Regional Concept for Transportation Operations
7. Summary
Transportation entities are turning to integrated and innovative approaches that reflect regional system level thinking, leverage available technology, and form new institutional relationships. Because these new approaches typically transcend individual agencies, political jurisdictions, and transportation functions, they only work when participating agencies share a common vision for how transportation system planners, owners, and operators will work together to improve the way the transportation system is managed and operated.
This primer introduces a management tool that offers partners a systematic way to organize efforts and resources toward common operations objectives. It helps senior managers and elected officials focus their interests and energies on cost-effective strategies for improving transportation system performance in the region. This tool, the Regional Concept for Transportation Operations (RCTO), contains six key elements that guide partners in developing and addressing regional transportation needs: motivation, operations objective, approach, relationships and procedures, physical improvements, and resource arrangements.
An RCTO can serve as a mechanism to translate relatively high-level concepts for management and operations defined within the planning process into specific, coordinated strategies for operations that can be acted on. Multiple opportunities exist to use an RCTO to advance operations in connection with transportation planning.
An RCTO can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the partners by bringing together varied transportation operations perspectives, priorities, and cultures from different agencies and jurisdictions and by helping them to think collectively through what they want to accomplish and how they work together to reach that operations objective in the near future. It facilitates coordinating priorities, leveraging resources, and alleviating duplicative efforts and it clarifies the roles and responsibilities of the partners in the collaborative effort.
The collaborative effort required to develop the RCTO establishes credibility with decisionmakers and the public by demonstrating that multiple agencies stand behind and are working toward the same operations objective for improving regional transportation system performance.
