Resources for Students and Instructors

ITS PCB All Levels Workshop #1
March 27-28, 2019 | Florida Department of Transportation District 7 in Tampa, Florida

Day 1 Presentation | March 27, 2019

ITS Work at MPOs

Presenter: Beth Alden
Presenter’s Org: Hillsborough MPO

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The slides in this presentation contain the Plan Hillsborough website URL (planhillsborough.org) and its logo.

Slide 1: ITS Work at MPOs

Hillsborough MPO
Tampa, Florida

[This slide contains a photo of a city street with two parking lanes and two travel lanes.]

Slide 2: The Role of MPOs

Forum for agencies to coordinate on ITS initiatives
Provide info to decision-makers on the impact ITS investments can have on the transportation system
Identify unmet needs for ITS and help decision-makers set priorities among all multimodal needs
Track area-wide performance, and benefits of ITS investments, over time

Slide 3: MPO as a forum: What should be on the agenda?

Planners need:

Familiarity with elements of ITS (sensors, controllers, communication systems…) & their limitations and benefits
Understanding of how ITS deployments can help achieve community multimodal goals
Awareness of trends as technology continues to rapidly evolve

[This slide contains a photo of people at a meeting in a conference room.]

Slide 4: MPO as a storyteller re: benefits of ITS

2040 Transportation Plan = Many Kinds of Investments

Preserve the System
Reduce Crashes & Vulnerability
Manage Traffic for Drivers & Shippers
Real Choices When Not Driving
Grow Economic Activity Centers

[This slide contains five clip art images of buckets, one above each of the titles listed above. Above “Manage Traffic for Drivers & Shippers” is a traffic light icon.]

Slide 5: MPO as a storyteller re: benefits of ITS

What can we get if we invest in Managing Traffic for Drivers & Shippers…

Level 1 - Current Spending
- Peak-hour travel time is how much less reliable than today?
- Hours of truck delay
Level 2 - ATMS Fully Funded
- Travel time % more reliable on major roads
- Reduced truck “hot spots” by %
Level 3 - Freeway ATMS Funded Too
- Level 2, plus increased reliability on freeways

[This slide contains a vertical bar chart summarizing data regarding travel time variability, comparing the travel time variability of the seven largest counties in Florida to the travel time variability on Hillsborough County’s arterials and freeways, at two different funding scenarios. There are two vertical bars—one above the x-axis labeled “2010,” and the other above the x-axis label “2013.” Above both the x-axis labels “Level 1,” and “Level 2” are two vertical bars.]

Slide 6: MPO as a storyteller re: benefits of ITS

[This slide contains a screenshot of a page on Hillsborough’s Imagine 2040 Public Engagement website, displaying a tool for investment programs.]

Slide 7: MPO as a storyteller re: benefits of ITS

To tell the story, planners need:

Ability to use new travel demand modeling tools/ post-processors that can estimate the benefits of ITS projects, at the long-range, macrosimulation scale

[This slide contains two images: (1) a screenshot of “Safety and Reliability TDM Model” and (2) a screenshot of FHWA’s SHRP2 Solutions “Solutions” page.]

Slide 8: MPO: identifying & prioritizing needs

[This slide contains two images: (1) the BayArea Plan logo and (2) a scatterplot/infographic showing the benefit/cost of road projects, the relative size of the project benefits, and the degree to which the projects support or have an adverse impact on BayArea Plan targets.]

Slide 9: MPO: identifying & prioritizing needs

[This slide contains two images: (1) the BayArea Plan logo and (2) a scatterplot/infographic showing the total annual benefit/cost of road projects, transit projects, and regional programs, the relative size of the total annual benefit, and the degree to which the projects support or have an adverse impact on BayArea Plan targets.]

Slide 10: MPO: identifying & prioritizing needs

San Francisco MTC: Summary Observations

The best performers are pricing projects and transit and road efficiency projects in the Central Bay Area.
Transit expansion projects achieve the highest target ratings but many have B/C less than 1.
- Results are mixed for Resolution No. 3434 projects.
- Many projects have high operating costs.
- Many have large benefits but also have very large costs.
Roadway expansion projects are middle of the pack for B/C but rate lowest for targets.

[This slide contains the BayArea Plan logo.]

Slide 11: MPO: identifying & prioritizing needs

Planners should have a general understanding of where ITS strategies fall on various scales, such as cost per mile, cost/benefit ratio, environmental and community impact, public opinion, in order to help their communities choose the right tool from the multimodal transportation toolbox.

Preserve the System [a road and bridge icon] (1964 responses)
- Medium: 51%
- High: 33%
- Low: 16%
Min. Traffic for Drivers & Shippers [a traffic signal icon] (1920 responses)
- Medium: 40%
- High: 34%
- Low: 26%
Real Choices When Not Driving [a pedestrian in a crosswalk icon] (1886 responses)
- Medium: 32%
- High: 34%
- Low: 34%

[This slide contains three pie charts and a photo of four young people taking a survey using tablets. The photo is titled “Public engagement survey says the right level of investment is…” The information from the pie charts is reproduced in the lists above.]

Slide 12: MPO performance targets: monitoring progress

Travel Time Reliability

Performance Targets		Actual, 2018
≥75%	Interstate NHS network with a level of travel time reliability less than 1.50	71%
≥50%	Non-interstate NHS network with a level of travel time reliability less than 1.50	62.5%
≤2.00	Truck travel time reliability index score	2.08

[This slide contains a map of the Tampa, Florida area which is labeled “Good data available from FHWA on the interstate highway system.”]

Slide 13: MPO performance targets: monitoring progress

Segment-level data on average speed by time of day is available on most roads of interest…for a price

What about sharing data among TMCs? Requires data business planning:

Inventory of datasets and formats
Interlocal agreements for data-sharing
Software to manage enormous data sets (beyond Excel’s capacity)
Programming of analysis functions

	Maturity Level
	1	2	3
Data Collection, Management, & Technical Standards	X	Small Gap
Data Integration and Expandability	X	Small Gap
Data Storage and Access	X	Small Gap
Technology and Tools	X	Small Gap
Data Governance	X	Small Gap
Culture	X		Large Gap
Collaboration	X		Large Gap

Slide 14: MPO performance targets: monitoring progress