Memorandum
Date December 21, 2017
TO David J. Mohler, Executive Director
Office of Transportation Planning, MassDOT
FROM Karl H. Quackenbush, Executive Director
RE Work Plan for Congestion Management Process (CTPS Project #2118)
The Congestion Management Process (CMP) is an integral part of the metropolitan transportation planning process. The purpose of the CMP is to apply a systematic, performance-driven approach to measuring and identifying locations that are congested and which lack mobility, in order to assess safety and mobility concerns and their causes.
Findings from the CMP are used to propose mitigation projects and strategies to be included in the MPO’s Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP). Projects that are funded by the MPO’s Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) are evaluated through the CMP. The CMP utilizes data to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies that already have been implemented. In addition, the CMP recommends appropriate detailed follow-up studies and prioritizes them for funding in the MPO’s Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP).
The MPO began its CMP program in 1995 through the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) legislation. Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which is the current federal transportation legislation, expanded the CMP role. New legislative requirements include monitoring congestion reduction and system reliability. The national goal of congestion reduction is “to achieve a significant reduction in congestion on the national highway system.” The national goal of system reliability is “to improve the efficiency of the surface transportation system.”
As a result of CMP monitoring, numerous studies have been included in the UPWP, and many projects have been included in the LRTP and TIP for construction funding. CMP products may be viewed on the Boston Region MPO’s website, in the Plans and Programs section. Listed below is a sampling of current and past work conducted by MPO staff that was based on recommendations from CMP monitoring.
In 2013, the Boston Region MPO began purchasing pre-collected roadway travel-time data for 2012 from INRIX, which enabled the CMP to increase the scope of its performance monitoring. In 2016, an additional dataset was purchased from INRIX, which represents roadway conditions for 2015.
Support sustainable growth in economic activity, sustain livability in the region, prevent the increase in congestion, and improve mobility, efficiency, and safety for people, goods, and services by encouraging programs that reduce single-occupant-vehicle use, including transportation systems management and operations, travel demand management, and technology.
The Boston Region MPO’s CMP committee was formed in January 2012. The purpose of the CMP committee is to help implement recommended solutions from the most recent CMP report, the LRTP, the TIP, and corridor studies.
The CMP committee will meet approximately four times during federal fiscal year (FFY) 2018. In order to support the CMP committee, MPO staff will organize and attend CMP committee meetings; create agendas, take minutes, present materials; and ensure that the meetings are accessible according to the Americans with Disabilities Act. When CMP staff completes a task, it will present the results formally to the MPO. The CMP also monitors the progress of evaluating projects for CMP criteria that were submitted for the FFYs 2019–23 TIP.
In the past, Boston Region MPO staff have assembled MBTA parking lot (2013) and bicycle parking inventories (2012) separately, and then shared this analysis with MassDOT and the MBTA. MassDOT has expressed interest in working with MPO staff to collect updated bicycle parking data at MBTA stations.
Two hundred and eighty one (281) MBTA stations would need to be surveyed for bicycle parking data. In addition, the MBTA parking lots, which have not been surveyed since 2013, also would need to be updated. Because it is less costly to make a single visit to stations that offer parking for both modes, this collection effort will combine data for both bicycle and automobile parking. In addition to MBTA-operated parking lots, staff will analyze private lots and on-street parking used by MBTA commuters. Factors such as parking lot prices will be analyzed to determine how utilization is affected.
Station fare data may be available from the MBTA, which could help determine park-and-ride utilization. Bicycle parking data may be available from the MBTA for cyclists who are registered to store bikes in cages. Staff collected some data for bicycle parking in FFY 2017 and will continue this effort into FFY 2019.
Work for FFY 2018 will include: 1) continue to collect data at MBTA park-and-ride lots; 2) enter collected data into a Microsoft Access database; and 3) write a brief memorandum to summarize the data-collection process and data analysis results at the stations for which data were collected through fall 2017.
The Boston Region MPO has access to several roadway monitoring datasets, including the INRIX dataset, The National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS), and MassDOT Go-Time dataset. INRIX is a private company that probes vehicles to record roadway travel speeds. Until February 2017, the NPMRDS used data that was provided by a company named HERE; beginning in February 2017 (until the present), NPMRDS uses generic INRIX data (that is, without confidence scores). The MassDOT Go-Time dataset consists of roadway travel times that were collected with Bluetooth readers by MassDOT staff.
Recently, it was discovered that vehicle probe data could be mined from interactive map displays such as google maps and open street maps through application programming Interface (API) calls; and this data potentially could be used to fill coverage gaps that may persist in other datasets. For example, because NPMRDS covers only the National Highway System (NHS), other data sources would be required to determine roadway speeds for roads that are not a part of the NHS, but which are part of the CMP network. This task will compare each of these datasets to discern which ones are best suited for the various roadway monitoring tasks for the Boston Region MPO.
Beginning in 2018, state DOTs and MPOs will have new requirements from the FHWA, which will require them to monitor new congestion performance measures. These performance measures reveal the travel time reliability, or variability of the roadway network. State DOTs and MPOs are also required to set performance targets for each of these measures, and state DOTs are required to meet each set target for the roadway network during future monitoring activities. This is required to be a coordinated effort between the MPO and the state DOT. The NPMRDS be used to calculate these performance measures. The new federally required CMP related performance measures are:
In FFY 2017, staff evaluated and selected transit performance measures—which analyzed data about MBTA buses during fall 2016—for the CMP. MPO Staff will use RStudio software to calculate the performance measures. Once the performance measures for fall 2017 are calculated, MPO staff will create a graphical snapshot summary that shows the change in performance measures between fall 2016 and fall 2017, comparing the results to identify any trends. This interactive dashboard would compare the changes in CMP transit performance measures for each bus route between fall 2016 and fall 2017; and could be displayed on the MPO website.
This task will continue to examine the 2012 and 2015 INRIX datasets. In addition, activities that were performed previously to compare these datasets would be documented. The documentation would include, locations where roadway speeds increased or decreased, possible reasons for the change (construction, land use changes, and so forth), and the procedures for creating the comparator application.
It is estimated that this project will be completed 12 months after work commences. The proposed schedule, by task, is shown in Exhibit 1.
The total cost of this project is estimated to be $111,895. This includes the cost of 44.4 person-weeks of staff time, overhead at the rate of 105.66% percent, travel, and other direct costs. A detailed breakdown of estimated costs is presented in Exhibit 2.
KQ/RH/rh
Task |
Month | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | |
|
1.
Support for the CMP committee and other CMP staff activities |
From month 1 to 13.
| |||||||||||
|
2.
MBTA bicycle parking/MBTA park-and-ride lot monitoring |
From month 1 to 5.
From month 6 to 9.
From month 12 to 13.
| |||||||||||
|
3.
Validate roadway data sources (INRIX, NPMRDS, and the like) |
From month 1 to 4.
| |||||||||||
|
4.
MAP 21 performance measures |
From month 1 to 10.
| |||||||||||
|
5.
MBTA Transit—Snapshot summary of transit performance measures for fall 2017 |
From month 9 to 12.
| |||||||||||
|
6.
Document comparison of 2012–15 INRIX datasets |
From month 5 to 9.
| |||||||||||
Task |
Person-Weeks | Direct Salary |
Overhead (105.66%) |
Total Cost |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M-1 | P-5 | P-4 | P-3 | Temp | Total | ||||
|
1.
Support for the CMP committee and other CMP staff activities
|
0.6 | 0.2 | 3.6 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 4.4 | $6,508 | $6,876 | $13,384 |
|
2.
MBTA bicycle parking/MBTA park-and-ride lot monitoring
|
0.0 | 0.0 | 5.5 | 0.0 | 11.0 | 16.5 | $13,263 | $14,014 | $27,278 |
|
3.
Validate roadway data sources (INRIX, NPMRDS, and the like)
|
1.2 | 0.0 | 4.3 | 1.5 | 0.0 | 7.0 | $10,054 | $10,623 | $20,676 |
|
4.
MAP 21 performance measures
|
0.6 | 0.5 | 3.3 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 4.4 | $6,722 | $7,102 | $13,824 |
|
5.
MBTA Transit—Snapshot summary of transit performance measures for fall 2017
|
0.5 | 0.5 | 2.1 | 3.0 | 0.0 | 6.1 | $8,480 | $8,960 | $17,439 |
|
6.
Document comparison of 2012–15 INRIX datasets
|
1.0 | 0.0 | 4.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 6.0 | $8,652 | $9,142 | $17,794 |
|
Total
|
3.9 | 1.2 | 22.8 | 5.5 | 11.0 | 44.4 | $53,678 | $56,716 | $110,395 |