Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 25 (2010) 440–451 Integration of Sustainability Issues in Strategic Transportation Planning: A Multi-criteria Model for the Assessment of Transport Infrastructure Plans Elena L ´ opez ∗ & Andr´ es Monz ´ on TRANSyT-UPM, Centre for Transport Research, Universidad Polit´ ecnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Abstract: Last decades have witnessed significant ad- vances in transportation planning methodologies, facil- itated by the development of computational algorithms, technologies, spatial modeling tools—such as geograph- ical information systems (GIS) and decision support systems (DSS). However, at strategic planning levels, a commonly accepted assessment model integrating the sustainability paradigm is still lacking. This work presents a novel contribution to this research line, with the proposal of a multi-criteria assessment model embed- ded in a GIS. The criteria have been designed covering the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental. This assessment model constitutes an interdisciplinary approach tightly linking network analy- sis, spatial geography, regional economic, and environ- mental issues in a GIS-based computer framework. The validity of the methodology is tested with its application in a case study: the extension of the high speed rail (HSR) network included in the Spanish Transport and Infras- tructure Plan 2005-2020 (PEIT). 1 INTRODUCTION Transport infrastructure planning processes have ben- efited from recent significant advances in computa- tional algorithms and technologies (Samant and Adeli, 2000, 2001; Adeli and Samant, 2000; Adeli and Karim, 2000; Karim and Adeli, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c; Adeli and Jiang 2003; Dharia and Adeli, 2003; Ghosh-Dastidar and Adeli, 2003, 2006; Adeli and Ghosh-Dastidar, 2004; Jiang and Adeli, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2005), along with the development of sophis- ticated assessment methodologies (Wang et al., 2007; ∗ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: elopez@ caminos.upm.es. Malczewski, 1999; Arampatzis et al., 2004) and decision- making methods (Bana e Costa et al., 1999; Salling et al., 2007; Marashi and Davis, 2007; Vreeker et al., 2002; Jha, 2003). Additionally, increased computer capacity and the recent development of assessment tools, such as ge- ographical information systems (GIS) has enabled the upsurge of important methodological advances in this direction (Fotheringham and Wegener, 2000; Miller, 1999; Arampatzis et al., 2004; Wegener, 2001; Sextos et al., 2008). Despite the above advances, at strategic planning lev- els, such as the Transport Infrastructure Plan level, a consensus on a common conceptual assessment frame- work has not been reached yet (Bickel et al., 2005). This lack of a common methodological approach is mainly due to three reasons. First, the inclusion of transport sustainability issues (Akinyemi and Zuidgeest, 2002; Adeli, 2002, 2009; Greene and Wegener, 1997; Banister et al., 2000; Jeon et al., 2008) into the planning framework caused a shift in transport planning objectives toward strategic pol- icy goals, such as network efficiency, cohesion, or envi- ronmental issues (Bigotte and Antunes, 2007; Joumard and Nicolas, 2010; Voogd and Woltjer, 1999). How- ever, both the implementation and the subsequent as- sessment of these strategic impacts are uneven and scarce among official methodologies (Bickel et al., 2005; Grant-Muller et al., 2001; Bristow and Nellthorp, 2000). Second, the increased importance given to consensus building, transparency, and communicative issues of the planning approach (Voogd and Woltjer, 1999; Marashi and Davis, 2007) calls for an adaptation of “black-box” methodologies, into “easy to interpret” ones, provid- ing relevant information on different strategic aspects. Indeed, at strategic transportation planning levels, the decision-making process is experiencing an increased C  2010 Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8667.2010.00652.x