Moving Forward with the NTOC Performance Measurement Initiative
Participants Sought for NCHRP Pilot Study

When the National Transportation Operations Coalition (NTOC) action team on performance measurement was convened in 2004, its goal was “to define and document a few good measures” for transportation operations agencies to apply in evaluating and documenting their performance. Guided by an oversight team comprised of transportation professionals and state and local government representatives, the initiative sought to identify and define candidate performance measures commonly agreed upon by federal, state and local transportation officials.

Supported by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the oversight team held two workshop meetings consisting of representatives from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), the Transportation Research Board (TRB), the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO), the American Public Works Association (APWA) and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).  The first meeting in November 2004 identified 14 measures commonly agreed upon by the participants for further study, while the second meeting in March 2005 completed the process of selecting the measures and began the process of refining their definitions. Specific measures focused on the issue areas of non-recurring congestion (e.g., traffic incident management), recurring congestion (e.g., arterial management, traffic signal timing and system-wide performance (e.g., travel time, reliability, congestion). 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. At the conclusion of this effort, the NTOC action team finalized a Performance Measures Initiative Report in the summer of 2005.

After the report was completed, the NTOC action team sought to identify opportunities to work with states and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to pilot some or all of the measures. Specifically, a proposal was submitted for a National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project that would allow for piloting a number of measures in order to help the team determine whether the measures were useful and to tighten their definitions and guidance.

Moving this effort forward, a NCHRP Guide to Benchmarking Operations Performance Measures workshop was held on February 27 and 28, 2007, marking the first major milestone in the NCHRP 20-7 study that will continue the work that the NTOC performance measures action team started. Based upon input from this workshop, each of the performance measures originally identified are in the process of being updated in anticipation of a pilot testing phase. Prior to pilot testing, guidelines for the collection and processing of data will be developed and disseminated to a steering committee for review and comment. The steering committee will consist of workshop attendees as well as other interested parties who were unable to attend. After the pilot testing locations are identified, data collection is anticipated to take place between May and July of 2007, with a final report summarizing the effort aimed for January 1, 2008.

Local, regional or state agencies that have existing comprehensive traffic data collection programs or are planning data collection or survey efforts between May and September 2007 and are interested in participating in the pilot testing phase are strongly encouraged to contact Phil Tarnoff at tarnoff@eng.umd.edu or 301-403-4619. For more information on the call for volunteers, visit http://hosting-source.bronto.com/458/public/CATT.doc.