Improvements to Loop 410 are providing economic benefits to San Antonio and a template for successful expansion to the Texas Department of Transportation.

Accountability. Performance measures. “Bang for the buck.”

We hear these terms a lot these days about our transportation system. Knowing how to maximize the return on our transportation dollar is vital at a time when budgets are shrinking but commuter needs continue to grow.

In 1960, San Antonio’s population was 587,718. Loop 410, which opened to the public in 1966, was the first planned and constructed metropolitan loop in Texas. The loop was designed to handle 40,000 vehicles per day (twice the anticipated volume in the 1960s) and facilitate the growing trend of suburban commuting.

By 1995, however, 200,000 vehicles per day traveled the loop, and each San Antonio resident sat in traffic about 24 hours per year due to the congestion. To combat this reality, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) spent over $900 million on infrastructure improvement projects along the loop. The improvements multiply the loop’s original vehicle capacity by a factor of 10.

“The Loop 410 projects afforded us a unique opportunity to assign a real value to the improvements TxDOT made along the corridor,” explains Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) Research Engineer Steve Venglar.

To assess the projects’ economic benefits to San Antonio, TTI researchers looked at local trackable metrics, like impact on land use and business sales, along with regional impacts, including how jobs were affected. Other factors examined included

• reduced travel time,
• improved travel time reliability,
• vehicle operating costs (including fuel consumption),
• driving safety,
• air quality and
• accessibility.

“We also gathered anecdotal evidence from local companies and businesses within nine zip codes along Loop 410 to assess their perceptions of improvements,” says Venglar. “In general, business owners viewed the changes as positive, and many noted improvements in commute times.”

Conservatively speaking, the assessment calculated a 3-to-1 return on infrastructure improvement dollars invested, with some 12,000 new jobs created by the project. By 2035, commuter savings will likely accrue to $1.2 billion, and fuel savings could rise to $626 million. Tax-base contributions will reach an estimated $109 million by 2020. To increase the accuracy of the predicted benefits of the improvements, TTI suggests continued evaluation using a more comprehensive analysis after the project has been in place for several years.

“TTI’s work has helped us clarify the long-term benefits of our work on Loop 410,” says Clay Smith, director of transportation planning and development for TxDOT’s San Antonio District. “Knowing in advance how projects like this benefit the system helps us better plan and execute other such projects in the future.”

TTI Research Scientist Ed Hard conducts a workshop promoting improved coordination of corridor management and preservation activities between TxDOT and local agencies.

The current fuel-tax system essentially subsidizes travel by highly fuel-efficient vehicles and electric vehicles, because they pay less in fuel taxes or none at all.

Metropolitan planning organizations have coordinated local urban planning efforts with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) for decades. But historically, rural areas haven’t had transportation planning organizations to synchronize efforts across agencies. Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) Associate Research Scientist John Overman says that’s changing.

“Rural planning organizations [RPOs] are emerging as an effective way to coordinate transportation planning in Texas,” says Overman. “A research project conducted for TxDOT created a guide to help RPOs define their role in the planning process and how they can best coordinate agency efforts.”

The planning and implementation process for transportation projects in Texas.

Partners in rural planning include TxDOT, RPOs, councils of government (COGs), public transportation providers, regional mobility authorities, coordinated public transit–human services planning agencies, cities and counties, and other stakeholders such as freight operators and economic development agencies. The study recommended that these partners work together to identify regional needs and coordinate various transportation projects.

The guidebook is aimed at all groups with an interest in rural transportation. That includes TxDOT district planners and engineers, COG planners, rural county judges, city and county staff, and policy makers. The guide includes an overview of the transportation planning process and requirements, and outlines how RPOs fit into the overall transportation planning process.

“Navigating the transportation planning and programming process is complicated due to the various rules, requirements, responsibilities and products involved. Rural stakeholders new to the process need assistance in navigating the requirements,” Overman explains. “The complexity of these relationships itself points up the need for the guidebook.”

Overman and his team looked at RPOs across the nation to glean best practices and captured how those organizations work with their respective state’s department of transportation. Researchers also spoke with various stakeholders and compared the role of RPOs with similar transportation planning efforts elsewhere.

Finally, they reviewed bylaws from existing Texas RPOs and reconciled how those should work within the framework of TxDOT‘s proposed transportation planning rules. Title 43, Texas Administrative Code Part 1, Chapter 16, was adopted Aug. 26, 2010, with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2011. The guidebook includes the requirements and processes presented in these rules.

Through the end of this summer, TTI will conduct 10 workshops for COGs and districts around the state. The workshops will provide rural planners and stakeholders with a better understanding of their role in the planning process and raise awareness of available resources.

“Planning is really communicating — communicating a need and then solutions to meet the need,” explains Bob Appleton, TxDOT director of transportation planning and development for the Bryan District. Appleton served as director on the project that developed the guide. “Through these workshops, we’re training new regional planning organizations to appreciate and apply that rule of thumb.”

Better strategic planning will help streamline our state’s approach to meeting those needs. To that end, the Texas Legislature has been calling upon the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) more often over the past year.

“Leveraging TTI‘s expertise is one way to meet the challenges of maintaining and enhancing the Texas transportation system,” explains Cinde Weatherby, who directs TTI‘s newly christened Center for Strategic Transportation Solutions (CSTS). “Our job is to provide the state’s transportation decision makers with the most accurate, factual information we can as they face these challenges.”

Created by the 81st Texas Legislature, CSTS analyzes “big picture” transportation issues and evaluates strategic solutions to address various statewide transportation. Legislators see TTI as an unbiased third party regarding the future of transportation in the Lone Star State. The center has coordinated TTI expert researcher testimony 11 times before eight different committees to date in 2010.

The center’s current projects emphasize economic analyses and projections. One of these, conducted for the Texas House Select Committee on Transportation Funding, is trying to answer the question, “What is the cost of not increasing the resources available for transportation projects?”

“You can’t start talking about solutions until more people understand the problems,” says Weatherby. “Transportation funding, planning and project implementation are complicated issues, particularly for those who aren’t engineers or planners.”

While the center’s primary customer is the Texas Legislature, Weatherby also wants to reach out to other governmental levels in Texas and to other states. “Many of the challenges faced at the state level are the same as those faced by municipal, county or regional officials,” she says. Weatherby hopes to make the CSTS website, currently in development, a source for information exchange for communities across the United States.

As a member and advisor on several national transportation committees, Weatherby is able to connect with colleagues nationwide trying to answer the same questions. Exchanging best practices will help Texas and other states share lessons learned at a time when no one can afford to reinvent either the wheel or the road it drives on.

“Our legislators are looking for data, they’re looking for advice, and they’re looking for answers,” says David H. Cain, chair of TTI‘s Advisory Council and former member of the Texas Legislature. “When they want to get the information from those who will give it to them in the unvarnished way, the unvarnished truth, they come to TTI.”

The 2030 Committee is comprised of 12 Texas business and civic leaders appointed in May 2008 by Texas Transportation Commission Chair Deirdre Delisi. She charged the committee with providing an independent, comprehensive analysis of the state’s future transportation needs. In addition to TTI’’s substantial contribution, researchers from the Center for Transportation Research at The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas at San Antonio also conducted research for the report.

The report forecasts costs and the resulting benefits in 2008 dollars from highway maintenance (pavements and bridges), urban mobility, and rural mobility and safety. The committee’s timeframe did not allow for an in-depth analysis of other transportation modes that could complement traditional highway capacity, but the report includes overviews of public transportation, freight and intercity passenger rail, ports and waterways and airports, along with recommendations for further study.

TTI researchers wrote chapters on urban mobility, rural mobility and safety and the overview sections. TTI staff edited and designed the report and executive summary, as well as built and maintained the committee’s website. In addition, TTI organized the 2030 Committee meetings and public hearings, while also monitoring and compiling public comments during the report’s nine-month development period.

“It was a personal privilege to have the opportunity to be engaged in this important effort with such an outstanding group of fellow Texans,” says Dr. C. Michael Walton, chair of the committee. “Each gave freely of their expertise and their time in the highest interest of Texas and transportation needs for our state.”

“I am extremely proud of our overall involvement in this independent review of Texas’ transportation needs over the next two decades,” says TTI Executive Associate Agency Director William R. Stockton. “This is one of the most important and visible projects that TTI has ever undertaken, and the individuals who developed and produced the report spent countless hours to ensure it was accurate and understandable by the public.”

Rep. Chet Edwards explains his Bryan/College Station Mobility Initiative during a news conference on Jan. 30.

When tailors measure cloth twice before cutting, they’re maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste by first calculating carefully. In the transportation planning arena, that’s what sustainability is all about.

“Sustainable transportation” means different things to different people. In its recent project for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) defined it as “the provision of safe, effective and efficient access and mobility into the future while considering economic, social and environmental needs.” These needs are often called the “three pillars” of sustainability.

By measuring and applying these principles, a more sustainable — or safer, more effective — transportation system can be established. It’s easy enough to dream of sustainability, but without specific performance measures, it’s much more difficult to quantify and implement its principles.

“The three pillars are tied together by many cross-cutting issues, including how they affect and are affected by the development of our transportation system,” explains Joe Zietsman, director of TTI’s Center for Air Quality Studies. “What we’ve done is to figure out how we can measure these pillars of sustainability using data that’s already available.”

Zietsman’s team used TxDOT’s own strategic goals as a framework for defining how the pillars interact. With these goals in mind, the team developed sustainability objectives, created 13 sustainable transportation performance measures and a methodology for benchmarking them, and derived a method for combining those measures in one index for comparative purposes. This whole process was coded into a user-friendly Microsoft Excel®-based calculator.

Since the performance measures and their underlying methodology are uniform, researchers can compare different corridors and different sections of the same corridor in terms of their relative sustainability. A comparison can also be made over time between baseline and future conditions. This output can then be used by TxDOT to enhance the relative sustainability of their transportation corridor projects while ensuring the efficacy of their strategic goals.

“The 13 measures can help TxDOT see a more realistic portrait of the transportation system by simultaneously considering all three dimensions of sustainable transportation,” says Zietsman.

Researchers refined the methodology by evaluating case studies involving transportation corridors in San Antonio, Houston and Amarillo. That field work proved the flexibility and effectiveness of TTI’s approach in rural, urban and suburban environments.

Bill Knowles, TxDOT’s project coordinator, notes, “TTI’s research on this project provided a valuable planning method that is both practical and easy to use. The project findings are now being rolled out as an implementation project through a series of workshops in Texas’ largest metropolitan areas.”

As the United States looks to improve its transportation infrastructure, proactive planning tools like these will prove vital to getting the most from its transportation dollar.

SUSTAINABILITY: A concept, not a technology

“Sustainability” is an idea comprising multiple goals that need to be related to one another and quantified. Unlike an innovative technology — like a new kind of crash barrier on the roadside — it’s a concept, not a piece of equipment. And sometimes that makes it difficult to understand.

Through this project, TTI researchers made the abstract more concrete by identifying objectives and performance measures organized around TxDOT’s five goals: reducing congestion, enhancing safety, expanding economic opportunity, increasing the value of transportation assets and improving air quality.

Using their spreadsheet in a case study in San Antonio, the TTI team projected that the overall sustainability of the corridor got worse over time despite proposed capacity enhancements. In this example, the calculator gave TxDOT specific information about why sustainability actually got worse along the corridor. It also helped them understand how their strategic goals were affected by those results and where the problem occurred along the corridor.

“Using data that’s readily accessible, our analysis tool gave us important information on how TxDOT can improve the sustainability of the test corridors,rdquo; says Zietsman. “Using the calculator, TxDOT can proactively identify remedies that will actually make a difference before ever beginning a project.”

Location of study corridor for US-281 Case Study. It stretches from IH-410 in downtown San Antonio in the south to the Comal/Bexar county line in the north.

Study section of US-281 near downtown San Antonio.

Traffic Volumes for Base Case and Future Case Scenarios: US-281

Link	Length (miles)	Daily Volume (2005)	Number of lanes (2005)	Daily Volume (2025)	Number of lanes (2025)
1	3.89	101,364	6	156,129	6
2	5.22	77,314	6	169,629	6
3	3.97	36,884	4	102,067	6
4	1.85	33,887	4	75,261	6

The U.S. DOT is funding congestion reduction strategies at multiple sites throughout the country through the competitive Urban Partnership Agreement (UPA) and the Congestion Reduction Demonstration (CRD). Both programs are part of the U.S. DOT’s Congestion Initiative.

The selected sites—which include the metropolitan areas of Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Atlanta—are implementing a wide range of innovative strategies. Examples of projects include high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, a priced dynamic shoulder lane, new and expanded park-and-ride facilities, dual downtown bus lanes, real-time transit information and lane guidance for shoulder running buses. Other strategies include variable pricing on existing freeways, active traffic management systems, variable priced on-street and off-street parking, improved regional 511 traveler information systems and telecommuting and flexible work arrangements.

The U.S. DOT also selected a national evaluation contractor through a competitive procurement process to assess the effectiveness of the various UPA/CRD strategies. The Battelle Memorial Institute team, which includes TTI, was selected to conduct the national evaluation.

“The national evaluation is assessing the impacts of the UPA/CRD projects in a comprehensive and systematic manner, as well as the specific impacts of technology, tolling and transit elements,” notes Shelley Row, director of the U.S. DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), ITS Joint Programs Office. “The evaluation results will benefit other metropolitan areas interested in deploying similar strategies and will support future federal policy and program development related to mobility and congestion and the role of pricing, transit and intelligent transportation systems.”

“We are working with representatives from the local agencies and the U.S. DOT in developing and conducting the evaluation,” notes Katie Turnbull, TTI executive associate director and lead on the Minnesota UPA site evaluation. “The team approach is critical to successfully evaluating the influence of these innovative programs.”

Other TTI researchers are serving as technical experts, providing assistance across all sites. Kevin Balke, research engineer, is the technology expert and David Ungemah, associate research scientist, is the tolling expert.

“Some projects, such as the HOT lanes in Miami and the Transit Advantage bus bypass lane in Minnesota, are in operation,” states Row. “Most of the projects will be implemented in late 2009, 2010 and early 2011. The national evaluation will provide preliminary results after the projects come online, as well as a comprehensive final assessment.”