Going beyond LOS: Towards a Performance Measure Framework for State DOTs January 9, 2016

Why New Framework? Old LOS based framework is not meeting new federal and state legislative mandates on state DOTs. LOS considers directly only a few mobility related measures: delay, speed, density for auto; frequency and speed for transit, separation from motor vehicles for bike and pedestrians. MAP-21/FAST Act Adds safety, reliability, freight, sustainability (GHG) to the traditional congestion (e.g. LOS) measure. State legislatures add their own mandates VMT reduction, accessibility One state dropped congestion (LOS) as an environmental impact

What’s a Performance Measure Performance measures are supposed to be quantifiable (but can be qualitative) indicators of progress towards achieving the agency’s goals and objectives. Performance measures are supposed to provide an efficient way to provide information to decision-makers by translating the technical analyses, into a consistent and understandable format. (Personal aside: in the profession’s eagerness to accurately and adequately measure all aspects of performance, we seem to be in danger of inundating decision makers with too many performance measures for reasoned decision making)

The Context - Goals Identifying and Setting Agency Goals One example: System Performance Goals Safety and Health Sustainability, Livability, Economy System Performance Agency Performance Goals Stewardship and Efficient use of public funds Organizational Excellence

Example Initial Framework Agency Goals Agency Objective Candidate Performance Measures Safety and Health Reduce crashes. Promote active transportation. Reduce air pollution. Number of crashes bike and ped counts Tons of emissions Sustainability, Livability, Economy Reduce impacts on planet. Improve livability of streets. Improve prosperity. Tons GHG emissions Jobs accessible in 30 min Freight movement delays System Performance Reduce system delay. Improve travel time reliability. Improve system integration. Person-hours delay Modal Buffer Index ICM installations 3 Goals  9 objectives  10 performance measures. How to weight the measures, objectives and goals?

Another Challenge Other mandates for other performance measures FHWA MAP-21 & FAST Act State Transportation Plan Agency’s Strategic Management Plan Agency’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan etcetera

Key – Intended Use Identifying intended uses of performance measures System planning and programming Project delivery Selection of project and design alternatives Environmental impact analyses Quantifying impacts, Identifying mitigations System Operating decisions? Setting speed limits, Signal timing. Developing and selecting ATDM strategies: managed lanes, etc. Safety improvements, Snow plow operation Percolating performance measures throughout the organization’s day-to-day activities to achieve organizational goals.

A Potential Framework Goals System, Corridor, and Long Range Planning Project Delivery Agency SMP SMP MOEs Overlapping Goals and MOEs Overlapping Goals and MOEs Project Delivery MOEs Livability Goals Accessibility MOEs S-LRTP Goals S-LRTP MOEs Operations MOEs  MAP21 Goals MAP21 MOEs Reports: 1. SMP Report 2. Accessibility Report 3. S-LRTP Report 4. MAP21 Report 5+. Project Delivery Reports

Beyond LOS Away from Letters – Going towards numbers Agencies are wanting to do their own weighting (or not) of different performance measures. Reliability – becoming a “must have” Freight mobility and reliability – a “must have” Livability and Accessibility – becoming a “must have” Measured in terms of number of jobs within “x” minutes Measured in terms of “bikability” and walkability.