7.0 Conclusion
The Congestion Management Process provides a flexible, rational system for addressing congestion challenges across modal lines, and at different geographic scales and time spans. It shares with other transportation systems management and operations concepts an objectives-driven, performance based approach to metropolitan transportation planning, and represents the leading edge of systems management practice for urban areas. While required only for Transportation Management Areas, the CMP offers a useful methodology for addressing transportation problems in growing metropolitan areas and those urban areas with complex transportation networks and multiple jurisdictions and operating agencies.
The CMP also incorporates mechanisms for ongoing monitoring and reporting on transportation system performance, and offers a framework for data collection and management that can support a variety of related project development activities. By using the CMP data and analysis throughout project development, planners and system managers can streamline the environmental review process. Integration of CMP analysis means that alternatives analysis does not have to start from square one, but instead can make use of information generated during the evaluation of system performance and the comparison of alternatives performed during development of the metropolitan transportation plan.
