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The Value of a Business Case in Mainstreaming TSMO

2. The Role of a Business Case in Mainstreaming TSMO

A TSMO business case can help DOT personnel across the agency understand TSMO’s potential and benefits. TSMO can provide cost-effective improvements that are delivered more quickly than construction projects. To mainstream TSMO programs and strategies, the case must be made for their value and contribution to the overall mix of solutions adopted to improve transportation system performance. It is important to know your audience (executive leadership, DOT business units, legislators, general public, etc.) when developing a business case and to use real-life examples and data to appeal to the audience’s interests and priorities. Some agencies have found that personalizing a business case makes it more effective by helping specific audiences see how it relates to them.

What Is a Business Case for TSMO?

Making the business case for TSMO involves defining challenges and problems faced by DOTs and determining how those issues can be addressed through TSMO. These challenges include transportation system safety, reliability, and congestion that affect management and operation of the system and decisions about investments. A business case can be outward facing to provide information on how TSMO can improve transportation systems for users. It can also be inward facing to encourage a greater commitment to TSMO through agency policies, processes, organizational changes, and development of a TSMO culture to improve system performance before investing in additional capacity. The business case is also made less formally through presentations across the agency or ongoing conversations with colleagues. For success in mainstreaming TSMO, a TSMO business case should be made formally and informally on an ongoing basis to help develop an understanding of and commitment to TSMO.

A TSMO business case lays out how TSMO can address current and anticipated challenges to the transportation system. It also discusses the value to the agency, in terms of cost savings and the ability to deliver on agency goals, and the value to system users and elected officials in terms of improved safety, decreased congestion, enhanced system reliability, economic vitality, quality of life, and effective use of taxpayer funding.

FHWA’s Developing and Sustaining a Transportation Systems Management & Operations Mission for Your Organization: A Primer for Program Planning (FHWA 2017, p. 23) provides the following questions when developing a TSMO business case to help agencies frame the benefits of TSMO:

  • What issues and trends are affecting the performance of our transportation system?
  • What are the agency’s unique transportation needs and challenges?
  • What opportunities does TSMO offer in addressing the challenges?
  • Who are the users of our transportation system?
  • What is most important to the system users?
  • What is most important to our decisionmakers?
  • What constraints must we work with to manage and operate the system effectively?

FHWA’s Advancing TSMO: Making the Business Case for Institutional, Organizational, and Procedural Changes (FHWA 2018, pp. 26–27) looks at why an agency would make changes to how it operates, internally and in collaboration with partners, to advance TSMO. It suggests including the following content in a TSMO business case:

  • Describe the jurisdiction's current system performance and TSMO activities as a baseline for change.
  • Describe how current problems or events suggest that an effective TSMO response requires institutional, organizational, and procedural changes that integrate TSMO into agency activities on a more formal (rather than ad hoc) basis.
  • Specify recommended or required institutional, organizational, and procedural actions.
  • Identify the external and internal benefits and payoffs from the proposed institutional, organizational, and procedural changes.
  • Identify and quantify institutional, organizational, and procedural improvement costs and resource requirements.
  • Discuss the overall balance between rate of return and risks.
  • Identify the responsibilities for change management at the unit and agency level.

How a Business Case Can Advance Mainstreaming

To mainstream TSMO, the business case must shape an agency’s understanding of what TSMO is. It must also provide a vision for how TSMO enhances management and operations of transportation systems and across lines of business in an agency.

A business case for TSMO can be used to gain support and funding for deploying TSMO strategies, modifying business processes to better integrate TSMO, making organizational changes to better deliver TSMO, integrating TSMO into standard training programs, and allocating more staff to TSMO activities. These outcomes can all advance the mainstreaming of TSMO within transportation agencies.

The motivation behind a business case may be a desire to maximize return on investment, or it may be a public- or media-driven motivation resulting from a significant event that impacts major facilities. As public entities, transportation agencies must meet user needs and expectations within the limits of available funding and regulatory requirements.

TSMO definitions vary across DOTs. Some agencies take a more traditional operations focus, while others include more business areas within TSMO. FHWA defines TSMO as:

A set of strategies that focus on operational improvements that can maintain and even restore the performance of the existing transportation system before extra capacity is needed. The goal here is to get the most performance out of the transportation facilities we already have. This requires knowledge, skills, and techniques to administer comprehensive solutions that can be quickly implemented at relatively low cost. This may enable transportation agencies to “stretch” their funding to benefit more areas and customers. TSMO also helps agencies balance supply and demand and provide flexible solutions to match changing conditions. (FHWA 2019)

This means DOTs can identify and implement strategies to optimize the current system to improve operations without adding new capacity. If additional capacity is needed, there may be opportunities to reduce the scope and extent of capital investment through TSMO strategies.

Mainstreaming TSMO typically evolves over time as key stakeholders gain a better understanding of TSMO and the business case becomes more compelling. Mainstreaming requires broad support for considering TSMO strategies as integral to planning, program and project development, and day-to-day operations. This can involve multiple reinforcing actions:

  • Developing a common understanding of TSMO. Managing and operating the system to optimize current and future investments applies to all aspects of a DOT. This includes traffic operations, system planning, design, construction, and maintenance. It is important to frame the TSMO business case to provide a clear understanding of TSMO and to highlight the benefits and opportunities of TSMO across all DOT functional areas.
  • Aligning TSMO initiatives with agency goals and objectives. The business case for TSMO should align with a DOT’s strategic goals and objectives. It should articulate how TSMO supports agency goals in a cost-effective manner, and how TSMO can be a method of delivering those goals and meeting agency objectives. The business case should help agency leadership, management, and decisionmakers see that TSMO is not a separate activity but a set of strategies for obtaining agency priorities.
  • Building support for TSMO initiatives across the agency, among decisionmakers, and with system users and the public. Building support for TMSO should include clear examples of TSMO projects, services, and activities that have been implemented by the DOT to help realize agency goals and maximize return on investment. Building on successes can help engender support. As agencies realize benefits from specific strategies, such as traffic incident management, successful initiatives can be highlighted as examples of how TSMO can support DOT goals and illustrate the opportunities for return on investment in TSMO.
  • Expanding allocation of resources to TSMO. An effective business case for TSMO can help integrate TSMO projects, services, and activities in investment planning and resource allocation processes. With an understanding of what TSMO has to offer, its potential benefits, and the return on investment, DOTs can more effectively allocate resources for personnel, funding, and assets to advance TSMO activities. The business case can help elevate the status of TSMO within the agency to a core business line integral to the DOT’s mission.
  • Providing a basis for integrating TSMO into all business sectors of the DOT. Integrating TSMO into existing business processes makes TSMO a part of every aspect of how agencies approach their work, helps people see the value of TSMO, and helps advance and mainstream TSMO.