Search Performance Measurement:

Relevant Resources and Publications

Online Resources for Getting Started

• Performance Measurement Exchange
  Federal Highway Administration
• Performance Measurement Committee (A5022/ABC30)
  Transportation Research Board
• Performance Measurement Library
  Washington State Department of Transportation
• Performance Measures Course
  Provided by the University of Maryland's Consortium for ITS Training and Education (CITE)
• Performance Measurement for Government
  Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)

Organizations Endorsing Operations Performance Measurement

• Subcommittee on Systems Operations and Management
  American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)
• National Transportation Operations Coalition (NTOC) Action Team on Performance Measurement
  • National Transportation Operations Coalition (NTOC) Performance Measurement Initiative: Final Report (PDF 3.0MB), July 2005

Publications - Operations Performance Measurement

• 2011 Urban Congestion Trends: Improving Travel Reliability with Operations (HTML, PDF 9MB) - The brochure 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.
• 2010 Urban Congestion Trends: Enhancing System Reliability with Operations (HTML, PDF 2.9MB) - The brochure features a number of operations project evaluations demonstrating how system reliability can be enhanced through a variety of operational strategies. The report also includes three national snapshot performance measures derived from travel time data from 20 urban areas in the U.S. The measures include congested hours, travel time index, and the planning time index.
• 2009 Urban Congestion Trends: How Operations is Solving Congestion Problems (HTML, PDF 3.7MB) - The brochure features examples from across the country that show how transportation agencies are operating the highway system more efficiently and helping to reduce congestion. The report also features congestion trends over the past three years from the 23 urban areas that participate in the quarterly Urban Congestion Report developed by the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Operations. The trends are reported via congestion and reliability performance measures that illustrate the importance of monitoring and reporting the performance of the highway system.
• NCHRP Research Results Digest 312: Guide to Effective Freeway Performance Measurement (PDF 204KB), February 2007
• NCHRP Web-Only Document 97: Guide to Effective Freeway Performance Measurement: Final Report and Guidebook (PDF 6.3MB)
• NCHRP Synthesis 311: Performance Measures of Operational Effectiveness for Highway Segments and Systems (PDF 3.0MB), 2003

Publications - All Performance Measurement (Agency, Planning, Operations, etc.)

• Performance Measures to Improve Transportation Systems: Summary of the Second National Conference (PDF 4.0MB), TRB, 2005
• Summary of Roundtable on System Performance Measurement in Statewide and Metropolitan Transportation Planning, FHWA, October 7-9, 2003.
• Performance Measurement: An Institutional Perspective from State and Local Transportation Agencies. Report No. FHWA-OP-02-049, August 2002
  (available for purchase at http://www.pti.org/index.php/ptiee1/inside/C136)
• Performance Measures to Improve Transportation Systems and Agency Operations: Report of a Conference (PDF 2.8MB), TRB, 2001
• Measuring Performance Among State DOTs (PDF 1.7MB), AASHTO, March 2006
• The following reports are available from the Transportation Research Board Bookstore:
  • NHCRP Report 446, A Guidebook for Performance-Based Transportation Planning, 2000
  • NCHRP Report 431, Valuation of Travel-Time Savings and Predictability in Congested Conditions for Highway User-Cost Estimation, 1999
  • NCHRP Research Results Digest 226, Multimodal Transportation: Development of a Performance-Based Planning Process, July 1998
  • NCHRP Synthesis 238, Performance Measurement in State Departments of Transportation, 1997
  • NCHRP Report 398 (Volume I: Final Report and Volume II: User's Guide), Quantifying Congestion, 1997
  • TCRP Report 47, A Handbook for Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Service Quality, 1999
• The Mobility Monitoring Program produced a summary technical report (PDF, 886) that describes data processing and performance measure calculation procedures. This report may be helpful for those who are interested in the details of using archived traffic operations data for operations performance measures. A brief Lessons Learned report has also been produced to summarize key findings from the Program.
• U.S. and International Approaches to Performance Measurement for Transportation Systems (PDF, 1.86MB) TRB 2009

Performance Measurement Fundamentals and Best Practices

• Balancing Measures: Best Practices in Performance Management, August 1999
• Government Performance and Results Act of 1993
• Serving the American Public: Best Practices in Performance Measurement

You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the PDF(s) on this page.