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

PROJECT SUGGESTIONS

The concluding activities on Day 2 of the Peer Exchange Workshop included developing project ideas to help get to the “perfect world” of congestion measurement for operations. The following project suggestions were identified during the discussion.

• Compile terminology and develop glossary: Development of a guidebook of common terminology for operations performance measurement, including methods for calculating measures using standard inputs.
• Guidance on the target setting process: Development of a guidebook including a synthesis and guidance at both the program and project level for target setting.
• Identifying a process for performance-based decision-making: Development of a process for decision-making, which might include a predictive modeling tool, identifying the value of data in decision-making, and recognizing tradeoffs with limited resources.
• Understanding best practices for customer engagement: Perform synthesis of best practices for engaging customers (e.g., panels, focus groups, social media, etc.) and include decision-makers as customers.
• Investigation and documentation of external factors that can impact operations performance measurement: Identify key attributes that should be tracked and reported and provide guidance on the process (extension of peer exchange background white paper #4).
• Synthesis and guidance on non-traditional performance measures: Non-traditional measures are ones that capture land use, multimodal aspects, and environmental effects (e.g., Greenhouse Gases).
• Technical Support for National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS): Includes user's forums and data crosswalk and integration issues (particularly with fusing NPMRDS to existing data sets). Project could be established as a pooled fund study.
• Identification of additional benefits and opportunities with private-company data: investigation of the potential for private-company data sources beyond just travel time and origin-destination data (e.g., individualized data from private providers for traveler choices).
• Improved arterial data: Guidance is needed to identify available data and calculation procedures for performance measures in the arterial environment (particularly the non-freeway National Highway System).
• Development of data governance policies for public agencies: A guidance document that identifies best practices for managing and sharing data within and among public agencies.
• Analysis tool for computing required performance statistics: A pooled fund for a “bare-bones” analysis tool to compute required performance statistics.
• Guidance on before-after evaluations of operational treatments: Guidebook to perform effective before-after studies of operational projects and programs including integrity of data sources, defining baseline, controlling for external factors, etc.
• Best practices online library on performance monitoring and management: Development and support of a web “presence” where this information could be queried and accessed.
• Value-added threshold: Better defining those facilities (using an average daily traffic [ADT] or ADT per lane threshold on arterials, for example) that are important for regional management and traveler information.