Enhancing Transportation: Connecting TSMO and Planning

Long Description for Figure 1. An approach to planning for operations that integrates operations in each major step of the planning process.

This step-by step flow diagram describes the progression of the planning process and illustrates how and where transportation systems management and operations (TSMO)fits in.

At the top, goals and motivation factor into reliability and operations issue identification and prioritization.

This in turn feeds into operations objectives and performance measures, which inform the systematic process to identify, evaluate, and select TSMO strategies to meet objectives. During this step, the following occurs:

1. Identify TSMO strategies.
2. Evaluate TSMO strategies.
3. Select TSMO strategies for the plan.

TSMO strategies then feed into the long-range transportation plan and other documents, which in turn feed into the overall transportation improvement program and other funding programs. This step precedes implementation.

Implementation occurs prior to the process of monitoring and evaluating how the selected plans and strategies are performing. In an iterative fashion, this evaluation process informs the next round of reliability and operations issue identification and prioritization, followed by operations objective and performance measure identification. It also informs the next round of systematically identifying, evaluating, and selecting TSMO strategies to meet the identified objectives.