NCHRP Project 08-36
Proposed Research Problem Statement
1. Title
Software Tools to Quickly Assess Project Benefits
2. Background
The movement towards performance-based planning has contributed to transportation
agencies being required to evaluate diverse projects with respect to multiple criteria such as
safety, cost, accessibility, jobs-housing balance, economic development, sustainability, and
congestion mitigation. Although such evaluations are not unusual for large investments that
are part of the NEPA process, states and cities are increasingly being called upon to provide
such evaluations as a routine step within the transportation planning and programming
process. There is a need to examine available software products to determine if they could
be used by localities, MPOs, and state DOTs to quantify project benefits for the large number
of investments that may appear in an annual transportation program. Any software must be
applicable to diverse surface transportation projects, such as capacity expansion, operational
improvements, and intermodal connections, and must be feasible with many projects.
3. Statement of Urgency
Three factors contribute to the urgency of this project.
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One is that states are increasingly being asked to calculate benefits of projects or
packages (scenarios) of projects for the proposed transportation program. As an
illustration of just one state, legislation passed in Virginia known as House Bill 2 requires
that project decisions be based, in part, on how each project is scored against certain
criteria such as congestion mitigation, safety, accessibility, economic development,
environmental quality, and land use/transportation coordination.
A second factor is national legislation: under MAP 21, FHWA requires that the impacts
of transportation projects be forecast. Accordingly, more traditional methods of
evaluating project benefits, such as a reduction in crashes or delay, may not necessarily
be sufficient, especially as programming decisions cross modal boundaries. (For
example, California’s draft 2016 STIP Guidelines contain language suggesting that
investments should respond to “the most critical corridor needs” without restricting
investments to a particular transportation mode; one subsection within Oregon’s STIP
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emphasizes the need to consider diverse projects through a “single multi-modal
investment decision.”)
Third, scenario-based planning has become increasingly popular, where the benefits of an
integrated set of transportation projects is larger than would be the case if projects were
considered individually. Because some stakeholders may desire to implement only some
projects within a scenario, the ability to quantify the impact of removing one or more
projects from a package (e.g., the loss of synergy) is critical.
4. Project Objective(s)
The purpose of this project is to determine how transportation agencies can consistently use
off-the-shelf software to quantify multimodal project benefits, given that (1) there may be
hundreds of candidate projects under consideration in a transportation program, and (2) there
will be some projects that, although listed separately, should in fact be prioritized as part of a
package of projects.
5. Relationship to Existing Body of Knowledge
Software to evaluate project benefits across multiple criteria is not new: public sector
examples have included the FHWA-sponsored IMPACTS and STEAM packages; a private
sector example is the TREDIS software created by the Economic Development Research
Group. Performance-based planning is also not new; a search in TRID with this yields 79
citations having that exact three word phrase. It is also recognized that work in this area is
ongoing, for example, the Texas Department of Transportation recently initiated a project to
identify performance measures that “decision makers can easily understand” (the project is
titled Framework for Implementing Performance Planning for Rural Planning
Organizations). SHRP 2 has also placed emphasis on making the transportation decision
making process more transparent, notably through the effort formerly titled “Transportation
for Communities: Advancing Projects through Partnerships” [TCAPP] which is being
retitled to “PlanWorks.”
To be clear, the above literature is relevant but, by itself, does not directly address the project
objective of indicating how an agency can use existing software to routinely assess diverse
project benefits for hundreds of projects. The literature also does not provide a methodology
that can be readily understood, as, in some cases, the prioritization techniques are quite
detailed.
6. List of Anticipated Work Tasks
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One task is to identify potential software products that are available. Such products
should be classified based on data requirements, time requirements, skill sets required to
successfully apply the software, and ability to analyze packages of projects.
A second and related task is to survey transportation agencies that are using, or are
considering the use of, software products to evaluate project benefits for candidate
projects in their program.
A third task is to develop criteria that transportation agencies could use to evaluate
software products. For example, one criterion would be the extent to which the software
product can use existing agency data without re-entry; another criterion would be the
ability to share the results of these data across multiple agencies.
A fourth task is to identify insights based on transportation agencies’ use of these
software tools. For example, in Virginia, one MPO commented that it would be of
interest if a software tool could help one present very complicated data sets, such that the
details behind a complicated performance measure are understood rather than becoming a
“black box” of information. As another example, knowing how agencies have assessed
benefits, on a large scale, of projects in some of the societal impact areas such as jobshousing balance, would be of interest.
7. Estimate of Funds Needed
Depending on the scope of the survey, the cost is estimated to be 4-6 person-months of effort,
or roughly a cost of $50,000 to $100,000. If time is limited, then depth on task 4 would be
preferable to breadth on task 1 or 2.
8. Estimate of Time Needed to Complete the Research
Depending on how the project is staffed, it could be completed within 4 to 8 months.
9. Name, Affiliation and Contact Information of Submitter(s)
Marsha Fiol
Virginia Department of Transportation
(804) 786-2985
marsha.fiol@vdot.virginia.gov
1401 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219
John Miller
Virginia Department of Transportation
(434) 293-1999
john.miller@vdot.virginia.gov
530 Edgemont Road
Charlottesville, Virginia, 22903
10. Date of Submittal
March 27, 2015