From transportation agencies tasked with long-range transportation plans (LRTP) to Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) developing Transportation Improvement Plans (TIP), we constantly see agencies struggle with prioritizing the right projects and measuring their success to truly advance goals. Our new framework can help agencies establish clear priorities and select projects based on transparent, outcome-driven performance measures.
Transportation agencies and MPOs often create ambitious goals around job access, congestion reduction, safety, cost-efficiency, and livability. While all are important priorities, they are often immeasurable, vague, and conflated goals that don’t breed success, leaving staff scratching their heads wondering why residents still face delayed buses, dangerous roads, increased traffic, and few multimodal facilities. Why have a goal if you don’t have a way of measuring its success?
To help agencies better identify and assess their transportation goals, we compiled a framework for the best practices for transportation project selection and performance measurement.
Our recommendations help agencies prioritize goals and get more specific with measuring outcomes. If an agency has too many goals, particularly if they contradict each other, it complicates the process and the public at large will believe that the process is entirely about political influence, not merit.
No transportation agency will ever have the resources to complete every project on their list. But, if you try to prioritize everything, you are prioritizing nothing. To genuinely improve access and connectivity across your region, you need a way to choose projects that generate the greatest benefits.
We urge other agencies to read through our recommendations, along with our previous Guide to Performance Management and Practical Solutions Memo to begin crafting performance measures that align with your community’s needs. Agencies of all sizes in all regions will benefit from our straightforward processes that aim to maximize transportation access for all users.
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