Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming (2019) / Chapter Skim
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73 This chapter of the guidance contains documentation for each of the tools and methods developed to assist practitioners in identifying and evaluating right-sizing opportunities. The documentation is organized as follows: • Introduction.
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74 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Land uses within districts and along key corridors often change considerably over time. Initial infrastructure attributes may have once been right for the context but, if that context has changed or will soon change, then it would be poor practice to perpetuate the status quo.
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Technical Guidance 75 Data and Overview of Procedure Best Practice Right-Sizing Actions for Short-Trip, at-Grade Corridors The Institute of Transportation Engineers and Congress for the New Urbanism have together published guidelines for designing walkable urban thoroughfares. A few best practice recommendations from that guidance for corridors that have or soon will experience a shift toward shorter trip lengths follow from the Institute of Transportation Engineers and Congress for the New Urbanism (2010)
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76 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming 2. Communities regard the corridor as economically blighted and/or are actively promoting more multi-family and mixed uses.
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Technical Guidance 77 attracted to other districts. Notice that in the 1970s, intra-district trips (the diagonal)
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78 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Thus, it is possible to compute the average trip length for productions separately from attractions and then add them together to determine the average of both productions and attractions. Table 23 shows how this is done.
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Technical Guidance 79 suggests that despite low counts, there may be considerable latent demand to travel by active modes if such travel can be made safe and enticing. Furthermore, for trips that remain in vehicles, the average vehicle trip has shifted more toward intra-district circulation and less toward long-distance commuting.
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80 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming by Metro Analytics on behalf of Salt Lake City)
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Technical Guidance 81 The process is easiest within a spatial information system that can handle multiple data sets, such as a GIS. While this is not the only tool, it is the most widely used tool and will be a reference for the remainder of the procedure: 1.
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82 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming 2. Secure the following data sets in a form that can be linked to the road network, either as static tables, or more ideally as links to the relevant databases (i.e., through a SQL)
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Technical Guidance 83 The screening method combines these two variables into an equation, which was identified previously as LCT. As shown in Figure 11, application of the method (with the given LCT formula)
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84 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Figure 10. Comparative traffic volumes and historic preservation outlays.
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Technical Guidance 85 Note that there are nuances to interpreting the data results: Segment C is in the highest quantile of the LCT screening. It does have low volumes and an above-average maintenance cost allocation.
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86 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming right-sizing strategies may be beneficial. Segment B has high volume and cost totals (Figure 10)
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Technical Guidance 87 from the candidate list. A user would do this to avoid counting past maintenance totals against the roadways prior to the roadways being right-sized.
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88 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Elements for Specifying a Development-Sensitive Safety Scenario. In the Excel workbook provided, the first four tabs (colored red)
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Technical Guidance 89 in comparison with the base-case outlays that would be made without the solution. These outlays should be entered in undiscounted constant dollars.
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90 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming be more commuting (and potentially delivery) traffic and may have more economic effects than residential.
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Technical Guidance 91 Step 4: Define Safety Characteristics and Anticipated Crash Modification Factors The final set of inputs needed by users addresses the safety performance of the corridor or network studied (shown on the fourth tab of the workbook titled Crash Assumptions)
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92 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Step 5: Interpret Reports and Compare Benefits Once a right-sizing scenario is completely defined (in Steps 1–4) , the practitioner can look to the BCA summary on the sixth page of the workbook to consider the benefits (or disbenefits)
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Technical Guidance 93 • No acceptable bike facilities in corridor with latent bike demand. • Eleven out of 12 bus stops are not ADA compliant.
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94 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming improvements in 2017–2019, instead fully replacing the misaligned infrastructure in 2020 and 2021, putting the entire facility on a different maintenance cycle thereafter. Once the new facility is in place, ongoing operations and maintenance costs will tend to be lower, with most of the additional agency outlays for implementing the right-sizing occurring in 2020 and 2021.
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Figure 12. Development of land use characteristics through regional comparisons.
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96 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming complemented by parcel-level data available from the city about historical and potential utilization. Consideration of the development capacity as shown in the figure, validated through discussions with real estate brokers and comparison with other developing areas in the city, provides a basis for reasonable assumptions about the anticipated development pattern.
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Technical Guidance 97 mode, have an average length of 5.54 miles compared with 7.46 miles, and that truck utilization is expected to be unaffected by the change. Further comparisons show that trips in locations matching the anticipated future land use profile already have lower speeds (37 to 42 miles per hour)
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98 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Step 4: Define Safety Characteristics and Anticipated Crash Modification Factors The Salt Lake case also entailed considering safety characteristics for the scenario. Table 30 summarizes 7 years of past safety performance for the study area (as currently built)
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Technical Guidance 99 Best Case/Worst Case Reduction Factor = 1.5 Best-case Best-case Worst-case Worst-case CMF Reduced* CMF Low Reduced*
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100 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming (attributable to slower speeds and right-sizing features) and reduction in vehicle operating costs (associated with shorter trips and more efficient operations in the right-sized area)
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Technical Guidance 101 Tool Purpose Each right-sizing project is unique, both in its physical attributes and in its institutional and political framework. Because the need to rightsize is almost by definition unplanned, potential partners in a right-sizing project need a starting point for negotiation.
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102 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming The ROI Calculator is contained entirely within an Excel workbook. The calculator consists of five data-input steps and a final step that provides results.
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Figure 14. Screenshot of home page.
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104 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming following pages emphasizes buttons to navigate within the ROI Calculator and manipulate data (e.g., insert default values or clear previous entries)
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Figure 15. Screenshot of Step 1.
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Figure 16. Screenshot of Step 2.
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Figure 17. Screenshot of Step 2B.
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Figure 18. Screenshot of Step 2C.
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Technical Guidance 109 For projects with similar life spans, the net present value allows for accurate comparison of each partner's monetary costs under each project scenario. The net present value of monetary costs for each partner under each scenario may be transferred to the "total financial contribution" cells in Step 2 by clicking the button labeled "Link Results to Step 2." Sometimes the projects being compared have different life spans, which prevent net present values from being directly comparable.
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Figure 19. Screenshot of Step 3.
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Technical Guidance 111 Step 4: Enter Criteria Values In Step 4, the user enters estimates of the values for each criterion for each partner under each scenario and also defines thresholds for poor and excellent outcomes for each criterion. Tabs allow the user to switch among partners (Figure 20)
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Figure 20. Screenshot of Step 4.
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Technical Guidance 113 Step 5: Weight Criteria by Importance Criteria are not equally important to partners' perception of success. The ROI Calculator accounts for the differences among criteria's importance in estimating the benefit that each scenario provides to partners.
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Figure 21. Screenshot of Step 5.
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Figure 22. Screenshot of Step 6 (results)
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116 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Below the summary benefits table is a set of tabs that allow the user to view the achievement of each criterion for each partner under each scenario. The percentages show the extent to which the project scenario achieves the criterion.
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Figure 23. Screenshot of Step 6 (charts)
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(a) Figure 24.
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(b) Figure 24.
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120 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Discussion Caveats and Limitations Like all tools, the right-sizing ROI Calculator makes assumptions and has limitations that the user should remember when interpreting results. These limitations are summarized as follows.
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Technical Guidance 121 rekindling discussion among partners and rerunning the right-sizing ROI Calculator to support their discussions. The reassessment period may be set to align with the partners' planning processes or it may be independent.
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122 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming The funding and development awareness method is a simple assessment process to provide situational awareness for project planners and designers. The procedure enables an agency to roughly identify (1)
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Technical Guidance 123 – The economic values of new land use types or development intensity to calculate assessed value of land and improvements per square foot. – Calculated changes in land and developed property value over the most recent 5 to 10 years; pay particular attention to developed property that has changed character or intensity.
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124 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Consider this project context: A pedestrian improvement project is considered along and across a congested six-lane arterial with 40,000 average daily vehicle volume and at least 20,000 daily pedestrian and bicycle crossings. The street borders a major university that has experienced significant recent growth and that expects that growth to continue.
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Technical Guidance 125 It can provide a significant basis for reaching out to municipal, county, state, or private sector partners and also provide meaningful intelligence on the underlying needs surrounding a project. The recommended process also opens up important lines of communication between governmental entities early in the process.
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126 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming fundamentally, what is the proper target hour for the uncongested system? In a congestion sense, this can be thought of as "how many hours of a network with undesirable traffic congestion levels is a region able to handle before the citizens and businesses feel too much ‘traffic pain'?
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Technical Guidance 127 patterns that exist in the networks. The congestion threshold testing method can also be used as an interim step to evaluate congested network locations and possibly make changes to the future investment scenarios.
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128 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming This approach will show costly needs on freeways but give no guidance on when roads would be expected to be uncongested. This analysis answers a different question: "what happens to travel routes if the traffic demand is reduced?
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Technical Guidance 129 Figures 28 through 30 illustrate the results that might be developed by multiplying the base travel volumes by 90%, 80%, and 60%, and then coloring the road sections with the same scale as with the base map. Major road sections remain in the red color (very congested)
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130 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Figure 28. Example of 90 percent of peak-hour traffic volume (delay per mile values)
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Technical Guidance 131 Figure 29. Example of 80 percent of peak-hour traffic volume (delay per mile values)
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132 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Figure 30. Example of 60 percent of peak-hour traffic volume (delay per mile values)
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Technical Guidance 133 In programming processes involving a benefit–cost analysis, the comparative benefits of projects that cut off user costs at the lower congestion threshold levels (90%, 80%, 70%, and 60%) while creating lower congestion costs can also be instructive in identifying those corridors with deep underlying network efficiencies.
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134 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming resources. DOTs, as required by MAP-21 legislation, have performance standards for bridge and pavement assets that receive federal aid.
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Technical Guidance 135 Table 35 provides an example of converting from qualitative to quantitative states.
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136 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming On a programmatic level, using the heat map across the state would first show those transition areas influenced by the change in performance measures. Second, as performance measures are changed, this results in incurring deferred maintenance on the segments, as actions are likely to be lower priority for those segments on the border between good–fair rather than those in fair or poor.
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Technical Guidance 137 Anticipating these potential challenges, the mapping exercise also highlights "hot spots," where there may be high future costs spatially co-located due to deferred maintenance resulting from standards changes. This can support policy dialogue about distributional equity as well as regional or district-level resource planning across a state.
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138 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming level, the method can be applied across different functional classes and area types, as mentioned previously. Regarding the area type, it is important to be aware that segmentation in the urban settings may be shorter than in the rural areas.
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Technical Guidance 139 way that provides taxpayers with a full story of the project benefits. For example, pavement rehabilitation projects are described with phrases like "extended service life" and "smoother riding surface." More approachable measures like delay and cost savings from congestion projects or reduced crashes and serious injuries from safety projects are usually mentioned for those types of projects.
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140 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming This process provides a spatially comprehensive and visually consistent level of information. This mapping process informs project comparison, project selection, improved public engagement, and awareness of the relationship of transportation costs and benefits.
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Technical Guidance 141 4. Conflate (or match)
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less congested more congested Figure 34. Congestion data.
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Technical Guidance 143 • Needs assessment. Determine the amount of facilities that are performing below a certain threshold within the system.
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Figure 36. Bridge condition.
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Figure 37. Crash risk.
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lowest value highest value Figure 38. Freight value.
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Technical Guidance 147 The project scoping method could be deployed in three phases: Phase 1. Use the data layer maps to identify locations where several attributes are coded with red or orange (high priority)
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148 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming 10,000 residents, models report "nothing substantial needed" so plans recommend an 84-foot right-of-way for a minor arterial to serve this area. Homes and businesses are set up accordingly.
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Technical Guidance 149 Figure 39. Guideline for ideal macro-level network spacing.
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150 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Using the Results to Influence Right-Sizing 1. Application to fully built-out communities: Show Ideal Grid next to Existing Plus Future.
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Technical Guidance 151 5. Initiate immediate corridor preservation for at-risk segments: Once there is general buy-in on future alignments that should eventually exist if the community ever expands into that space, even if it is beyond the planning horizon, identify segments that are at risk due to pending development and then focus on preserving those locations.
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152 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Uses. This graphic has been used by many leaders to communicate where they are not rightsized and to encourage greenfield communities to do everything possible to create a stronger grid.
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Technical Guidance 153 Step 3: Compare current plans with conceptual "master architecture": This shows what is planned for the horizon year versus what arguably should be preserved for build-out. The first network should be effectively a subset of the second network.
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Figure 43. Step 3: Compare actual to ideal grid -- Utah County.
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Technical Guidance 155 for that transect (see Figure 45)
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156 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Dendritic networks cannot easily intensify beyond suburban densities, and such areas can suffer land use degradation over time, as the market has no mechanism to replace decaying structures with larger, more valuable structures. However, dendritic networks can support T4-scale mixed-use development along arterials if those arterials are designed for complete streets.
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Technical Guidance 157 "freeways" can be substituted for lower-speed expressways, parkways, tollways, or even urban boulevards with high-frequency transit. The point is that unless there are facilities designed for longer-distance vehicle trips, then freight and other long-distance trips have no choice but to exacerbate congestion on the general circulatory network.
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158 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Safety Will the project maintain or improve safety? Have local planning and zoning authorities been consulted to identify potential future changes in traffic levels, access density, or bicycle/pedestrian activity?
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Technical Guidance 159 While there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to practical design, the general categories and questions in the table are offered as a starting point for agencies that wish to build a design checklist into their right-sizing strategy. This checklist can be implemented within the following procedure: 1.
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160 Right-Sizing Transportation Investments: A Guidebook for Planning and Programming Wider Context. There is no meaningful variability in the forecast for the corridor, and the traffic level has been relatively stable for over 10 years without significant increase in volume, and none predicted.
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Technical Guidance 161 designers and other partners opportunities to consider underlying issues and arrive at better and more right-sized options before committing the agency to the more resource-intensive environmental or pre-design processes of the DOT. It is understood that the project in this example may have had difficulty making it through a National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 process and may have been unlikely to have ever been selected in a prioritization process even using typical BCA measures.
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