Evaluating Alternative Operations Strategies to Improve Travel Time ...

SHRP 2 L11: Final Report
capacity measures that are at the core of SO&M. Therefore, agencies need to institutionalize a
commitment to delivering reliable services first and have the right, motivated people with the
necessary resources to manage for reliability.
Systems Operations and Management (SO&M) refers to the broad concept that transportation
agencies can apply a set of known strategy applications to maintain and improve highway service
in the face of recurring peak-period congestion and nonrecurring events. There are several best
practice examples of SO&M applications on the part of state DOTs in a few major metropolitan
areas in the United States. They include highly integrated incident management systems, wellmanaged
work-zone control, and innovative traveler information programs. However, these
examples obscure a more general reality: at the statewide level (even in states with the well-known
examples), best practice is confined to only a few congested metropolitan areas. Even in those
metropolitan areas, only a narrow range of strategies is applied. Therefore, this generally low level
of implementation offers significant opportunities for improvement.
Agencies are currently more likely organized to handle infrastructure improvements as the bulk of
their work. With a SO&M structure in place, implementing and managing the various strategies
and treatments discussed below is much more do-able. Agencies with more comprehensive
strategy applications that are increasingly integrated, standardized, and comprehensive are
distinguished from agencies with less-developed SO&M activities through four key institutional
features (4) :
• Systems Operations and Management Awareness
• Systems Operations and Management Structure
• Systems Operations and Management as High Priority Budget Item
• Identify Opportunities for public-private partnerships
The purpose of these strategies is to support transportation agency management towards an
institutional framework that increases and encourages the capability of supporting more effective
management, organizational, and resource allocation structures. These strategies are specifically
aimed at managing nonrecurring congestion.
On the freight side, the literature (8, 9) shows that the effective adoption of in-vehicle transportation
technology is accompanied by a system of regulation. Government often provides policy guidance
to allow industry to make decisions to invest in technology. Significant productivity gains can be
achieved from government-supported performance-based standards for trucks which allow trucker
to more-flexibly respond to business needs.
Table 6.2 provides a summary of the key strategies for the examples presented in this section.
Note that all the strategies within this category are essential for managing the sources of
congestion.
Agencies need to monitor travel-time reliability problems as they arise and to prepare to respond.
Problems can be addressed by tracking travel trends, identifying innovative solutions, and acting to
implement those solutions. Smart use of resources, driven by good information and the ability to
decide and act, are all parts of the solution. Agencies may wish to make a case for increasing
transportation funding levels that promote economic development and safety. Agencies may also
train and elevate a new cadre of professionals who are focused on service quality, system
management and technology innovation.
OPERATIONS STRATEGIES AND TREATMENTS TO IMPROVE TRAVEL-TIME RELIABILITY Page 65