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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 1 - Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14510.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 1 - Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14510.
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Page 9
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 1 - Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14510.
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Page 9

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C H A P T E R 1 BackgroundAs departments of transportation (DOTs) move toward more customer-based performance metrics, network and travel time reliability begin to take a more prominent role among the potential measures on which a transportation management agency rates its own performance. With the strong focus on the Federal Congestion Initiative, agencies need innovative approaches to deal with congestion and delay; travel time reliability is a key measure of such approaches, as well as of overall system operations (1). Tools and approaches that can improve reliability or an agency’s response to impediments to travel time reliability can yield valuable benefits to an over- all operations strategy. Integrating key processes can further demonstrate the positive effects and operational influences. L01 is an integral part of the SHRP 2 Reliability focus area in that it establishes a baseline of knowledge of current agency business processes—and the integration of these processes— that have significant impact on travel time reliability (2). Reli- ability is defined in this report as consistency of travel times for a particular trip. Travelers tend to estimate how long a trip will take based on parameters such as distance, time of day, and their own experience. Impacts to the transportation net- work that cause unexpected delays introduce uncertainty in travel time reliability. Project Overview The results of L01 identify the core of operations business processes within transportation management that have day-to- day influence over operations and network performance and, in turn, have positive impacts on travel time reliability. The L01 project differs from other research activities that are part of the SHRP 2 Reliability focus area, some of which are also developing specific procedures, monitoring programs, or exploring alternatives to traditional traffic management strate- gies. L01 specifically looks into the processes that enable oper- ational functions that directly affect network and travel time reliability and in which integration plays a significant part.7This integration involves operational processes, as well as the broader efforts to institutionalize core processes at the agency level. The outcomes of this project are envisioned to assist trans- portation agency and authority managers in developing and integrating business processes with a tangible goal in mind— to improve travel time reliability. These processes and their relationship to travel time reliability may initially seem abstract, but the intent is to map out clearly defined paths toward suc- cessful integration of processes that have been demonstrated to enhance travel time reliability, thereby guiding transporta- tion managers and officers in adopting and integrating these processes within their respective agencies and operations. The following were the project’s key research objectives: • Identify and document successful practices that integrate business processes to improve travel time reliability. This was accomplished through researching available litera- ture, identifying appropriate case studies, and interviewing agencies that have demonstrated innovative approaches or integration strategies. An important research focus was on those agencies that have integrated various business processes concerning factors that affect nonrecurring con- gestion, because these factors tend to have the most nega- tive impact on reliability. • Define key business processes within DOT and transporta- tion operations that are linked to travel time reliability. • Promote awareness of the business process concept within DOT operations and demonstrate how relating integrated business processes with operational enhancements results in travel time reliability. • Demonstrate how strategies and business process integra- tion activities successfully employed by agencies can be adopted by other entities, and document the factors that could affect such adoption. • Help agency managers identify critical gaps in their current processes and strategies to address these gaps, including

8combining and integrating processes to improve travel time reliability. This provides a foundation for more detailed ana- lytic and program application activities being conducted through other SHRP 2 Reliability efforts. • Coordinate L01 research activities with ongoing research within the SHRP 2 Reliability focus area to extract the most innovative case studies. Leveraging the research activities among the multiple Reliability projects will enhance the overall product of this focus area. Business Process Focus Defining a Business Process In general, a business process is a series of actions or activities that result in a specific or desired outcome or accomplish a spe- cific organizational goal. There are several interpretations of business process, depending on the context or focus. In systems engineering and information technology, business process management and mapping take a quantitative approach. Efforts are under way to standardize how processes are shown and integrated to provide a detailed road map of events, actors, inputs, outputs, activity sequences, and outcomes. Sparx Systems (3) describes a business process as a collection of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market. It implies a strong empha- sis on how the work is done within an organization, in contrast to a product’s focus on what. A process is thus a specific order- ing of work activities across time and place, with a beginning, an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs; it is a structure for action. A business process: • Has a goal; • Has specific inputs; • Has specific outputs; • Uses resources; • Has a number of activities that are performed in some order; • May affect more than one organizational unit (horizontal organizational impact); and • Creates value of some kind for the customer (internal or external). The Queensland Government (Australia) Chief Informa- tion Office describes a business process as “the execution of a sequence of related steps in response to an event that leads to a clearly defined deliverable or outcome. A number of role- players may contribute to the execution of an end-to-end Busi- ness Process. End-to-end business processes may also cross functional boundaries” (4). In each of these broad definitions, there is an emphasis on inputs, outputs, sequence of events, and a value-added result. For the purposes of this study and with a focus on transporta- tion operations and management, a similar view of business processes and the steps within a process were analyzed toidentify where critical actions and activities come together and to identify their impact on travel time reliability. Relationship of Business Processes to Transportation Operations and Travel Time Reliability SHRP 2 and the program’s Reliability Technical Coordinating Committee identified a range of potential business processes that have a key role in transportation operations. Some of these processes at the institutional level were broad, such as policy development, planning, programming, and incident manage- ment. Others were focused at the operations level, such as active traffic management (ATM), snow and ice removal, and coordination of traffic signal operations. These represent vary- ing levels within an organization of where and how specific processes may be implemented. For example, although policy development, planning, and programming are often separate from day-to-day operations, in many cases there is a direct relationship between a transportation agency’s policy set and how operations are conducted. Similarly, although planning and programming may influence available resources or imple- mentation time frames for certain operational activities, the day-to-day relationship between these might not be clear or even apparent to personnel in the field who are responsible for typical operations activities. For this research to have the greatest impact, the focus of the business process analysis was narrowed to those key oper- ational areas that have the most influence on travel time reli- ability. These corresponded to the root causes of congestion as identified by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and through numerous performance monitoring/reporting documents and ongoing reliability research. These key opera- tional areas are as follows: • Incident management; • Work zones; • Planned special events; • Weather/road weather management; • Traffic control/traffic operations; • Capacity/recurring congestion; and • Fluctuations in demand. Within each of these areas are key business processes that have come together to provide a set of integration points, roles and influences of stakeholders, sequences of activities, and outcomes. It is also expected that by identifying core business processes and establishing a link to reliability, there will be definitive relationships within each area to • Policies needed to support operations within an agency, as well as relationships with stakeholders from multiple agencies;

9• How programming, infrastructure planning, or resource planning supports the process or integration; • Where important data or information originates, links, or transfers within the process; • Key dependencies among actions (which are critical and which are secondary); • Where certain actions are automated or are carried out manually; and • Where and how impact on reliability is measured or could be measured, and how agencies view performance mea- sures in relation to reliability.References 1. Research and Innovative Technology Administration, U.S. Depart- ment of Transportation. The Department’s Congestion Initiative and Urban Partnership Agreement. Federal Register, Vol. 71, No. 242, 2006, pp. 75807–75809. 2. Transportation Research Board. Strategic Highway Research Pro- gram 2: Reliability. www.trb.org/StrategicHighwayResearchPro gram2SHRP2/Pages/Reliability_159.aspx. Accessed July 18, 2011. 3. Sparx Systems Pty Ltd. The Business Process Model. www.sparxsys tems.com.au/business_process_model.html. Accessed July 18, 2011. 4. Queensland Government Chief Information Office, Department of Public Works. Glossary. www.qgcio.qld.gov.au/qgcio/resources/ glossary/Pages/index.aspx. Accessed July 18, 2011.

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TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report: S2-L01-RR-1: Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability addresses various ways that transportation agencies can reengineer their day-to-day business practices to help improve traffic operations, address nonrecurring traffic congestion, and improve the reliability of travel times delivered to roadway system users.

The project that produced this report also produced SHRP 2 Report S2-L01-RR-2: Guide to Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability.

An e-book version of this report is available for purchase at Google, Amazon, and iTunes.

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