CDOT Performance Data Business Plan - Cambridge Systematics

CDOT Performance Data Business Plan
relative to similar facilities. CDOT incorporates safety components into a
project’s design when its location has been identified as a viable safety candidate
through the SPF analysis. This targeted approach and the leveraging of projects
implemented through non-safety programs has enabled CDOT to achieve
significant safety improvements over the past decade. Given the success of this
approach, it would be beneficial to understand the relationship between
additional funding and expected future performance. However, a cost/benefit
curve for these funds would be very difficult to develop because the projects
implemented with them are driven by prioritization processes that largely
consider non-safety factors, and the expected impacts of the safety strategies are
largely location and project specific.
Given the focus on incorporating safety into non-safety motivated projects and
the difficulty in modeling the implications of this strategy at the network level, it
is recommended that CDOT not develop the type of cost/benefit curve
illustrated in Figure 6.1 for safety. Instead, it is recommended that CDOT assess
safety costs and benefits at the project level. For example, by evaluating the
relationship between the incremental costs of modifying the scope of a nonsafety
motivated project to address safety and the expected impact on safety of
the modification. In addition, if not done so already, CDOT should consider
systematically inflating unit costs for preservation projects to account for safety
strategies and updating existing preservation cost/benefit curves based on these
updated costs. This would require developing historic estimates for the cost of
safety related scope changes. Updating the costs would change the shape of the
cost/benefit curves because a portion of the overall funding would go to safety
related work rather than to preservation activities.
6.2 MOBILITY
CDOT’s Fiscal Year 2010 Performance Report indicates that approximately eight
percent of Colorado’s lane miles are considered highly congested. Congestion is
defined as peak traffic exceeding eighty-five percent of a highway’s design
capacity. The Annual Performance Report provides a map that shows that the
congested segments are largely concentrated in the Denver region. In major
urban areas such as Denver, increasing highway capacity through capital
projects (for example, adding lanes to an existing highway or building a new
corridor) can be cost prohibitive, leading agencies to focus on a relatively small
set of strategic expansion projects. In these cases, highway operations strategies
provide an alternative means for achieving significant performance
improvements.
Throughout the course of this project, CDOT staff confirmed that the situation
described above holds true for Colorado. Achieving significant mobility through
capital improvements does not appear to be a viable option. Therefore, a
meaningful cost/benefit curve would need to focus on potential operations
strategies.
Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 6-3