Transportation leadership you can trust.

presented to

ITS Georgia 2005 Annual Meeting

presented by

Kenny Voorhies Cambridge Systematics, Inc.

August 29, 2005

Current Efforts in Measuring Operations PerformanceA National Overview

Current Performance Measurement Activities

Two national efforts• NCHRP 3-68 – “Guide to Effective Freeway Performance

Measurement”

• NTOC Performance Measures Task Force

FHWA national activities• Urban Congestion Reporting

• Mobility monitoring

State DOT efforts

NCHRP 3-68 - “Guide to Effective Freeway Performance Measurement”

Project Tasks• Benchmarking interviews – 11 regions

• Information development

• Six Regional workshops (probably September)

• Final Guide production

Focus on measures related to congestion/mobility

Estimated completion date: October 2005

NCHRP 3-68 Findings: Performance Measures Used

Outcome measures• Derivations of travel time, speed, delay

• LOS still used but not as much

• Reliability measures in early stages

Output measures• Incident management efficiency

• Operation of field equipment

Minimal use of customer satisfaction measures

NCHRP 3-68 Findings: Data is an Major Issue

In some cases ITS provides data for operations agencies

Data quality has reduced use of ITS data

Primarily model-derived data for planning agencies

NCHRP 3-68 Findings: Desired Uses of Performance Measures

“Now that we have measures, what do we do with the results?”

Weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual reports

Statewide reporting, Regional reporting

Linking measures to investment decisions not well established

NCHRP 3-68 – Basic Principles

1. Measures based on travel time

2. Multiple measures are good

3. Traditional HCM measures (LOS, V/C) not primary measures

4. Use person-based measures when necessary

5. Use mobility (outcome) and efficiency (output) measures

NCHRP 3-68 – Basic Principles (continued)

6. Include customer satisfaction

7. Three dimensions of congestion: source (cause), temporal aspects, spatial detail

8. Include reliability measures (may require continuous data)

9. Use graphics and methods to communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences

NTOC Performance Measures

National Transportation Operations Coalition (NTOC) • ITE, AASHTO, TRB, ITS America, ICMA, AMPO, plus other

associations and the FHWA

One of several task forces is focusing on operations performance measurement• Led by ICMA with assistance from University of Maryland

Center for Advanced Transportation

NTOC Performance Measure Effort

Literature Review

Initial List of 14 Candidate Measures

Development of Survey• Sent to association members

• 333 responses (261 from State and local agencies)

Candidate measures and survey results reviewed by oversight committee at the ITE Technical Conference in March

“Final” list of 10 performance measures has been developed – four defined here

Some NTOC Performance Measure Definitions

Travel Time Reliability (Buffer Index) - The buffer index is the additional time that must be added to a trip, to ensure that travelers making the trip will arrive at their destination at, or before, the intended time, 95% of the time.

Extent of Congestion – Spatial (also measurable by time) - Miles of roadway within a predefined area and time period, for which average travel times are 30% longer than unconstrained travel times.

Some NTOC Performance Measure Definitions

Incident Duration - The time elapsed from the notification of an incident until all evidence of the incident has been removed from the incident scene.

Customer Satisfaction – A qualitative measure of customers’ opinions related to the roadway management and operations services provided in a specified region.

Top Ten NTOC Performance Measures

Customer Satisfaction

Extent of Congestion – Spatial and Temporal

Incident Duration

Recurring Delay

Speed

Throughput – Person

Throughput – Vehicle

Travel Time – Link

Travel Time Reliability (Buffer Index)

Travel Time - Trip

NTOC Performance Measures Next Steps

A report documenting these initial measures was distributed to the operations community in late July to encourage their use

• NTOC Performance Measure Initiative – Final Report

Potential next steps still under consideration - may include having states/locals actually “test drive” the performance measures to determine their usefulness and whether or not the data is available to reliably compute the measures

Use of Performance Measures by FHWA

Key Outcome Measures• Travel time index

• Extent of congestion

• Buffer index

Uses• Tracking national trends

• Educating state and local governments on use of performance measures

Key FHWA Performance Measures Efforts

Urban Congestion Reporting (monthly)

Mobility monitoring (annually)

• Monthly reporting under development

Urban Congestion Reporting

Uses “web-scraping” from 10 traveler information web sites to develop a monthly report on the following measures:• Percent congested travel (time-based)• Travel Time Index• Buffer Index

Mobility Monitoring Program

Use of archived Traffic Management Center/ITS Data to develop annual performance measures

Using 33 cities for 2004 data analysis

Mobility Measures: Travel Time Index, Percent of Congested Travel

Reliability Measures: Buffer Time Index, Planning Time Index

State DOT Efforts

Examples of Performance Measurement Activities• Washington State DOT

• Minnesota DOT

• Maryland SHA (CHART)

Washington State DOT

Performance measures vital tool for :• Program Delivery

− Where are we now?

− How are we doing?

− Are there gaps?

− Where do we want to take this?

• Budget

• Sustainability of Maintenance and Operations

Measuring WSDOT’s Incident Response Program (from Grey Notebook)

- Joint Operations agreement with State Patrol (2002)- Zero over-90 minute incident performance target- Doubled IRT units (July 2002)- Incident Response Database (WITS)

Ramp Metering Improvements

Minnesota DOT

Mn/DOT uses ITS technologies to measure system performance for reports to the public and policy makers

Mn/DOT uses before/after studies and market research to measure the performance of ITS technologies

Two system measures are congestion and incident clearance

Incident Management – Clearance Time

Average Clearance Time for Urban Freeway Incidents

37.3

34.333.7

36.2

34.033.733.532.9

36.3

38.034.4 34.1

32.6

36.3

39.2

36.4 36.3

41.4

32.5

33.2

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Calendar Year

Cle

aran

ce T

ime

(Min

utes

)

Source: Mn/DOT RTMC. (3-Year Moving Average) & Annual Average

Target = 35

39

35

Trendline

Maryland State Highway Administration - CHART

Developed business processes

Maintains Business Plan annually

Analysis conducted by University of Maryland

Performance measures documented annually in DOT Performance Report

CHART Business Process

Performance measurement and traffic flow analysis — CHART archives data related to traffic flow, weather, and the activities managed by the program to establish and maintain a data set by which statistical and operational performance measurements can be calculated and evaluated, and reenactments of activities may be simulated and evaluated for best practices.

TRAFFICMONITORING,DETECTION,

VERIFICATION

INCIDENT,TRAFFIC,

OPERATIONSMANAGEMENT

TRAVELERINFORMATION

PERFORMANCEMEASUREMENT

ANDTRAFFIC FLOW

ANALYSIS

EXTERNALTRANSPORTATION

MANAGEMENTSYSTEM

INTERFACE

Objective from CHART Business Plan

Objective 2.1 Provide effective incident management that reduces annual incident congestion delay by at least 30 million vehicle-hours to achieve related cost savings of $570M for the traveling public, including $150M for commercial traffic, by June 30, 2008

UMD Analysis

UMD Analysis