Evaluating Alternative Operations Strategies to Improve Travel Time ...

SHRP 2 L11: Final Report
development in the optimistic scenario, this treatment was identified as a key application to
reduce travel-time variability in the future. The high cost of VII along with a reduction in
VMT for the pessimistic scenario and moderate technological investments in the mediocre
scenario led to dropping VII as a priority treatment.
The same rationale was applied to the other treatments shown in Table 7.2. Note that this list
provides the foundation of ITS strategies to the implementation roadmap from the present to the
future scenarios described next in this chapter. Innovative technologies are likely to cause
significant changes in travel-time reliability in the future. The potential impacts of innovative
technologies are discussed at the end of this chapter as well.
IMPLEMENTATION ROADMAP
This roadmap covers the range of challenges and opportunities that may result from the future
scenarios and discusses the needed approach to address travel-time reliability needs over the next
20 years. Rather than focusing on one alternative future, this section will provide an overview of
what is needed to improve travel-time reliability by 2030. Afterwards a discussion is presented on
institutional challenges, funding constraints, and technological opportunities that will need to be
responded to in order to overcome congestion and travel-time reliability threats generated in all
three alternative future scenarios.
Improved Travel-Time Reliability: What’s Needed?
The most significant benefits in improving travel-time reliability would be attained when
technological changes, operational solutions, and organizational actions are used in an integrated
fashion to improve the balance between travel demand and capacity. A variety of technological
changes, operational solutions, and organizational actions currently exist, or would become
available in the next 20 years. These changes, solutions, and actions would allow more effective
management of transportation demand, increases in person and freight moving capacity, and faster
recovery of the capacity lost to various types of disruptions. A wide range of activities would be
employed by groups ranging from individual travelers, carriers, and shippers, to highway agencies,
local governments, and private companies that supply services that support roadway operations.
To do this would require major institutional and functional changes in how our roadways (and the
transportation system as a whole) are currently funded and operated. That is, technical
improvements, while highly beneficial in specific instances, would have only a modest benefit to
travel-time reliability unless more significant structural changes occur in balancing travel demand
and transportation supply (capacity) as shown in Figure 7.2.
A CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS Page 110