While FHWA, DOTs, and MPOs have worked diligently to establish performance measures for highway, transit, and freight operations—as directed in MAP-21—specific performance measures for the nonmotorized modes included in the Transportation Alternatives Program have been slower to emerge. A newly released report from the four Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program communities offers an important effort at establishing performance measures for bicycle and pedestrian investments and identifies new directions for developing robust metrics to support funding decisions for nonmotorized investments.
performance measures
Virginia DOT aims to assess its core assumptions and reprioritize
Last month, Virginia’s Deputy Secretary of Transportation, Nick Donohue, updated the Commonwealth Transportation Board, which oversees VDOT, on the status of the agency’s long-term planning process. He indicated to the board that the agency is beginning to rethink its core assumptions about future travel needs, and that the state’s next surface transportation plan will reflect this new way of thinking in important ways. Among the issues facing VDOT, Donohue noted, was the fact that recent increases in VMT have been far lower than the state’s forecasts suggest—a nationwide phenomenon that affects funding outlooks and programming decisions.
Regional accessibility metric offers powerful approach to transportation system planning
Researchers at the University of Minnesota developed a measure of multimodal accessibility for the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, which they hope can be implemented in metropolitan areas around the nation as an alternative to commonly-used congestion metrics for prioritizing transportation projects and planning system improvements. For decades, transportation system performance has been measured in terms of traffic congestion and delay, both at the project scale and the regional scale. Developers of the new accessibility measure flip the equation by asking what the value of accessibility is, rather than what the costs of congestion are.
NCDOT rethinks project selection
North Carolina has developed a new set of transportation project prioritization criteria officials hope will bring greater efficiency and objectivity to transportation investment. The criteria were developed in response to the passage last June of the state’s Strategic Transportation Investments law. Lawmakers and transportation officials have noted that the prioritization scheme will shift more funding towards urban areas due to the use of congestion as a primary factor.
SSTI seeks input on bike-ped performance measures
Many states and MPOs may have criteria for evaluating bicycle-pedestrian proposals for funding, but those criteria often don’t take into account system-level benefits and costs. And compared with highway measures, metrics for tracking ongoing performance are scarce. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic counts are being done in some cases, but these do not equal performance measures.
Guide to Incorporating Reliability Performance Measures into the Transportation Planning and Programming Processes [Draft] (TRB and Cambridge Systematics, 2013)
The purpose of this Guide is to help agencies wherever they are in the process of using reliability performance measurement to (1) understand and communicate reliability; (2) identify the tools and methods to help them track transportation system reliability; (3) begin to incorporate reliability into their existing analysis tools; and (4) identify emerging analysis tools that will better help them evaluate reliability and make program and project investment choices that address the reliability of the system.
Guide to Incorporating Reliability Performance Measures into the Transportation Planning and Programming Processes [Draft] (TRB and Cambridge Systematics, 2013)
The purpose of this Guide is to help agencies wherever they are in the process of using reliability performance measurement to (1) understand and communicate reliability; (2) identify the tools and methods to help them track transportation system reliability; (3) begin to incorporate reliability into their existing analysis tools; and (4) identify emerging analysis tools that will better help them evaluate reliability and make program and project investment choices that address the reliability of the system.
Study highlights importance of travel time as a metric
As commute times increase, married women work fewer hours or even drop out of the workforce according to a forthcoming article. The finding helps explain differences in women’s workforce participation across various metro areas. Its focus on travel time as a driver of economic outcomes, the article has clear relevance to transportation agencies that are wrestling with setting meaningful, outcome-based performance measures.
Time Pollution (John Whitelegg, 1993)
In his 1993 essay, originally published in Resurgence & Ecologist, the author tries to explain why the more people try to save time, the less time they seem to have. This is true of transportation as well, and he uses travel time as an example of this phenomenon. Regardless of what mode people chose, they tend to average the same amount of time traveling. He also points out that there is a fundamental difference between speed and access. This is an interesting read when considering performance metrics for transportation systems.
Bicycle Friendly State Report Card 2013 (League of American Bicyclists, 2013)
Each year the League of American Bicyclists ranks each state in five areas. The 2013 rankings can be found here with a link to more detailed report cards for each state.