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Statewide Corridor Planning 13
require that problems associated with safety, intermodal freight movement, access to intermodal
facilities, traffic operations, capacity, intelligent transportation system (ITS) opportunities, and
access management be explicitly considered in the corridor studies, while implementation projects
or strategies to address some of these issues might have funds available from dedicated sources
with specific selection criteria.
There are a variety of levels for conducting corridor analyses as part of a statewide transportation
planning process, ranging from major corridor studies to lower levels of analysis. To provide
additional guidance, Appendix B identifies and discusses three levels of effort of analysis.
Alternatives Identification and Analysis
Similar to problem identification, certain types of alternatives and analysis tools might be applied
to provide consistent and comparable results among the corridor studies. Additional guidance on
analysis issues and methods are included in Appendix B and Appendix C. References to documents
and websites with information on different analysis tools that can be used in a corridor study are
provided at the end of this Guidebook.
Project and Corridor Evaluation
The purpose of any evaluation process is to produce information that can be used by decision-
makers to select the most feasible, most performance-effective, and/or most cost-effective set of
projects and strategies. The SWCP approach to statewide planning depends on having some
common evaluation measures as well as evaluation methods that can be used to compare candidate
projects across studies. For example, the state DOT could require the use of benefit/cost analysis
as a means of providing a dimensionless measure of the respective values of candidate projects.
As another example, if highway congestion is an important issue, state guidance could require that
congestion measures relating to the extent, duration, and magnitude of congestion be considered
in each corridor study. Similar to the corridor performance measures, each corridor analysis
could also have corridor-specific evaluation criteria that have been identified through the public
participation and resource agency coordination process.
During the research project, state DOTs identified some specific challenges in addressing
corridor needs, impacts, and alternatives. For that reason, additional information is included in
Appendices D, E, and F on the issues of public transportation, freight movement, and economic
development, respectively.
Identify Statewide Investment Program
and System Management Strategy
The final step in the SWCP approach is to use the results of individual corridor studies as
input to the development of a statewide transportation plan, an STIP, and potentially a system
management strategy. As in any type of planning, this final step usually considers not only
technical information and public input, but also political considerations relating to such things
as geographic equity, state and regional economic development needs, other statewide issues and
goals, and long-standing project-specific promises. Such factors are to be expected in what is
essentially a public investment decisionmaking process.
However, information produced by corridor plans are often better vetted through the local
political process than more global plans produced on a state-level basis. In addition, corridor
plans usually provide more specific project-level information that can be used as direct input
into the project prioritization and STIP process.
