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Page 11
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Review of Literature and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25222.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Review of Literature and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25222.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Review of Literature and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25222.
×
Page 13
Page 14
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Review of Literature and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25222.
×
Page 14
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Review of Literature and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25222.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Review of Literature and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25222.
×
Page 16

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11 This chapter examines the history, existing knowledge base, and trends in transportation agencies’ consideration of alternatives to the expansion of highways (altogether new facilities and additional lanes on existing ones) as a means of increasing capacity. The existing literature and practice indicates that there is a scarcity of direct investigation and examples of how added highway capacity projects are directly compared against other modal projects and strategies. This lack of examples demonstrates that many of the practices used by transportation agencies to allocate resources (either by policy or legislation) discourage this direct comparison between modes. Much of the previous discussion and analysis of added highway capacity projects and other modal projects and strategies has been related to broader activities such as goal setting and iden- tification of objectives. Examples of specific comparisons of added highway capacity projects to mode-neutral performance measures and prioritization of projects across modes using stan- dardized criteria are limited. Prior research has indicated that some state DOTs directly allocate resources to various modes and strategies based on system-level criteria, eliminating the need to assess added highway capacity projects against other modal projects and strategies. The bulk of existing domestic work was sponsored by and conducted under the auspices of the U.S. DOT (primarily FHWA), AASHTO, and TRB. Most of the products reviewed and cited for this synthesis include guidebooks, reports, and technical resources complemented by conference proceedings that include presentations and scholarly articles. Additional international viewpoints were gained from similar resources aimed at discussing how said evaluation of various modes against each other can occur, but not necessarily where it actually has occurred. There are multiple recent initiatives and resulting products (including NCHRP syntheses) that include excellent literature reviews that summarize past efforts in areas providing peripheral but not direct insights on how or why transportation agencies evaluate added highway capacity projects against other modal projects and strategies. A handful of these topic areas are reviewed briefly in this synthesis to provide perspective to the results of the survey of state DOTs and MPOs that provided the rationale for the ten case examples conducted. The four main related areas of research discussed individually below are (1) linking invest- ments to planning goals and objectives, (2) performance-based planning and programming, (3) performance-driven funding, and (4) decision-making frameworks. Linking Investments to Planning Goals and Objectives At the outset of both long-range and nearer-term planning, goals are typically developed to provide overall direction and focus. Objectives are intended to provide more specific guidance on actions and activities to meet goals. In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on C H A P T E R 2 Review of Literature and Practice

12 How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies establishing goals and objectives that provide a direct connection to outcomes that are meaning- ful to the community. In some instances, agencies suggest that the goals of transportation plans be developed “without regard to the transport system,” but “that transport has some potential to contribute towards” their attainment (Australian Transport and Infrastructure Council 2015). Agencies “may have ‘guiding principles,’ ‘policies,’ or other statements that reflect values or priorities” but are separate from their outcome-based goals (Grant et al. 2013). As multiple objec- tives, along with associated guiding principles, policies, and the like, are developed for numerous factors, “most are related to the Federal planning factors” (Lyons 2012). Interestingly, the federal planning factors contained in the Fixing America’s Surface Trans- portation (FAST) Act and included in the mandated scopes of the statewide and nonmetropolitan transportation planning and metropolitan transportation planning processes (title 23 § 450.206 and § 450.306 of the Code of Federal Regulations, respectively) do not require that nonhighway modes nor that multimodal or intermodal projects and activities be advanced. However, the goals and objectives of state DOTs and MPOs commonly dictate that further planning and investments in the transportation system aim to make the network more “multimodal” (Lyons 2012). This can reduce the need for assessments—quantitative or otherwise—as nonhighway preservation initiatives are essentially prequalified (and, potentially, prioritized) for implementation and others are tacitly discouraged (added highway capacity). Performance-Based Planning and Programming In the past, linking transportation investments to outcome-based goals and objectives with loosely defined follow-on activities and minimal reporting (for MPOs, an annual listing of obligated projects that presents the amount of federal funding and associated match committed to projects in the TIP is a historical requirement) was not necessarily considered good practice, but it did not result in the same level of negative feedback that it does today. Elected officials, the general public, and other affected parties are increasingly expecting and demanding that trans- portation agencies at the state and regional level measure and report on not just the costs but also the benefits of their investments. This has led to the practice of developing objectives with greater specificity that detail what is to be achieved, how progress will be measured, and when results should occur. These go beyond identifying preferred or desired directions for selected performance metrics and include quantified targets. This increased emphasis in the initial stages of strategy development serves as the foundation of performance-based planning and program- ming (PBPP), driving analysis, programming, and evaluation of progress (see Figure 4). How PBPP is being implemented as a result of federal performance management requirements first included in the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act and carried forward into the FAST Act presents various effects for added highway capacity projects and the alterna- tives that such projects could be assessed against. In the submission of comments to FHWA as part of the rulemaking process for the Assessing Pavement Condition for the National Highway Performance Program and Bridge Condition for the National Highway Performance Program measures, AASHTO and multiple states expressed concern that the metrics and associated targets would result in a worst-first approach to maintaining highway and bridge assets, which could impede efforts to add highway capacity where needed. State DOTs and MPOs have also expressed concerns about the conflicts that may arise when attempting to make progress toward the highway and bridge targets (collectively, the infrastruc- ture condition rulemakings) along with the other five rulemakings covering safety, congestion, efficiency for freight, protecting the environment, and reducing project delivery delays. These trepidations are not unique to state DOTs and MPOs on the highway side. Participants in a series of joint FTA-APTA PBPP roundtables acknowledged that “PBPP will change the ways in

Review of Literature and Practice 13 which their agencies have done business for many decades, it will be a challenge to convey the process and potential benefits of PBPP to senior leadership, stakeholders, and the public” (FTA and APTA 2017). Performance-Driven Funding of Projects and Strategies The programming element of PBPP requires that decisions be made with respect to how resources are made available for implementation of projects and strategies. This can happen via the allocation of resources by mode, work type, geography, other factors, or some combina- tion thereof. These decisions can use models to allocate a set amount or percentage of resources to various modes or projects, and strategies can be evaluated irrespective of mode to select those alternatives projected to most improve performance. In both cases, the intent is to project the progress toward long-range plan goals and objectives that will be realized by doing so. These approaches are not mutually exclusive, and, in practice, programming by state DOTs and MPOs often involves both. The need to address deficiencies in existing assets has resulted in state DOTs and MPOs placing significant emphasis on system preservation even as they acknowledge that additional highway capacity and other improvements are needed. The result is that capacity expansions, moderniza- tions, and improvements are addressed with what resources remain after funds are allocated for preservation (Duncan and Schroeckenthaler 2017). The same is true for public transportation with the bulk of transit resources being allocated to address (to the greatest extent possible) the more than 12,000 full-size buses and more than 8,000 rail cars (heavy rail, commuter rail, and light rail) in need of replacement (Grisby 2016), even as operating agencies express the desire to add service, requiring additional vehicles and infrastructure. Source: Grant, M., et al., Performance-Based Planning and Programming Guidebook, Report FHWA-HEP-13-041, Federal Highway Administration, Washington D.C., 2013. Figure 4. Framework for performance-based planning & programming.

14 How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies Crossmodal prioritization and the various means to conduct it (both in theory and in practice) have garnered significant attention as MPOs, in particular, and some state DOTs attempt to create a level (mode-neutral) playing field for all projects and strategies. Crossmodal priori- tization generally occurs through processes that incorporate elements of benefit-cost analysis (BCA), multicriteria analysis (MCA), or economic impact analysis (EIA). BCA was the only one of the three methods cited by state DOTs and MPOs based on a recent survey that measured the percent frequency of prioritization approaches of state DOTs and MPOs in selecting projects (Gunasekera 2014). However, its use varies with only “a small group of roughly five to six . . . systemically employing BCA to inform decisionmaking” (FHWA 2017). BCA monetizes direct system and user benefits derived per unit of cost for the lifecycle of the project or strategy. This does not mean that every transportation project is expected to result in every benefit and every cost considered, but all projects are analyzed to determine if benefits exceed costs (i.e., a benefit-cost ratio greater than one). As discussed in a report by the Mineta Transportation Institute, BCA can incorporate elements of equity and sustainability, and—when properly combined with travel demand modeling (either traditional four-step or activity-based)—induced demand and interrelationships between modes can be considered in transportation planning and policy (Holian and McLaughlin 2016). Regardless of the type of benefits and costs analyzed, “ensuring monetary values are consistent across modes is not straightforward” (Goodchild, McMullen, and Wygonik 2014). The most prominent domestic example of the application of BCA for crossmodal prioritization is the U.S. DOT’s Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Program, which has awarded $5.1 billion to over 400 projects since 2009 and, at the time of this writing, is evaluating and prioritizing projects for an additional $500 million in federal funding. BCA has been a requirement in each round of TIGER, and additional refinement and associated guidance has occurred. U.S. DOT allows project sponsors to determine the benefits and costs analyzed in their applications, which are then reviewed by an economic analysis team “led by the[US]DOT’s Chief Economist and staffed with economists from across the four modal administrations” (GAO 2014). State DOTs use BCA in various ways. Examples based on case studies conducted by FHWA include the following: • Arkansas DOT incorporates BCA into safety analysis, planning, and project prioritization; • Connecticut DOT uses BCA as a part of the assessment of safety projects; • Florida DOT is expanding the use of BCA in multiple project types; • Nevada DOT requires BCA for added highway capacity projects expected to cost more than $25 million; and • Utah DOT applies BCA to the evaluation of select added highway capacity projects: intersection upgrades, new interchanges, and upgraded interchanges (FHWA 2017). EIA evaluates benefits to businesses, which in turn betters communities by “preserving existing jobs, attracting employers with desirable jobs to the state, improving productivity and stimulating long-term economic development” (Zhang et al. 2016). The Kansas DOT uses the Transportation Economic Development Effect System to estimate changes to employment, gross regional product, income growth, and added safety benefits of added highway capacity and highway modernization projects. The Missouri DOT worked with the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center to project changes to net general revenues to the state, personal income, and gross state product for select major added highway capacity projects. MCA provides greater flexibility and “allows for the widest possible range of positive and negative effects to be considered in decision making, and it enables consideration of essentially all ways in which any given project may affect area businesses or households” (Economic Development

Review of Literature and Practice 15 Research Group et al. 2014). MCA is undertaken by many state DOTs and MPOs as they evaluate projects across typical long-range plan goal areas such as safety, travel time, emissions, and other factors. The Genesee Transportation Council (GTC) is the MPO for the Rochester, New York, urbanized area. GTC evaluates all modal projects and strategies against the common criteria of safety, mobility and accessibility, community and economic development (without a formal EIA), system continuity and operations, environment, and fiscal responsibility. In addition, GTC evaluates projects by mode-specific criteria, and the scores for the common criteria are added to these with all projects eligible to score an equal total number of points (Gunasekera 2014, Middleton 2015). In practice, “no single technique, including BCA, is relied on by multimodal agencies exclusively” (Gunasekera 2014). Most agencies for which research on their project and strategy prioritization processes are available use some combination of the three approaches. Represen- tative examples are the North Carolina DOT (NCDOT) and the Ohio Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC). NCDOT evaluates capital projects across all modal projects and strategies using MCA that incorporates BCA and economic competitiveness (FHWA 2017, Middleton 2015). The Ohio TRAC was established by the Ohio General Assembly in 1997 to prioritize projects proposed by the Ohio DOT, Ohio Rail Development Commission, MPOs, transit and port authorities, local governments, and others based on transportation effects, eco- nomic effects, local investment served, and the amount of non-Ohio DOT funding being proposed (Gunasekera 2014). Decision-Making Frameworks The Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) included capacity as one of four focus areas (with safety, renewal, and reliability being the other three). Recognizing that added highway capacity projects can have significant social and environmental implications, SHRP2 has advanced research activities that have resulted in a series of products to better integrate all resulting effects and viewpoints. These include frameworks for identifying and selecting perfor- mance measures to be incorporated (Louch, Smith Reeder, and Crossett 2009) and creating and applying a collaborative decision-making process (ICF International and URS Corporation 2014). The latter effort concluded that “the selection (and application) of inadequate screening criteria can contribute to unequal consideration of all alternatives (e.g., ruling out transit and non-highway options with a cursory review)” and that “In many cases, transit and multimodal alternatives were better addressed at the regional level or in a corridor-level planning study” (ICF International and URS Corporation 2014). Another factor that will become more prominent in decision-making frameworks in the near future will be the effects of connected and automated vehicles and other emerging technolo- gies, including those that enable better management of transportation demand. These have the potential to reduce the need for additional highway capacity being discussed and that which would be planned for in the future absent their introduction. Based on a review of modeled con- nected/automated vehicles environments in multiple metropolitan areas, it may be necessary to consider their potential to increase existing highway capacity by 25% to 200% (Kockelman et al. 2017). Given this broad range, improvements are required in modeling “capacity gains and operational outcomes” based on following distances, roadway configurations/geometries, and other factors (Campbell and Alexiadis 2016) to allow for more useful (and credible) analysis of alternatives. The policy responses from state DOTs and MPOs on connected/automated vehicles and other technologies may result in them further “turning their focus away from infrastructure development (in terms of building and maintaining roadways) and toward intelligently managing and operating those roadways with new technologies” (Baker et al. 2016).

16 How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies Summary Generally agreed-on (if not fully accepted) processes and frameworks for fuller evaluation of transportation goals, objectives, policies, strategies, and alternatives have been conceptualized, articulated, reviewed, and refined by and on behalf of state DOTs and MPOs. Standardization of performance measurement, target development, and reporting is being driven by the federal performance management requirements, resulting in calls for more technical assistance and resources. FHWA and FTA continue to respond to this need, having anticipated it and initiated work via dedicated websites and knowledge transfer opportunities even before finalizing the relevant rulemakings. Duncan and Schroeckenthaler (2017) offer the most complete and recent appraisal of what the existing research has discovered relevant to the assessment of added highway capacity projects versus other modal projects and strategies by transportation agencies: • States continue to have difficulties comparing modes and programs outside the major highway asset categories owing to less established practices for needs assessment and poorer data quality. • Many states provide only the required pass-through funds from federal sources to transit. They have little reason to develop strategic processes for these programs because transit agencies and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) make most of the project programming decisions. • States struggle to articulate clearly which needs are satisfied by different modal programs, how those programs compare with highway and bridge programs, and how sensitive their performance might be to statewide transportation policy. The need to familiarize themselves with and determine how to incorporate federal performance management requirements and the projected effects of technology into long-range statewide transportation plans and STIPs and MTPs and TIPs may delay state DOT and MPO advancements in assessing added highway capacity projects versus other modal projects and strategies. Con- versely, if the ability to meet these emerging policy considerations is less resource intensive than expected, there could be a heightened motivation for additional crossmodal prioritization, including for added highway capacity projects.

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TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 529: How Transportation Agencies Assess the Value of Added Capacity Highway Projects Versus Other Modal Projects and Strategies summarizes the methods and policies used by state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to evaluate and compare different types of transportation improvement strategies. This information will help to quantify the full spectrum of benefits, costs, and economic impacts of transportation improvement strategies. Download the following appendices that accompany the report:

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