| Note
From the Director
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
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Consider
the Possibilities for Safe, Reliable, and Secure Transportation . . .
During incidents and emergencies, transportation system operators and public
safety officials improve response times and decision-making by effectively coordinating
and communicating with each other.
During a major highway reconstruction project, public transit services and traffic
operations successfully work together to manage demand.
Under the spotlight of special events, public transit ser-vices, traffic operations,
and public safety services move goods and people and minimize negative effects
on the community by coordinating transportation operations and travel demand
management.
Freeway ramp meters work together with arterial signal systems to balance demand
throughout the regional network.
Traffic signals coordinated across multiple jurisdictions manage mobility and
demand to meet community needs.
Road users hear reliable, timely, and relevant news about weather conditions
and traffic situations thanks to a regional traveler information service that
seamlessly delivers information across jurisdictions, agencies, and modes.
Customers move easily between travel modes and across jurisdictions because
of a multijurisdictional and multi-agency electronic payment service strategy
for transit, parking, and tolls.
Hazardous materials moving through an urban area are electronically identified,
monitored, tracked, and coordinated by regional traffic management and public
safety agencies to ensure safe, secure, and efficient intermodal movement.
Real-time information about regional transportation system conditions and performance
shared across agencies and jurisdictions enables better management of resources.
Regionally accepted system performance standards and performance measures drive
transportation resource investment decisions.
What Can Make This Happen?
These outcomes can be
made possible when agency department heads or managers, responsible for
day-to-day operations, work together to solve operational problems, improve
system performance, and communicate successfully with one another through
deliberate collaboration and coordination. Regional operations collaboration
and coordination builds key relationships among the agencies and jurisdictions
responsible for delivering transportation and public safety services in
a metropolitan region, including traffic operations engineers and managers,
transit operations managers, police officials, fire officials, emergency
medical services (EMS) officials, emergency managers, and port authority
managers, as well as private sector representatives such as port and gateway
operators and traffic reporting media. These relationships lay the foundation
for effective regional transportation systems and services that cooperate
in all situations, under a range of conditions, and with other related systems,
for the good of the ultimate customers—those who depend upon the regional
transportation system.
Serving the public well and planning for performance excellence at the level
of a regionwide system requires more than just the installation of equipment
and completion of projects. This primer provides a reasonable framework
to link the actions of the many transportation operators and service providers
in a metropolitan region.
About This Document
This primer was written
for transportation professionals and public safety officials from cities,
counties, and States who are responsible for day-to-day management and operations
within a metropolitan region. It is intended to help agencies and organizations,
and the operations people within them, understand the importance of regional
collaboration and coordination, how it happens, and how to get started.
This document may also be of interest to agencies such as metropolitan planning
organizations (MPOs) already involved in regional collaborative efforts
by helping them build on previous success.
Domestic
Security.
The events of September 11, 2001, focused national attention on the need to respond to attacks on our homeland, both real and threatened, especially in densely populated urban areas. The extraordinary response to this crisis shown by regional transportation and public safety agencies proved key in saving lives and evacuating those in imminent danger. This sobering experience reminds us of the importance of regional planning for operations in planning responses to such events. Since September 11, many metropolitan areas have developed or refined homeland security initiatives that respond to a variety of threats, including nuclear, biological, and chemical, and that address first response, command and control, communications, emergency evacuation, consequence management, and continuity of operations.
Example: In the aftermath of September 11, New York City’s
transportation system continued to function well due to coordination
among not only the city’s agencies, but also those of the region around
it. An intricate system of communication among more than 400 agencies
in the region ensured, for example, that road, bridge, and tunnel
closures were coordinated and drivers remained informed, ultimately
maintaining the flow of roadway traffic throughout the region.
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Following
this brief overview of the meaning and importance of regional collaboration
and cooperation are four main sections as follows:
- The Practice
of Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination.
This section provides a framework and associated steps for successfully
moving from theory to practice. The framework consists of five elements—structure,
process, products, resources, and performance—that, when taken together,
help a region begin and/or evolve toward continuous collaboration and
coordination regionwide.
- Transportation
Operations Regional Collaboration and Coordination and the ITS Architecture
Development Process. The process of developing a regional ITS architecture
can be the impetus for new or more effective collaboration and coordination.
In the same way, regional operations collaboration and coordination
can provide a platform for initiating ITS architecture development in
a region that has not begun the process. This section describes the
synergistic interplay of these two processes in improving regional operations.
- A Self-Assessment—Where
Are You in Regional Collaboration and Coordination? Agencies can
use this self-assessment tool to determine if they are starting from
the beginning or building upon existing efforts to create and sustain
effective collaboration and coordination within their regions.
- Applications
of Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination.
This section presents examples of how some regions are already
benefiting from greater collaboration and better coordination. The examples
show the positive effects of this regional teamwork on transportation
system performance.
What Does Collaboration Mean to Transportation Operations?
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Strategic
Thinking—The Key to Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration
and Coordination
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Collaboration
on regional operations policies and projects by operators and service providers
in metropolitan regions is essential for the following reasons:
- Collaboration
enables regional strategic development of projects and policies that
have regional effects on users, including activities such as incident
management, advanced traveler information services, public safety/EMS/security,
special events, electronic payment services, and performance measures.
- Collaboration
among operators and service providers helps answer questions like:
- How
should our transportation system operate over the next 5 years to
ensure its safety, reliability, and security?
- How
should the elements of our transportation system integrate and evolve
over time?
- What
stakeholders should be at the table sharing information and making
operations decisions?
- Who
is accountable for improved system performance and what measures
should be used for determining that improvement?
System operators
within a metropolitan region are most likely to achieve measurable improvement
in the safety, efficiency, and quality of service that customers experience
in their day-to-day use of a regional transportation system when they work
together to develop strategies and tactics. The successful conception, development,
implementation, and execution of these regional strategies and tactics may
be used to achieve a new level of interjurisdictional/interagency functionality
in the transportation system. Collaboration should go beyond solving a problem.
Its purpose should be that of combining the knowledge, expertise, and information
of many agencies across jurisdictions to produce and operate an efficient
regional transportation system.
Building on existing ad hoc relationships, agencies and jurisdictions within
the region can use a common framework for setting expectations, managing
resources, sustaining relationships, and establishing responsibilities.
The action steps provided by this framework will be used in developing the
structures, processes, products, resource plans, and performance measures
necessary in a regional approach to collaboration, strategic thinking, and
information sharing. The combination of knowledge, expertise, and information
that results when agencies successfully collaborate offers the following
advantages:
- Well-developed
relationships among key agencies and jurisdictions,
- A shared
vision among operators and public safety providers for regional transportation
system performance,
- A regional
concept of operations,
- Information
sharing on a regular basis, and
- Integration
of regional systems and organizational processes.
Regional
operations collaboration and coordination within a metropolitan region
helps to:
- Shape, develop, manage, and evolve policies,
programs, procedures, protocols, and projects
- Enable the elements of the transportation system
to work better and together for all customers across modes, functions,
and jurisdictions
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Strategic policies,
programs, procedures, protocols, and projects of regionwide scope and benefit,
such as traffic incident management programs or emergency response/management
plans, usually depend on integration and/or interoperability for optimum
performance. They therefore require regional collaboration and coordination.
By concentrating on issues that cross agency and jurisdictional boundaries,
disparate operators and service providers work together to improve the services
they provide. Whether the task is as broad as homeland security or as specific
as electronic payment services, the approach will prove integral to defining
visions and goals for ongoing, strategic regional transportation operations.
Regional collaboration takes into account the activities of a diverse array
of non-transportation entities (e.g., public safety officials, major employers,
chambers of commerce, convention and visitors’ bureaus, port authorities,
and special interest groups) that routinely affect or depend upon transportation.
Whether it is an emergency management plan or next year’s Mardi Gras that
system operators face, collaboration and coordination encourages a regional
perspective regarding transportation system performance rather than focusing
on narrower issues involving single components of the system or a limited
set of stakeholders.
By collaborating to define a regional strategy and performance standards
and the evolution of the system, operating agencies can better develop a
seamless transportation system. Potential benefits of a regional operating
strategy include a single form of payment for transit that crosses many
jurisdictions; regional traffic information provided to travelers in a uniform
format; reduced delay of traffic around construction projects; and coordinated
highway incident response and related traffic management.
Regional operations collaboration and coordination is an ongoing, iterative
effort. Collaboration often initially occurs due to a specific need or problem
of regional significance such as special event planning, major reconstruction,
a natural disaster, or a hazardous material incident. Having addressed the
problem, regions may recognize the value of regional collaboration for improving
performance (better working relationships and procedures, improved communications,
reduced delays). With the application of new technology and better information-sharing
procedures, collaboration and coordination can lead to an integrated regional
transportation system where agencies routinely work together to make the
region’s transportation system work better for all customers—travelers,
employers, businesses, commuters, public safety agencies and many others.
Figure 1 shows this progression from problem solving to performance improvement,
leading eventually to a focus on regional transportation system integration.
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| Figure
1. Regional collaboration and cooperation evolves from a focus on
problem solving to a focus on integrated transportation systems. |
For example, following Hurricane Floyd, the North Carolina Department of
Transportation (NCDOT), working with other regional transportation and public
safety organizations, developed plans for providing timely information to
travelers during emergency evacuations by using variable message signs,
highway advisory radio, and other real-time communication media. Seeing
the value of this traveler information system, NCDOT expanded this regionwide
effort to use the same systems to notify travelers about planned or ongoing
reconstruction activities on several bridges that link the barrier islands
of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The collaboration that began with an emergency
evacuation not only resulted in improved performance of the emergency evacuation
procedures, but also provided a forum and a precedent for expanding this
regional teamwork to include operations during reconstruction projects.
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