This webinar highlighted innovations in congestion management performance measures, building on the recent Congestion Management Process Guidebook that ICF International developed for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).
Traffic congestion continues to challenge the U.S. transportation system, resulting in billions of gallons of wasted fuel, hours of wasted time, and costs to the economy. Efforts to address congestion in urban areas are one of the primary demands on transportation funding. As transportation agencies look to more performance-based approaches in investment decision making, prioritizing projects is a key consideration. The federally-required Congestion Management Process (CMP) for metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) with populations over 200,000 creates a solid framework for building congestion management objectives and performance measures into the metropolitan transportation planning process.
In the webinar, ICF discussed the movement from traditional congestion measures, such as volume-to-capacity ratios and level-of-service measures, to a broader array of performance measures that MPOs are incorporating into their CMPs, including measures related to transportation system reliability and multimodal system performance. It also provided information on the role of congestion management performance measures in supporting livability and other regional goals. Finally, the use of visualizations to display information about congestion was discussed, with examples of different types of displays of congestion data—including maps, graphs, photos, and videos—to facilitate analysis of congestion issues by technical staff and communication with the public.
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