National Academies Press: OpenBook
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14167.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14167.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14167.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14167.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14167.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14167.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14167.
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TRANSPORTAT ION RESEARCH BOARD WASHINGTON, D.C. 2008 www.TRB.org N A T I O N A L C O O P E R A T I V E H I G H W A Y R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M NCHRP REPORT 618 Subject Areas Planning and Administration Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability Cambridge Systematics, Inc. Oakland, CA Dowling Associates, Inc. Oakland, CA System Metrics Group, Inc. San Francisco, CA Texas Transportation Institute College Station, TX Research sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration

NATIONAL COOPERATIVE HIGHWAY RESEARCH PROGRAM Systematic, well-designed research provides the most effective approach to the solution of many problems facing highway administrators and engineers. Often, highway problems are of local interest and can best be studied by highway departments individually or in cooperation with their state universities and others. However, the accelerating growth of highway transportation develops increasingly complex problems of wide interest to highway authorities. These problems are best studied through a coordinated program of cooperative research. In recognition of these needs, the highway administrators of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials initiated in 1962 an objective national highway research program employing modern scientific techniques. This program is supported on a continuing basis by funds from participating member states of the Association and it receives the full cooperation and support of the Federal Highway Administration, United States Department of Transportation. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies was requested by the Association to administer the research program because of the Board’s recognized objectivity and understanding of modern research practices. The Board is uniquely suited for this purpose as it maintains an extensive committee structure from which authorities on any highway transportation subject may be drawn; it possesses avenues of communications and cooperation with federal, state and local governmental agencies, universities, and industry; its relationship to the National Research Council is an insurance of objectivity; it maintains a full-time research correlation staff of specialists in highway transportation matters to bring the findings of research directly to those who are in a position to use them. The program is developed on the basis of research needs identified by chief administrators of the highway and transportation departments and by committees of AASHTO. Each year, specific areas of research needs to be included in the program are proposed to the National Research Council and the Board by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Research projects to fulfill these needs are defined by the Board, and qualified research agencies are selected from those that have submitted proposals. Administration and surveillance of research contracts are the responsibilities of the National Research Council and the Transportation Research Board. The needs for highway research are many, and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program can make significant contributions to the solution of highway transportation problems of mutual concern to many responsible groups. The program, however, is intended to complement rather than to substitute for or duplicate other highway research programs. Published reports of the NATIONAL COOPERATIVE HIGHWAY RESEARCH PROGRAM are available from: Transportation Research Board Business Office 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 and can be ordered through the Internet at: http://www.national-academies.org/trb/bookstore Printed in the United States of America NCHRP REPORT 618 Project 07-15 ISSN 0077-5614 ISBN: 978-0-309-11741-8 Library of Congress Control Number 2008905516 © 2008 Transportation Research Board COPYRIGHT PERMISSION Authors herein are responsible for the authenticity of their materials and for obtaining written permissions from publishers or persons who own the copyright to any previously published or copyrighted material used herein. Cooperative Research Programs (CRP) grants permission to reproduce material in this publication for classroom and not-for-profit purposes. Permission is given with the understanding that none of the material will be used to imply TRB, AASHTO, FAA, FHWA, FMCSA, FTA, or Transit Development Corporation endorsement of a particular product, method, or practice. It is expected that those reproducing the material in this document for educational and not-for-profit uses will give appropriate acknowledgment of the source of any reprinted or reproduced material. For other uses of the material, request permission from CRP. NOTICE The project that is the subject of this report was a part of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program conducted by the Transportation Research Board with the approval of the Governing Board of the National Research Council. Such approval reflects the Governing Board’s judgment that the program concerned is of national importance and appropriate with respect to both the purposes and resources of the National Research Council. The members of the technical committee selected to monitor this project and to review this report were chosen for recognized scholarly competence and with due consideration for the balance of disciplines appropriate to the project. The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied are those of the research agency that performed the research, and, while they have been accepted as appropriate by the technical committee, they are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board, the National Research Council, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. Each report is reviewed and accepted for publication by the technical committee according to procedures established and monitored by the Transportation Research Board Executive Committee and the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the National Research Council, the Federal Highway Administration, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and the individual states participating in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program do not endorse products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers’ names appear herein solely because they are considered essential to the object of this report.

CRP STAFF FOR NCHRP REPORT 618 Christopher W. Jenks, Director, Cooperative Research Programs Crawford F. Jencks, Deputy Director, Cooperative Research Programs Lori L. Sundstrom, Senior Program Officer Eileen P. Delaney, Director of Publications Margaret B. Hagood, Editor NCHRP PROJECT 07-15 PANEL Field of Traffic—Area of Traffic Planning Charles E. Howard, Jr., Puget Sound Regional Council, Seattle, WA (Chair) Scott R. Drumm, Port of Portland (OR), Portland, OR Patricia S. Hu, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Knoxville, TN Mark C. Larson, Minnesota DOT, St. Paul, MN Hani S. Mahmassani, University of Maryland, College Park, MD Phillip J. Mescher, Iowa DOT, Ames, IA Helen J. Rainwater, California DOT, Sacramento, CA Steven A. Smith, San Bernardino Associated Governments, San Bernardino, CA Ralph A. Gillmann, FHWA Liaison Mark R. Norman, TRB Liaison C O O P E R A T I V E R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M S

State departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, public tran- sit authorities, and other transportation stakeholders increasingly are turning to the use of transportation system performance measures to gain and sustain public and legislative support for investments in managing, maintaining, and constructing transportation infra- structure. Measures that express congestion and mobility in terms that system users can understand and use are needed for use in systems planning, corridor development, priority programming, and operations to inform investment decisions directed at improving system performance. This report presents a framework and cost-effective methods to predict, mea- sure, and report travel time, delay, and reliability from a customer-oriented perspective. The use of travel time, delay, and reliability as performance measures is hampered by complex data requirements, data accuracy issues, and inadequate procedures for incorpo- rating these measures into the transportation planning process. Few states have invested in comprehensive data collection programs because these measures can be expensive and difficult to generate. A relatively small number of public agencies have the data collection programs or analytical forecasting capabilities to generate reliable estimates of these mea- sures. States that do collect this data typically do so for select corridors, and their sample sizes are typically quite small. There is a need for structured, cost-effective measures of travel time, delay, and reliability that can be used by practitioners in predicting, measuring, mon- itoring, and reporting transportation performance in support of system investment and management decisions. The purpose of this guidebook is to provide transportation planners and project programmers with a framework to predict system performance using cost-effective data collection methods, analysis approaches, and applications that most effectively support transportation planning and decision making for capital and operational investments for quality-of-service monitoring and evaluation. F O R E W O R D By Lori L. Sundstrom Staff Officer Transportation Research Board

C O N T E N T S 1 Summary 4 Chapter 1 Introduction 4 1.1 Why Measure Travel-Time Performance? 5 1.2 How to Use the Guidebook 6 1.3 Limitations of the Guidebook 6 1.4 Measuring Mobility and Reliability 10 Chapter 2 Selecting Appropriate Performance Measures 10 2.1 Introduction 10 2.2 Measure Selection 13 2.3 Performance Measure Summary 13 2.4 Individual Measures 17 2.5 Area Measures 18 2.6 Basic Data Elements 19 2.7 Definition and Discussion of Speed Terms 20 2.8 Other Data Elements 21 2.9 Time Periods for Analysis 22 2.10 The Right Measure for the Analysis Area 22 2.11 The Right Measure for the Type of Analysis 23 2.12 Index Measure Considerations 25 Chapter 3 Data Collection and Processing 25 3.1 Introduction 25 3.2 Data Collection Methods 25 3.3 Data Collection Sampling Plan 30 3.4 Collecting Data from TMCs 32 3.5 Processing/Quality Control 34 Chapter 4 Before/After Studies 34 4.1 Introduction 35 4.2 Common Pitfalls of Before/After Studies 35 4.3 Selection of Performance Measures for Before/After Studies 35 4.4 Determining if Conditions Are Significantly Better 36 4.5 What to Do If the Null Hypothesis Cannot Be Rejected 37 Chapter 5 Identification of Deficiencies 37 5.1 Introduction 37 5.2 Quantifying Agency Standards 37 5.3 Data Collection 37 5.4 Comparing Field Data to Performance Standards 39 5.5 Comparing Forecasted Performance to Performance Standards 39 5.6 Diagnosing the Causes

41 Chapter 6 Forecast Future Performance 41 6.1 Introduction 41 6.2 Estimating/Forecasting Travel Time 48 6.3 Estimating Delay 48 6.4 Estimating Reliability 51 Chapter 7 Alternatives Analysis 51 7.1 Introduction 51 7.2 Defining the Problem 52 7.3 Generation of Project Alternatives for Analysis 53 7.4 Selection of Performance Measures 53 7.5 Evaluation of Alternatives 54 7.6 Develop Improvement Program 54 7.7 Evaluate Effectiveness of Implemented Solutions 55 Chapter 8 Using Travel Time Data in Planning and Decision Making 55 8.1 Introduction 55 8.2 Scope and Limitations 55 8.3 Organization 55 8.4 Creating a Performance-Based Decision-Making Environment 59 8.5 Using Travel Time, Delay, and Reliability in Planning Applications 59 8.6 Typical Planning Applications 69 References

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TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 618: Cost-Effective Performance Measures for Travel Time Delay, Variation, and Reliability explores a framework and methods to predict, measure, and report travel time, delay, and reliability from a customer-oriented perspective.

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