Operations Performance Measurement
What's New
The 2011 Urban Congestion Trends report is now available. Subtitled "Improving Travel Reliability with Operations," the report features a number of operations project evaluations demonstrating how system reliability can be enhanced through a variety of operational strategies as well as an example of how system reliability can be reported. The report also includes three national snapshot performance measures derived from travel time data from 19 urban areas in the U.S. during 2011. The measures include congested hours, travel time index, and the planning time index. The report can be accessed here.
Featured Item
Operations Performance Measures are a powerful tool for system operators and planners, for reaching out to the public and for decision makers deciding how to spend precious funding on our nation's highways. The Office of Operations has put together a brochure explaining the power of Operations Performance Measures in more detail. The new brochure is titled Operations Performance Measures: The Foundation for Performance-Based Management of Transportation Operations Programs and is available here.
Performance measurement is the use of evidence to determine progress toward specific defined organizational objectives. This includes both quantitative evidence (such as the measurement of customer travel times) and qualitative evidence (such as the measurement of customer satisfaction and customer perceptions).
Operations performance measurement, therefore, measures progress toward meeting the objectives of transportation system management and operations. Although the specific objectives of management and operations activities vary among organizations, most relate to the overall goals of transportation mobility, productivity, and safety.
The FHWA Office of Operations is leading numerous activities to advance the implementation and practice of operations performance measurement at the Federal, State, and local level:
- Urban Congestion Reports
A quarterly snapshot of traffic congestion and reliability trends at the national and city level, developed using archived traffic operations data. - Urban Congestion Trends and Related Reports
Technical reports that communicate recent trends in congestion as well as strategies to manage congestion and improve mobility. - Travel Time Reliability Measures
Guidance documents on the need for, calculation of, and implementation of travel time reliability measures.
The following pages provide links to information and resources to assist in implementing operations performance measurement:
