Performance Measures

The NTOC Action Team on Performance Measurement was convened to define and document "a few good measures" for transportation operations performance measurement. With the guidance of an oversight team comprised of transportation professionals and state and local government representatives, specific measures focused on the following issue areas:

• Non-recurring congestion (e.g., traffic incident management)
• Recurring congestion (e.g., arterial management, traffic signal timing)
• System-wide performance (e.g., travel time, reliability, congestion)

The oversight team identified and defined the following performance measures within each of the areas described above:

• Customer Satisfaction
• Extent of Congestion -- Spatial
• Extent of Congestion -- Temporal
• Incident Duration
• Non-Recurring Delay
• Speed
• Throughput -- Person
• Throughput -- Vehicle
• Travel Time -- Link
• Travel Time -- Reliability
• Travel Time -- Trip

The initiative also included a literature review and survey of transportation and government officials to gain input on the needs and data available for specific measures.

The initiative includes participation from the following associations (with support from FHWA):

• American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)
• International City/County Management Association (ICMA)
• Transportation Research Board (TRB)
• Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO)
• American Public Works Association (APWA)
• Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)

For more information see:

Since the Performance Measures Initiative Report was finalized in the summer of 2005, the Performance Measures team has worked on identifying opportunities to work with states and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) to pilot some or all of the measures. Specifically, a proposal has been submitted for a National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project that would allow for piloting a number of measures, helping the team to determine whether the measures are useful and to tighten their definitions and guidance. The I-95 Corridor Coalition has also expressed interest in working with NTOC to pilot some of the measures in its new performance measurement project.