As State DOTs continue to grapple with budget shortfalls and address competing demands such as maintenance and preservation of the system versus capacity expansion, more effort is being directed towards the creation of programmatic investment strategies. In terms of level of detail, these strategies are somewhere between a policy plan and a list of projects. A number of states now employ a long term programmatic investment strategies as a tool to both guide STIP decisions, and create a greater link between Department goals and policies, and future project selection.
This research identifies various methods by which various DOTs have developed and implemented programmatic investment strategies, i.e., prioritizing needs, allocating resources by type of asset, and making subsequent decisions on investment levels by infrastructure area. Further research is required to examine if a standard set of best practices exists, and to ascertain how such strategies have been implemented, both at the planning and programming level. and through the project development and operational processes within each respective DOT.
The final report is available here.
