Evaluating Alternative Operations Strategies to Improve Travel Time ...

SHRP 2 L11: Final Report
NEXT STEPS FOR MIGRATING TOWARD A MORE “RELIABLE”
FUTURE
The most important changes necessary to produce significant improvements in travel-time
reliability are 1) to bring market forces to bear on both travel decisions (which results from better
and more ubiquitous information available to all travelers) and 2) to provide additional supply in a
way that is balanced against demand.
As noted earlier in this chapter a more reliable roadway system will only occur on a sustainable
long-term basis when travel demand and roadway capacity are in balance. Achieving that balance
requires a combination of technical improvements. But, those technical improvements are
themselves dependent upon institutional and attitudinal changes that drive both how we operate
our transportation system and how our customers (travelers/shippers/carriers) make their travel
decisions.
Travel is an economic good. It behaves like all economic goods: when price is low, demand is
high; when price is higher, demand is lower. Because price is not an integral part of most current
roadway travel decisions, 1) roadway agencies are constantly faced with situations in which
demand exceeds capacity; 2) the resources to remedy that situation are not being generated and
deployed to meet those demands; and 3) travelers have insufficient information and incentive to
change their behavior to travel at less congested times or via other modes.
Allocating scarce highway capacity based driver expectations of travel time and reliability on
alternative routes, while equitable as explained above, is not economically efficient. When
pursuing economic efficiency, market forces and other approaches that can achieve equivalent
results need to apply to both demand and supply. Ideally, revenues would be better targeted if the
full social costs of travel were a part of the travel decision. In addition, it is desirable if the funding
generated by that travel were spent in the corridors where it is generated to support needed
increases in supply (travel capacity).
The demand to be accountable for how funds are spent will increase if a shift to a more
information-driven approach to travel were to occur. This would create the incentive systems that
are needed to encourage the technical and institutional changes that would result in the appropriate
level of travel time reliability (as valued by travelers). These technical and institutional changes
could include the following:
• an increase in the quality and completeness of traveler information systems, as consumers
of travel services demand better information about their choices, the cost of their choices
(whether priced in the market place or not), and the performance of those choices.
• a continued rise in the importance of improvements to the real-time control and operational
performance of transportation systems
• the capability to fully integrate highway operations with arterial and transit system
operations
• better, faster, and more capable systems for responding to capacity disruptions (incidents,
weather, etc.) and for restoring capacity lost to those disruptions
• more engagement of the private sector, especially for the collection and dissemination of
information about travel options and the performance of the transportation network
A CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS Page 125