managing travel for planned special events - FHWA Operations ...

Table 9-13Performance Evaluation MeasuresMEASURE• Parking occupancy and turnover rate• Arrival and departure service rate at parkingarea access points• Time to clear parking lots• Vehicle delay at intersections• Queue length• Travel time and delay on freeways andstreets• Traffic volume to capacity ratio• Traffic speed• Number and location of crashes and otherincidents• Traffic incident clearance timeTable 9-14 lists some of the reasons thatagencies have instituted performance measuresand the associated monitoring andevaluation processes.Table 9-14Reasons for Traffic Monitoring andEvaluationREASON• Provide better information about the transportationsystem to the public and decision makers(in part due, no doubt, to a greater expectationfor accountability of all governmentagencies).• Improve management access to relevant performancedata.• Improve agency efficiency and effectiveness,particularly where demands on the transportationagency have increased while available resourceshave become more limited.In managing travel for planned specialevents, a direct relationship exists betweenthe performance measures selected and thedata needed in the performance measurementprocess. The data and informationused in decision-making must be of highquality because the remedies have to be performedimmediately. They must originatefrom reliable, consistent sources and meetthe needs of the decision makers. Moreover,the decision makers must have confidence inthe information, or it will not be used.The most common data problems are acquiringthe required information in the exactform desired, and in ascertaining the qualityof the data. The ‘‘garbage in, garbage out’’concept applies to the data used in a performancemeasurement system. If the datagathered are highly uncertain, then the conclusionsdrawn by converting those data intoperformance measures also will be highlyuncertain and will have reduced value to interestedstakeholders. For this reason, greatcare needs to be taken in data collection. Inreality, however, some things either cannotbe measured accurately or cannot be measuredaccurately at an acceptable cost and inan acceptable timeframe. Transportationagencies need to consider the uncertaintyintroduced by inaccurate data when takingaction based on their system of performancemeasures, especially in planned specialevent management, where the modificationshave immediate, and possibly disastrous,results.9EVENT PROFILE POST-EVENT ACTIVITIES DAY-OF-EVENT ACTIVITIES ADVANCE PLANNINGOVERVIEW9-15