| Overview and Perspectives |
| Beyond CMS: A Systems Approach to Metropolitan
Transportation Operations and Management |
| By Steve Lockwood, Rockville, MD 1-301-816-1848,
lockwoodS@pbworld.com |
| A dramatic change in the approach to improving transportation
service is taking place in larger metropolitan areas around the world.
It's called system operation and management. |
|
Today’s transportation industry is placing a higher priority
than before on both active operation of the existing network and managing
travel demand in real time. As significant new capacity facilities
face rising construction costs and impact constraints, infrastructure
owners are looking increasingly at new systems concepts to maximize
the potential of existing facilities. New tools— advanced traffic
detection and surveillance technology, data communication networks
and software, traffic control hardware and traveler communication
media—redefine the potential of heretofore “fixed infrastructure”
to respond to changing service demands and disruptions.
In the U.S., this increased commitment was signaled by the inclusion
of “efficient system management and operation” as one
of the seven consolidated planning factors required by TEA-21, the
new federal transportation legislation. This requirement applies to
both statewide and metropolitan planning and clearly focuses infrastructure
owners on the mission of providing service, rather than just providing
facilities
Changing Demands Require System Management
The importance of system operations and management concepts extends
beyond more efficient use of existing infrastructure, primarily because
the definition of “poor service” in metropolitan areas
is expanding beyond congestion management alone. A broader range of
service attributes are becoming more important to today’s travelers,
who are part of a knowledge-based society that places a high premium
on information, efficiency, convenience, and responsive services.
Today’s travelers want transportation systems to provide reliability,
safety, security, systems status and navigation information, and convenience,
in addition to speed and capacity.
“Unmanaged” systems—representing passive capacity—are
imposing significant costs and lost opportunities on infrastructure
users and customers, affecting both passengers and the movement of
goods. Example problems include:
- One-half of metropolitan travel delays,
which result from slow clearance of incidents (accidents and breakdowns)
that interrupt travel
- Excess circuitry associated with destination
searching, which can add 10-15 percent to travel time in central
areas.
At the same time, travelers are beginning to reveal their willingness
to pay for traffic information, navigation support, guaranteed speed
facilities and on-call security services.
System management introduces a way of providing a wide range of new
user services that can meet changing user demands. These new services
include:
- A reduction in delay through incident management
- In-vehicle location and communication features
for accident security
- Navigation and guidance systems including
real-time traffic information
- Lane dedication or preferences for HOVs,
trucks or premium service paying customers
- Directionality or speed controls to increase
throughput
- Traffic signal preemption for transit or
emergency vehicles.
These services are the key targets for a new systems-engineering-based
strategy that systematically combines intelligent transportation systems
technology, advanced intermodal operations, innovative transit systems
operation and demand management.
New Type of Planning and Programming Process
Previous congestion management programs have focused metropolitan
transportation institutions’ attention on the cost-effectiveness
of operations and management improvements. Yet, Congestion Management
System (CMS) and Transportation Systems Management (TSM) improvements
were treated as one-time, low-cost, capital improvement alternatives
to major capital investments within the “set and forget”
conventions of traditional long-range capital-intensive facility planning
and programming.
Keep in mind, systems operations is not an alternative to major capital
improvements. It is an important cross-cutting policy to be applied
continuously to all systems and facilities—both existing and
new. There is a role for planning and programming in support of operations
and management, but the principal focus is on:
- Maintaining and improving today’s service levels through
facility operations in real time on a coordinated basis that is
integrated by a regional information/communications framework
across facilities, modes and jurisdictions
- Maximizing informed user choice through
the provision of system status information and information on
service options
- Integrating incremental upgrading of the
complete range of facility operation and information—based
demand management tools in a consistent and interrelated “architecture”
that provides a framework for systems management
- Responding to disruptive incidents through
cooperation and coordination across modes and jurisdictions, and
with other service providers, such as law enforcement and emergency
services, and private partners
- “Tuning” operations in real time based on feedback
to maximize systems performance
- Serving specific user needs and markets
with measurable short-run performance improvements, including
preferential and other “value-added” options
- Leveraging new technology through incremental
service upgrades and geographic extensions in an affordable and
sustainable strategy.
The basis for developing such systems is a systems engineering process
that starts with specific user needs and translates them in into functional
specifications and a guiding architecture that can be the foundation
for continuous expansion and the upgrading of inter-operable system
components. The specific service focus, the performance and feedback
basis and the incremental addition of relatively low-cost, small-scale
control components to existing infrastructure has little in common
with long-range travel forecasts, major construction disruption, environmental
impacts and complex capital budgeting that characterizes “major
investments.”
The Challenge
Developing such a framework and the operational capacities consistent
with it requires a new definition of the mission of infrastructure
owners and a hands-on approach to regional transportation improvements,
including a commitment to new concepts, new technology and new relationships.
Few state DOTs or local governments have yet fully committed themselves
to such a mission; and there are almost no regional entities that
are responsible for providing integrated, intermodal transportation
facilities and services on a coordinated interjurisdictional basis.
Metropolitan planning organizations, for example, rarely have any
operating authority and, while a few are playing important leaderships
roles, institutional arrangements for seamless, regional systems operation
in real time, including the necessary planning and programming, are
still being worked out in most areas. A key aspect of integrating
these new missions and concepts will be the way they relate to current
metropolitan planning and programming processes.
PB’s Role
“Operationalizing” systems operations and management within
the traditional transportation planning and programming will require
new tools, procedures and institutional arrangements, as well as a
readiness to accommodate continuing change. There is a range of challenges
to be met. PB has the experience and resources to play an important
role in this important evolution. |
|
| Note: For previous PB Network articles by Steve,
see the Summer '95 issue on ISTEA, #31, pp. 4-5 (Introduction)
and pp. 47-48, 58. |
|
