Document Library

The objective of this research was to hold an executive forum for senior DOT officials to share their views, assess their experiences with performance-based maintenance and operations contracting, and identify strategies for further advancing agency management practices in this area.

The research team conducted a critical review of transportation-agencies’ experience with contracting for maintenance and operations services, using published literature, telephone interviews, and other sources to gather experience from states, cities, and other countries. This review provided background information for participants in the executive forum. The forum was held with invited participants in Tampa, FL, in April 2009.

Transportation agencies are increasingly using performance measurement to solve complex management challenges. As applications of performance measurement have increased among state departments of transportation (DOTs), senior managers and technical staff have increased their interest in learning from the performance of their peer agencies that share similar goals and objectives. Comparative performance measurement offers a way to share DOT performance data and knowledge about best practices among agencies, and in turn to enhance managers' ability to judge their own agencies' effectiveness in program and system management. Identifying "best-in-class" practices and "lessons learned" facilitates managers' efforts to learn from experience.

The NCHRP 20-24(37) project series was requested by state DOT CEOs, who recognize that comparative performance measurement is a tool with potential to help improve their organizations. The initial development of the series explored the concept, opportunities, and obstacles for comparative performance measurement through discussions in a series of regional workshops held in summer 2004 that brought together representatives of DOTs from across the country and in interviews with senior DOT staff in selected states. A subsequent test of actual comparative measurement engaged seven volunteer states and served as the prototype for the project series.

The approach that emerged from the workshops, interviews and prototype testing relies on groups of volunteer state DOTs working together to establish meaningful performance measures and then sharing data to enable an individual agency to compare its own performance to the range of experience represented in the data set. Analysis of the data set is typically undertaken to identify typical- and best-performance experience without identifying the specific performance experience of any particular agency. Guiding principles for the program include a strong emphasis on overall integrity of comparisons, reliance on existing data, and avoidance of additional bureaucracy. The agency's final report describing the activities that led to the NCHRP 20-24(37) series has been published by AASHTO and is available on the website of the AASHTO Standing Committee on Quality.

Each of the projects in the NCHRP 20-24(37) series is selected to address a single important aspect of performance or to provide the framework for a consistent approach to state DOT's measurement and reporting of performance. NCHRP works with the AASHTO Standing Committee on Performance to ensure that performance measurement is an informative and effective management tool for DOT officials, transportation system users, and the public.

An active project / no abstract available.

This collection of documents focuses on the Wisconsin DOT's five main goals and additional performance measures for the MAPSS Performance Improvement Program. The five goals include: mobility, accountability, preservation, safety, and service.

This collection of documents includes the Lean project results for every project within the Wisconsin DOT Government Initiative. The topic areas of the projects include mobility, accountability, preservation, safety, and service.

A document summarizing a number of Lean initiatives undertaken by the Connecticut Department of Transportation. The individual summaries address the challenges, the initiatives, and the impacts observed and/or measured.

Active project, abstract pending.

Active project, abstract pending.

NCHRP Project 20-24(89) is intended to provide compelling research results to support effective decision making and inform public policy. The research being undertaken to present—in ways that are both readily understandable to a broad audience and defensible within the professional community—the role and value of transportation to the U.S. economy, by developing case studies of transportation’s part in representative industries or economic sectors. These studies will rely on available data and accepted analysis methods to produce meaningful information and present that information in ways that will resonate with stakeholders in the nation’s transportation system.

The goal of this study is to identify the best and most effective ways to collect element level data in a format and with specific procedures that will ensure quality data are obtained and subsequently used most effectively. Element level data are required to be collected to implement element level bridge inspection procedures by October 1, 2014 per the MAP 21.

The objective of the proposed pooled-fund project is to assess the feasibility of and demonstrate the use of Traffic Speed Deflectometer (TSD) for network level pavement structural evaluation for use in the participating state agencies' pavement management application and decision making.

The objectives of this research are to (a) Identify an injury scoring system for further consideration. Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of conventional injury scoring systems based on International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) codes and KABCO. Document advantages and disadvantages of various definitions for a serious injury metric. (b) Develop a roadmap to assist states in developing and implementing an interim system to measure and report injury severity using accepted injury scoring systems based on ICD codes. The intent of the roadmap is to enable year-to-year performance assessment by states using a standard measure. At a minimum, the roadmap should document a workable process(es) for linking statewide crash and hospital discharge data. For states where complete crash and/or hospital discharge data do not exist, identify surrogate sources, such as trauma registries, or alternative measures, such as estimates, that can be used within the workable process as an interim step until the preferred process(es) can be implemented. Identify means to overcome technical, legal, political, financial, and other challenges to implementation and linkage of these state-based data systems. The states’ future performance assessments will yield at a minimum the number of serious injury crashes and the number of persons seriously injured in each state using a standardized definition. This step should lead to the ultimate outcome, which is a unified database as described further in (c). (c) Expanding on (b), develop a state-based framework to perform comprehensive linkage of records related to motor vehicle crashes resulting in serious injuries, and incremental steps and priorities for achieving the linkage. A direct linkage is strongly preferred but it is recognized that alternative linkage methods may be appropriate, so the framework should include methods to be used when linkage is unsuccessful. Records may include crash and citation records; pre-hospital (telematics, 911, EMS, etc.); hospital (ED/inpatient); disability; death (coroner, medical examiner, vital statistics); trauma registries; traumatic brain injury registries; and roadway and traffic inventories. The framework will provide for a comprehensive analysis and understanding of the factors associated with serious injuries before, during, and after the crashes, and the associated medical outcomes. This will allow for the development, implementation, and evaluation of countermeasures for serious injury crashes, and continuous system improvement.