under development at the Georgia Institute of Technology to standardize, enhance, and automate planning and project evaluation for transportation projects in rural Georgia is described. The process will incorporate current statewide planning techniques in use at the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and additional sketch planning techniques that will use existing GDOT data. The purpose of this multimodal transportation planning tool (MMTPT) is to aid GDOT and local agencies in evaluating transportation requirements of rural areas and potential implementation constraints early in the planning process. The tool will include a system-level component to develop a prioritized list of projects by mode for a county and a project-level component to perform more detailed evaluations of roadway project alternatives and multimodal enhancements. The MMTPT will operate in a computerized hybrid system that uses expert system and conventional algorithmic programming techniques. Although organizational, management, and funding constraints that discourage multimodal planning are not overcome, the tool addresses the shortage of analytical planning techniques.