Organizing for TSMO
Case Study 3: Performance Measurement – Making Data-driven Transportation Decisions Using Performance Measures

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Historically, transportation agencies have managed congestion primarily by funding major capital projects that focused on adding capacity to address physical constraints, such as bottlenecks. Operational improvements were typically an afterthought and considered after the new infrastructure was already added to the system. Given the changing transportation landscape that includes increased customer expectations, a better understanding of the sources of congestion, and constraints in resources, alternative approaches were needed. Transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) provides such an approach to overcome these challenges and address a broader range of congestion issues to improve overall system performance. With agencies needing to stretch transportation funding further and demand for reliable travel increasing, TSMO activities can help agencies maximize the use of available capacity and implement solutions with a high benefit-cost ratio. This approach supports agencies' abilities to address changing system demands and be flexible for a wide range of conditions.

Effective TSMO efforts require full integration within a transportation agency and should be supported by partner agencies. This can be achieved by identifying opportunities for improving processes, instituting data-driven decision-making, establishing proactive collaboration, and performing activities leading to development of performance optimization processes.

Through the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2), a national partnership between the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), and the Transportation Research Board, (TRB), a self-assessment framework was developed based on a model from the software industry. The SHRP2 program developed a framework for agencies to assess their critical processes and institutional arrangements through a capability maturity model (CMM). The CMM uses six dimensions of capability to allow agencies to self-assess their implementation of TSMO principles²:

1. Business processes - planning, programming, and budgeting.
2. Systems and technology - systems engineering, systems architecture standards, interoperability, and standardization.
3. Performance measurement - measures definition, data acquisition, and utilization.
4. Organization and workforce - programmatic status, organizational structure, staff development, recruitment, and retention.
5. Culture - technical understanding, leadership, outreach, and program authority.
6. Collaboration - relationships with public safety agencies, local governments, metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), and the private sector.

Within each capability dimension, there are four levels of maturity (performed, managed, integrated, and optimized), as shown in Figure 1. An agency uses the CMM self-assessment to identify their level of maturity in each dimension, to determine their strengths and weaknesses, and to determine actions they can take to improve their capabilities.

Purpose of Case Studies

In the first 10 years of implementation of the TSMO CMM, more than 50 States and regions used the tool to assess and improve their TSMO capabilities. With the many benefits experienced by these agencies, FHWA developed a series of case studies to showcase leading practices to assist other transportation professionals in advancing and mainstreaming TSMO into their agencies. The purposes of the case studies are to:

• Communicate the value of changing the culture and standard practices towards TSMO to stakeholders and decision-makers.
• Provide examples of best-practices and lessons learned by other State and local agencies during their adoption, implementation, and mainstreaming of TSMO.

These case studies support transportation agencies by showing a wide range of challenges, opportunities, and results to provide proof for the potential benefits of implementing TSMO. Each case study was identified to address challenges faced by TSMO professionals when implementing new or expanding existing practices in the agency and to provide lessons learned.

Identified Topics of Importance

Performance measures are critical to the success of a TSMO program. Performance measures enable an organization to track the internal progress of TSMO to agency processes and achievements as well as monitor and optimize the performance of the transportation network. Performance measures tell the story of TSMO by tracking the optimization of organizational strategic goals, empowering informed transportation decision-making, and conveying a message to internal and external stakeholders on the efficient use of available resources.

Interviews

Agencies were selected for each case study based on prior research indicating that the agency was excelling in particular TSMO capabilities. Care was taken to include a diversity of geographical locations and agency types (departments of transportation, cities, and MPOs) to develop case studies that other agencies could easily relate to and learn from. Interviews were conducted with selected agencies to collect information on the topic for each case study.

Description of Performance Measurement

The success of any TSMO program is tracked through performance measures to manage progress and evaluate if actions are beneficial. The performance measurement dimension of TSMO includes:

• Definition and criteria of each metric.
• How data is, or will be, acquired to track metrics.
• How data will be utilized.
• How data will be analyzed.

Output performance measures are defined to describe the progress and productivity of TSMO activities through a process-oriented method. Strategic goals and objectives are identified through collaboration with internal and external partner agencies that align with regional transportation plans. After evaluation of data acquisition, analytics, and utilization capabilities, performance measures can be identified to correspond with each strategic goal and objective of an organization. The resulting output tracks an organization's progress towards reaching strategic goals.

Outcome performance measures for the transportation network are also tracked. Metrics such as travel time index, incident clearance time, and traffic fatality rates are a few examples of how to track the performance of transportation facilities.

Well-defined measures and the degree to which they are being met help transportation professionals make more informed decisions and prioritize projects based on a monitored rate of success. This information can be used to support benefit-cost analyses and enables continuous improvement through process-based metric selection.

Performance measures drive the success of TSMO programs by allowing agencies to realize and quantify improvements in the short-term through the effective use of TSMO strategies. Metrics that complement the framework of the TSMO program and measure achievements are shared with external agencies and the public to exhibit efficient use of resources.