Greenroads: sustainable roadbuilding

Many techniques are being used to reduce energy and pollution associated with asphalt paving, yet there has not been a system to measure the environmental level of design and construction, such as is available with LEED building construction.
This may soon change.
Greenroads is being jointly developed by the University of Washington and CH2M HILL. The system has been in development since early 2007 and has also involved a number of other people and organizations.
It is a way to measure sustainability performance in the design and construction of roads.
There are 11 “Project Requirements” that must be done in order for a roadway to be considered a Greenroad. There are also a number of  “Voluntary Credits” that a project team can choose to pursue or not. The points associated with the Voluntary Credits that are achieved are added together to give a final Greenroads score. That score can then be used directly for sustainability tracking, internal information, publicity, etc. Greenroads projects may choose to pursue several levels of “certification” based on the points associated with the Voluntary Credit achieved. The more points, the higher the certification level. Currently, there are four certification levels: certified, silver, gold, and evergreen.
The idea of this system is to present roadway sustainability in a straightforward manner so that everyone can understand and participate in roadway sustainability.
Every roadway project involves tradeoffs. The difficult decision is when you must decide between two items that are not directly comparable. Greenroads assigns points to each credit based on its sustainability impact. Therefore, you can compare two different items using a common point system to determine their relative impact.