| The current transportation problems affecting the Sail Juan Metropolitan Area (SJMA) have become of great concern for citizens and related government agencies.; These problems, which arise from the excessive use of motor vehicles promoted by the dispersion of the population and work centers away from public transportation corridors, cause a load of environmental impacts that impose a great burden on the environment and deteriorate the environmental quality of the SJMA, and that of Puerto Rico in general.; This research focuses on developing a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) based methodology to evaluate the environmental performance of the use stage of transportation mode vehicles. During this work, three transportation modes were considered: automobiles. busses, and heavy rail (known as Tren Urbano). The main goal is to develop the methodology and demonstrate its use by using available data for the modes Linder consideration.; During the analysis, all three components of LCA were carried out for the use stage of the vehicles, and within the context of the SJMA. Two important aspects of the methodology were: (1) the incorporation of public participation into the analysis by means of public perception on environmental concerns, and (2) the dependence of environmental performance on the level of ridership.; The main limitations found throughout the analysis were data quality, and data availability, however. the developed methodology achieved the goal of being able to systematically group large amounts of complex data into environmental performance indicators that could be used in decision-making processes that have the desired end-result of minimizing environmental impact, thus improving total environmental quality. |
