Making the Case for Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination

The Practice of Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination

Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination and the Regional ITS Architecture Development Process

A Self-Assessment—Where Are You in Regional Collaboration and Coordination?

Applications of Regional Operations Collaboration and Coordination Planning for Transportation Operations

Office of Travel Management, Office of Operations, Federal Highway Administration

     More than ever, the safe, reliable, and secure operation of our Nation’s transportation systems depends on collaboration and coordination across traditional jurisdictional and organizational boundaries. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our metropolitan regions where numerous jurisdictions, agencies, and service providers are responsible for safely and efficiently operating various aspects of the transportation system. Many of these operations activities in a metropolitan region must cross agency and jurisdictional boundaries to be successful. They may include traffic incident management, emergency management, communications networks, traveler information services, response to weather events, and electronic payment services. These regional operations activities depend on collaboration, coordination, and integration to be effective and truly benefit those that use or depend upon the regional transportation system.

     In this light, the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Travel Management is pleased to present this primer on Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination. The idea behind this document is based on the realization that for regional operations activities to be effective, those managers directly responsible for operating the system on a day-to-day basis must collaborate and coordinate continuously. They need to agree on a shared operations vision, a concept for how regional activities should be operated over time, what measures to use to assess effectiveness, and how to make improvements to achieve desired expectations in operating performance.

     The need for regional operations collaboration and coordination to achieve safe, reliable, and secure transportation was an important theme at the National Dialogue for Transportation Operations Summit, held in Columbia, Maryland, in October 2001. The Summit brought together over 240 professionals representing academia, planning, engineering, safety, transit, bicycles and pedestrians, and freight, as well as elected and appointed officials from local and regional governments. The summit was complemented by a very successful working group sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, on “Linking Planning and Operations.” This working group met three times over a 15-month period with a charge to envision ways to make transportation planning and transportation operations work better together to benefit transportation users. The participants represented professionals in the transportation operations, transportation planning, and public safety communities from local, regional, State, and Federal agencies.

     This introductory document encourages and enables regional operations collaboration and coordination for transportation managers and public safety officials from cities, counties, and States within a metropolitan region. These managers and officials may include traffic operations engineers and managers, transit operations managers, police officials, fire officials, emergency medical services officials, emergency response managers, and port authority (e.g., air and water) managers. The primer can help these managers and officials understand what regional operations collaboration and coordination means, why it is important, and how to get started. In many cases, this document will also help those local, State, or regional agencies currently engaged in some aspects of regional operations collaboration and coordination build on what they are already doing well and work toward addressing broader regional transportation operations and public safety issues.

     As envisioned in this document, regional operations collaboration and coordination is a deliberate, continuous, and sustained activity that takes place when transportation agency managers and officials responsible for day-to-day operations work together at a regional level to solve operational problems, improve system performance, and communicate better with one another. The document provides guidance on the five key elements that are associated with successful regional operations collaboration and coordination activity—structure, process, products, resources, and performance measures to gauge success.

     Finally, the development of this primer was guided by three important principles:

1. The value of regional operations collaboration and coordination results from having formalized and sustained activity between operators and service providers in metropolitan areas regarding regional operations policies and projects that cross agency and jurisdictional lines.
2. Where regional operations collaboration and coordination takes place, institutionally, is not the question. What gets done is the important challenge. The focus is on improving operational performance for safe, reliable, and secure transportation systems across a region to better serve the customers.
3. The regional operations collaboration and coordination activity must be closely linked to the metropolitan transportation planning and decision-making processes governed by Federal law. Stronger links between operations and planning will result in meaningful programs and investments as well as improved service to the customer across modes, agencies, and jurisdictions.

     We believe that regional operations collaboration and coordination can be a beneficial activity, especially in any metropolitan region confronting the pressures of operating transportation systems in the face of growth in demand, congestion, incidents and emergencies, weather, and customer service requirements. We look forward to working with organizations, agencies, and interest groups to advance the ideas presented in this primer.


Jeffrey Lindley
Director
Office of Travel Management