Peer Exchange Workshop on the "Perfect World of Measuring Congestion"
Workshop Summary Report

IMPLEMENTATION HURDLES AND NEEDS

After discussing the vision for the perfect world of congestion measurement for operations, workshop attendees identified implementation hurdles and needs in the areas of data, external factors and data analysis tools. These needs are listed in the sections below.

DATA NEEDS

Workshop attendees identified the following data needs (“new” or “improvements on existing”):

• Travel characteristics (needed for all modes on roadways)
  • Volume data
    • Person-volume
    • Density information
    • Data by lane
  • Latent/induced demand
  • Real-time speed
  • Capacity
• Information on causes of congestion
• Trip Information
  • Multimodal information (transit, bicyclist, and pedestrian data) – and how to fuse modes together
  • Origin-destination data
• Improved spatial coverage
  • Rural areas
  • Arterials
• Data governance guidance
  • Data business plan, data standardization
• Data use information
  • How are users using the data
  • What do they look at? How are they changing their decisions?
• Accessibility/Livability data
• How to fuse crowd-sourced and sensor data

EXTERNAL FACTORS

Workshop attendees identified the following external factors that serve as hurdles to performance monitoring because they may lead to fluctuations in performance measure values.

• Weather
• Economic factors
  • Employment rates
  • Population growth
  • Gross state product (or gross metropolitan product)
• Demand (where is it now? – temporally and spatially)
• Accessibility/livability must be incorporated and considered
• Quantitative extent of tourism and visitors (e.g., from Chamber of Commerce)
• Military base volumes/impacts

External factors are further discussed in white paper #4 (see Appendix C).

DATA ANALYSIS TOOLS

Workshop attendees identified the following analysis tools or provided the following observations for overcoming analysis barriers for measuring congestion for operations:

• FHWA National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS) is valuable, but a national tool is needed to analyze the dataset
• The University of Maryland has developed many data analysis tools (see http://www.cattlab.umd.edu/?portfolio=ritis) for the I-95 Corridor Coalition
• Many DOTs not present at the workshop likely need help in telling their message
• Tools must model/adjust/forecast and be more nimble