Abstract:There are an extraordinarily large number of potential technological changes for improving productivity, performance, service, and overall compatibility of transportation systems. This proliferation of opportunities overwhelms conventional analytic techniques and policy-making mechanisms. This paper presents a methodological framework for analyzing and evaluating multitudinous options in an efficient manner that is useful and meaningful for policy analysis and planning. The traditional "end state" scenario approach is discarded in favor of a pathway approach. After presenting several motivational and illustrative examples, the basic methodological structure of the pathway approach is described.