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

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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?

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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.