Planning and Implementing Multimodal, Integrated Corridor Management: Guidebook (2020)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

13 Chapter 3 - Pre-Assessing Integrated Corridor Management Overview This chapter emphasizes the pre-planning, foundational activities that will set the stage for the ICM planning process. It offers a set of optional, up-front steps that practitioners can step through to (1) quickly determine whether ICM is potentially a reasonable solution to their circumstances, and (2) sketch out the general contours of a prospective ICM project. It allows for initial pre-assessment before extensive time and resources are invested in more comprehensive ICM planning. Some practitioners will find the pre-assessment useful, while others may choose to proceed immediately with the planning process described in Chapters 4-6. Those who do perform the pre-assessment will, of course, be able to carry the findings forward into the subsequent planning activities. Steps in the Pre-Assessment The following steps – with corresponding details and questions – offer guidance on the suggested sequence and content of the ICM pre-planning activities. These steps and activities can be tailored to practitioners’ targeted circumstances, as appropriate. Skip over those activities that do not pertain to your situation. Cover only the detail necessary to arrive at an informed judgment about ICM in your corridor. Step 1 – Broadly Identify the Project Corridor • Begin by thinking about the roadways and transit systems that might possibly be included in the ICM project. • Is there an interstate highway or highways that would be a common-sense focal point for the corridor? • What are the major arterials that feed into and parallel the interstate route? • Identify the predominant origin and destination points for travelers. For example, do commuters travel daily from suburbia to a downtown urban setting? • What are the transit services that support the origin/destination travels? Where are the transit routes and key transfer points? • Are there logical interrelationships among the interstate, arterial, and transit services identified above? Do the different components tend to work together systemically? Do some of the components appear to exist in a “symbiotic” relationship, that is, do conditions on one component typically impact circumstances on another? Can the individual components of the transportation network be thought about as an interdependent, integrated system? • Using a map, sketch out these preliminary thoughts on the potential project corridor; this will serve as your “baseline corridor.” Do not worry at this juncture about being precise on the locations of the corridor boundaries. Step 2 – ICM Reality Check: Determine Whether ICM is a Candidate Solution for the Corridor The reality check will assist in determining the suitability of ICM as a potentially effective corridor management strategy. • Begin characterizing the major issues or problems to be solved in the baseline corridor and consider whether ICM is a potential solution. • Think about the ICM definition/concepts presented in Chapter 2 and ask whether those concepts are applicable here.

14 • Do the general characteristics of the baseline corridor broadly line up with the previously identified ICM concepts? For example, ICM strategies will not increase capacity in a corridor; however, ICM strategies, appropriately applied, may help to optimize performance in the corridor given capacity limitations. • What are the dimensions of the problems in the corridor? Do these problems inhibit mobility in the corridor? Is congestion predominantly recurring, nonrecurring, or both? What conditions or factors might explain this congestion? From your understanding of the concepts presented in Chapter 2, are these conditions/factors potentially addressable through ICM? • Are there pockets of underutilized capacity in the baseline corridor? For instance, is the interstate overloaded, but some arterial routes are underused? Is there underutilized capacity on the transit system or bus routes? Are commuter parking lots underused? The answers to these types of questions may suggest opportunities for “load balancing.” • Are there opportunities for technical, operational, and institutional integration? • Consider the institutional dimensions of the corridor: Is there likelihood for collaboration among the partner agencies in the corridor? Are these agencies open to working collaboratively and aggressively together towards the common goal of an integrated, multimodal infrastructure? • Regarding operational integration: Would it make sense to approach incident management in the corridor collaboratively? What would that look like? At a high level, how would it work? • How will “success” in the corridor be measured? Step 3 – Identify Regional Partners and Stakeholders ICM depends on regional collaboration and cannot succeed if ongoing, sustainable collaboration is not established. Consequently, it is essential that the ability to cooperate and collaborate be achievable from the outset. “Stakeholders” generally refer to those entities not serving as regional partners who have an interest in the ICM activities and outcomes. Some corridor agencies choose to involve public agencies only in the planning process; others invite both public and private organizations to participate. It is not necessary to engage with stakeholders as part of this preliminary activity – however, it is helpful to start identifying them. • Building on Steps 1 and 2, above, identify candidate ICM partners in the corridor. Those partners typically include the transportation agency/agencies responsible for operating the roadways in the corridor, the principal transit agencies operating in the corridor, the metropolitan planning organization (MPO), etc. • Sketch out some of the high-level roles that the candidate partners might potentially perform on the prospective ICM project. • Consider approaching the candidate partners, explaining the early concepts and preliminary ideas, and inviting their inputs and insights. Provide opportunities for them to engage in the planning process and to assume co-ownership for the potential ICM initiative. Begin thinking about which partner would best make sense as the lead agency for the ICM initiative. • Seek out and identify one or more regional “Champions” to spearhead ICM project planning and deployment. The Champion(s) will advocate for the project (both inside and outside his/her agency), engage partners and stakeholders, and organize important project planning and deployment activities. Public agency Champions have played indispensable roles in most ICM projects to date. Step 4 – Begin Profiling the Project Corridor • Begin documenting physical conditions and circumstances in the baseline project corridor. The objective here is to capture basic information now (enough information to support a decision on whether to move forward with the ICM project). The corridor profiling activity will continue beyond the pre-

15 assessment period; this will include gathering and capturing more comprehensive and detailed data during the planning process. • Using an ad hoc corridor map, identify key transportation networks and technology assets in the corridor. • Gather readily available data about the corridor – e.g., average daily traffic (ADT), vehicle miles traveled (VMT), transit ridership, etc. • Identify some or all the safety performance issues and congestion bottlenecks in the corridor. Step 5 – Conduct a Preliminary Maturity Capability Assessment for the Corridor • Recharacterize the key issues and problems identified in Step 2, above, as potential “actionable elements” in the corridor. Examples of actionable elements could be “Monitoring of Conditions,” “Incident and Emergency Management,” or “Information-Exchange Among Regional Partners.” • For each actionable element, identify state-of-play. The state-of-play is a summary description of how things function now. For example, for “Monitoring of Conditions,” the state-of-play might be: “We have cameras over much of the interstate system, but we still have ‘blind spots.’ On arterials, we have very little real-time knowledge about conditions. Regarding transit, we currently do not know the real-time locations of buses traveling the roadways and how they are performing in relation to their route schedules.” • Next, identify the targeted capability for the selected actionable elements. The targeted capability is an aspirational description of how things ought to function in the future. For instance, for the “Monitoring of Conditions” the targeted capability could be: “We will have real-time situational awareness on traffic, incident, and performance conditions across the corridor, including interstates, arterials, and transit.” • Finally, specify a high-level action plan for the selected elements. This plan specifies the broad- based actions necessary to progress from state-of-play to targeted capability. Again, for the “Monitoring of Conditions,” the action plan might be something like: “Install cameras at ‘blind spot’ locations on the interstate system. Add cameras or other sensing equipment at key intersections along arterials. Gain access to automatic vehicle location (AVL) system data for transit buses.” Step 6 – Determine Whether to Move Forward with the ICM Project • Document and review the outputs from Steps 1-5, particularly the ICM Reality Check completed in Step 2 and the action plans prepared in Step 5. Make a preliminary determination as to whether an ICM project is conducive to the problems in, and characteristics of, this corridor. In the event it is determined that an ICM approach is supported by this pre-assessment review, the outputs from the review should be carried forward to the more formalized planning activities described in Chapters 4-6. As the planning process progresses towards more structured assessments and more focused stakeholder guidance, the preliminary findings should, of course, be vetted and refined. Benchmarking Costs As part of the pre-assessment process, practitioners may find it instructive to begin thinking about how much their candidate ICM projects will cost. Although actual costs will vary by circumstances and not all projects will involve all elements, Table 5 presents some high-level cost benchmarks by type of ICM activity. You should adapt these benchmarks to your specific circumstances and continue to refine your cost projections as the planning process progresses.

16 Table 5. ICM Benchmark Cost Guidance ICM Element Cost Range ICM Planning (Concept of Operations and Requirements) $250K - $1M Preliminary Design and Procurement Documents $150K - $500K Agency Coordination Platform License Customization Data Integration Traffic Signal NTCIP Integration Hardware, commercial off the shelf software (COTS) $125K - $200K $100K - $200K $50K - $100K (per interface) $250K (per vendor interface) $125K - $500K Decision Support System Online Model Software Online Model Development Response Plan Development Rules Engine (Configuration of Open-Source Tools and Rules Development) Integration of Data Hardware, COTS, and Networking (Depends on Subsystem and Whether Host Environment is Existing or New) $400K - $600K $500K - $1M $100K - $250K $50K - $100K $50K - $100K (per interface) $150K - $1M Additional Implementation Costs (Project Management/ Coordination, Deployment of Field Components, etc.) $50K - $750K Maintenance and Operations (ICM Coordinator, Maintenance of Technical Components) 10% - 15% (of total deployment costs) “Reality Check” – A Process for Confirming that a Corridor Is Ready for ICM A new process will be developed for confirming that all intended elements in the phase have been accomplished: 1. Stakeholders – Stakeholders have been engaged and roles and responsibilities have been identified. 2. Analysis – ICM strategies considered have been analyzed and simulated and eliminated based on lack of feasibility or lack of performance improvements. 3. Funding – Initial funding sources have been secured and additional funding sources have been identified. To complete the “reality check” process, the Pre-Assessment Task Checklist, shown in Table 6, assures an agency that they have put into place the building blocks to begin ICM. Table 6. Pre-Assessment Task Checklist Task Checklist 1. Identify and Diagnose Problem • Qualitatively characterize the system dynamics of potential ICM corridors. • Define logical boundaries for potential ICM corridors. • Identify whether existing problems along each corridor can be addressed using ICM. • Set priorities among candidate corridors. 2. Determine Potential Partners • Compile a list of potential partners, agencies, and organizations by type of decision maker.

17 Task Checklist • Create a stakeholder engagement plan, which details specific agencies and organizations to reach out to and when each type of decision maker should be engaged. 3. Engage Potential Partners • Convince potential partners of the value of ICM. • Detail the potential benefits of ICM participation in terms of your audience’s goals. • Understand stated concerns from stakeholders and develop strategies to work around or mitigate operational constraints. • Establish communication channels with participating stakeholder groups for information sharing. 4. Planning Funds • Identify funds needed for the initial planning stage of the project. • Coordinate with stakeholders to receive their buy-in to participate. 5. Initiate Formal Agreements • Determine whether there is a need for formal or informal agreements for the ICM planning phase. • Discuss agreement terms with stakeholders (roles and responsibilities).