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This report provides a comparison of urban transportation performance in 51 major metropolitan areas throughout the United States. The authors compare their data on travel time, trip distance, and overall congestion with the findings presented in the 2010 Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). This report describes the limitations of the travel time index and TTI’s overall methodology for evaluating congestion in urban areas. It goes on to illustrate the state of congestion in metro areas, comparing cities using different measures (e.g. total hours of delay and total hours of peak travel time) and creating a series of charts and graphs that demonstrate their findings.

This report describes methods that managers of state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other agencies can use for setting performance targets to achieve multiple objectives and interact with multiple decision-makers and stakeholder groups, and how data management systems within a DOT can support performance-based decision-making. Transportation agencies at all levels of government are embracing performance measurement to improve agency efficiency and accountability. Setting performance targets, a crucial step in the management process, generally entails balancing among competing objectives and dealing with political implications. Unless the bases for setting those targets are sound and defensible and key decision makers and stakeholders concur, the effectiveness of performance-based management is likely to be compromised. This report presents a framework and specific guidance for target-setting and for ensuring that appropriate data are available to support performance management. The report draws on a range of private- and public-sector examples to explore issues of data management and stewardship as well as organizational factors likely to influence an agency's performance measurement and management experience. Supplementing the report, NCHRP Web-Only Document 154, available on the TRB website, presents case studies of organizations investigated in the research. The information will be useful to senior agency managers seeking to develop and improve their performance-management practices.

Case Study: Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) 2010

Case study of DART's transit asset management program

This page contains links to the 2010 SGR Roundtable. On July 21-23, 2010, the Federal Transit Administration held its Second State of Good Repair (SGR) Roundtable hosted by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) with representatives from 40 transit agencies from around the United States in Chicago, IL. FTA Deputy Administrator Therese W. McMillan was a featured speaker.

Overview of Recently completed SGR related research projects, presented at the 2nd State of Good Repair Roundtable

A national forum on performance-based planning and programming was held in Dallas, Texas on September 13-15, 2010. The forum was organized by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO), the American Public Transit Association (APTA), and the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) with support from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Participants in the forum were equally divided among state departments of transportation (DOTs), metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and transit operators with a number of representatives from rural planning agencies as well. The forum sponsors readily agreed that the objective of a performance-based planning and programming process is to provide the guidance required for resource allocation decisions that deliver the best system performance results possible given performance goals and objectives and the resources available. However, they recognized that perspectives on performance-based planning and programming, both within and across different types of agencies, would vary. Taking this variance into account, the overall intent of the forum was to define practical approaches to performance-based resource allocation. Performance-based resource allocation should occur within an agency’s planning and programming process. Long-range planning helps to define key goals and objectives and to analyze and evaluate strategies and scenarios for meeting goals. It is a logical place to connect performance measures to goals and objectives and to define intended performance results. Long-range plans also provide broad guidance to resource allocation decisions. The programming and budgeting process then provides an opportunity to directly link goals and performance measures from long-range planning to specific programs, projects, and operations. However, it was noted that even though performance-based approaches can improve accountability and the use of resources, performance based planning and programming is not a panacea. Without adequate and predictable funding levels, system performance will degrade.

Potential Concepts for a Proposed FTA SGR program, Asset Management Strategy

In order to fulfill the recommendations of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) concerning bridge management in 2009, a questionnaire was developed to help FHWA identify agencies needing assistance in implementing an effective bridge management system. This report details FHWA's process for developing the questionnaire, and otherwise fulfilling the OIG's recommendations.

The fourteenth installment in the pavement preservation checklist series, focusing on the procedure for fabric interlayer application.

Determining an appropriate set of performance measures to use for managing the nation's highway network is a vital component of the work to preserve our existing transportation infrastructure. Recent research, such as National Cooperative Research Program (NCHRP) Project 20-74 describing an asset management framework for the Interstate Highway System (IHS), has highlighted the importance of establishing a consistent set of performance measures for communicating physical conditions of our roads, bridges, and other highway assets. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Asset Management developed this project to analyze bridge and pavement data across a multi-state corridor, evaluate the quality of existing performance measures, and recommend additional measures as well as further avenues of research in this area. A key deliverable involved using the Integrated Corridor Analysis Tool (ICAT), previously developed by the I-95 Corridor Coalition, as a platform to display bridge and pavement performance data. ICAT provides a map-based application, accessible via the Internet, that allows users to view, analyze, and compare performance data along an entire corridor or at a specific location. This project provides a statistical analysis of bridge and pavement data received from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. This analysis included looking at individual values as well as comparing values both within a state and across states.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sponsored the development of a Pavement Management Roadmap to help identify the steps needed to address current gaps in pavement management and to establish research and development initiatives and priorities. This document presents an overview of the 10-year Pavement Management Roadmap, which can be used to guide new research, development, and technology transfer opportunities that will lead to improved approaches to pavement management. The roadmap was intended from the beginning to be a collaborative process that would involve representatives from each of the various stakeholder groups that either use pavement management data, support the use of pavement management concepts, or provide technical assistance or training to current or future pavement management practitioners. The contents of this roadmap were derived from a series of stakeholder workshops in which representatives from state and local agencies, academia, private industry (including data collection and software vendors), FHWA, and others met to discuss and prioritize the needs of pavement management professionals. The resulting needs were organized and grouped into one of the following four themes that emerged from the process: Theme 1: Use of Existing Tools and Technology; Theme 2: Institutional and Organizational Issues; Theme 3: The Broad Role of Pavement Management; and Theme 4: New Tools, Methodologies, and Technology. The executive summary to this report is published as a stand alone document, entitled Pavement Management Roadmap - Executive Summary (FHWA-HIF-11-014).