Project snapshot. More details below.
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Products
(Project Number)
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Impact on Practice
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Product Status
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INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURES TO ADVANCE OPERATIONAL STRATEGIES (L06)
Two companion publications—a guide and a research report—map out steps that agencies can follow to organize their own processes to successfully execute operations programs that improve travel time reliability. A version of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) widely used in the information technology industry was developed and applied to highway operations.
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The special demands of addressing nonrecurring congestion present new challenges for agencies in terms of policy, organization, staffing, resources, partner-ships, culture and leadership. With this CMM change-management tool, agencies can develop institutional arrangements that address the challenges and support more effective strategies for managing congestion and improving system operations.
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https://www.aashtotsmoguidance.org/
Project L34 will develop and pilot test an e-tool for evaluating business processes to improve travel time reliability based on findings from L01/L06. Completion is expected in early 2014.
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Staff Responsibility: William Hyman
A large number of strategies aimed at improving travel time reliability focus on highway operations. To be successful, operational strategies often require a collaborative and coordinated effort among many transportation organizations and within their key units. For example, effective work zone management within a transportation agency cuts across organizational boundaries and involves construction, maintenance, safety, and operations personnel. More significantly, many operational strategies, particularly traffic incident management, require strong cooperation from many different organizations, such as transportation departments, police, fire, emergency medical services, and towing and recovery.
The objective of this research was to undertake a comprehensive and systematic examination of the way agencies should be organized to successfully execute operations programs that improve travel time reliability.
The research addressed a large number of topics concerning organizational and institutional approaches that could enhance highway operations and travel time reliability. The most fruitful investigation was identification of the Capability Maturity Model, used extensively in the information technology field for organizational self-assessment and continuous improvement of quality and reliability. The researchers recognized that a version of the Capability Maturity Model could be developed and applied to highway operations and in turn travel time reliability. Elements defining different levels of maturity include culture/leadership, organization and staffing, resource allocation, and partnerships. As a part of the research, two companion publications—a guide and a research report—were produced and refined through workshops involving operations managers, executives, and others.
After the reports were submitted for publication, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) decided to support the conversion of the SHRP 2 Reliability Project L06 research into a web-based tool that would be user friendly, easy to access, and updatable. This work was done under the Transportation Research Board’s NCHRP Project 03-94, Transportation Systems Operations and Management Guide. At the same time, workshops with state DOTs and metropolitan areas were conducted to validate the research, and the findings were incorporated into the web material.
Status: The project is complete.
