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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
A Self-Assessment—Where Are You in Regional Collaboration and Coordination?
This document describes a strategic way of thinking built around the sharing of precepts and action steps by public partners responsible for day-to-day operations. By following these precepts and action steps, a region can blend motivation, commitment, and strategy to reach a vision shared by operators and service providers of how the region’s transportation system should perform under a variety of conditions. Regional collaboration and coordination is not about determining the best projects to solve a problem. It is about combining the knowledge, expertise, and information of many agencies across jurisdictions to produce and operate an efficient regional transportation system.

Table 7 includes questions for each of the five areas of the framework for collaboration and coordination. Together, they outline action steps that will enable planners, operators, and service providers to assess progress in planning for operations and charting a course to better transportation system performance regionwide. No region is likely to answer every question affirmatively—and perhaps some regions do not need to do so. What is important is that the guidance suggested in these five areas will prove useful to planners, operators, and service providers in assessing where they are and determining what they need to do next.

 
Table 7. Action steps for regional operations collaboration and coordination—Self-Assessment.

  Structure   Process   Product   Resource   Performance
spacerbox Are there linkages to key constituencies (e.g., employers, shippers, developers, communities) to build support for better system performance?
spacerbox Are there champions/ leaders in the region who are committed to working together (and encouraging others to work with them) to gain support for better system performance?

spacerbox Is there a vision shared among operators, service providers and planners?

spacerbox Is operations a regular item on the regional planning agenda?
spacerbox Are investment decisions made based on the best combinations of capital investments and operations strategies (performance-based planning)?
spacerbox Do the solutions (project) selection process and criteria yield a level playing field for operational improvements and investments, and are tools available to show benefits of operational improvements?
spacerbox Does the region do corridor planning (multimodal), including operational elements (e.g., incident management)?

spacerbox Are operations performance audits (e.g., corridor) used as a tool for guiding investment choices?
spacerbox Does the region leverage operations to achieve regional goals (or meet other commonly sought outcomes)?

spacerbox Does operations provide a current conditions baseline to calibrate long-range planning?
spacerbox Does a regional concept of operations set performance expectations for regional operators?
spacerbox Do public safety providers and agencies that operate the elements of the transportation systems acknowledge the regional operations implementations agenda?
spacerbox Has a regional operations action agenda been acknowledged as a necessary input into TIP/LRP?
spacerbox Does the region use market research as the common link between operations (customer feedback) and planning (planning input)?
spacerbox Are there linkages to the overall regional transportation planning process for needed investment in operations?
spacerbox Does the region use planning funds to support convening activities for operators and planners?
spacerbox Are resources sufficiently available and flexible to provide effective access to funding for operations?
spacerbox Does everyone at the table see a return on investment of time and other resources?
spacerbox Is there a consensus on the need for performance improvement?
spacerbox Have performance measures been developed?
spacerbox Is there an operations performance-based status report?
spacerbox Are real-time and archived data shared, linked, and made accessible to system managers and delivered to system users?

Regional Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination
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