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| Author | : University of Virginia. Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : |
| Release | : 1996 |
| Genre | : Highway engineering |
| ISBN | : |
| Author | : Yacov Y. Haimes |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 78 |
| Release | : 1998 |
| Genre | : Highway engineering |
| ISBN | : |
The goal of this effort is to assist the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) in improving the comparison in planning of potential primary and secondary roadway improvement projects. Historical projects that have been implemented or considered for implementation have been used as a case study data set. Methods are proposed for estimating cost, performance gain and crash risk reduction of future roadway projects, with the main focus being the presentation of trade offs among these criteria. If, in a particular case, more accurate and/or appropriate data is available for one or more of these criteria (e.g. from a simulation study that has been performed), then this information can easily be used to supplement or replace the estimations proposed here. The project comparison instrument combines three major decision making attributes in project selection: crash risk, performance, and project cost. By quantifying these attributes across a number of proposed highway improvement projects, projects can more readily be compared to one another, and a more holistic view of potential projects is achieved. This is an important step when choosing a portfolio of projects each year. In order to compare projects, attributes are quantified in the following manner for planning level decisions. Crash risk reduction is calculated as the number of crashes avoided per year at the project site. Particular roadway improvements are typically assumed to decrease the expected number of crashes by a statistically determined and pretabulated percentage. Performance gain is quantified by the vehicle minutes of travel time avoided in the peak hour. Finally, cost is modeled as the sum of preliminary engineering, right of way and construction costs. Once the objectives are quantified, they can be graphically displayed in a Project Comparison Chart. Examples for applying this approach are given in the text and in the accompanying workbook.
| Author | : Yacov Y. Haimes |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 78 |
| Release | : 1998 |
| Genre | : Highway engineering |
| ISBN | : |
The goal of this effort is to assist the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) in improving the comparison in planning of potential primary and secondary roadway improvement projects. Historical projects that have been implemented or considered for implementation have been used as a case study data set. Methods are proposed for estimating cost, performance gain and crash risk reduction of future roadway projects, with the main focus being the presentation of trade offs among these criteria. If, in a particular case, more accurate and/or appropriate data is available for one or more of these criteria (e.g. from a simulation study that has been performed), then this information can easily be used to supplement or replace the estimations proposed here. The project comparison instrument combines three major decision making attributes in project selection: crash risk, performance, and project cost. By quantifying these attributes across a number of proposed highway improvement projects, projects can more readily be compared to one another, and a more holistic view of potential projects is achieved. This is an important step when choosing a portfolio of projects each year. In order to compare projects, attributes are quantified in the following manner for planning level decisions. Crash risk reduction is calculated as the number of crashes avoided per year at the project site. Particular roadway improvements are typically assumed to decrease the expected number of crashes by a statistically determined and pretabulated percentage. Performance gain is quantified by the vehicle minutes of travel time avoided in the peak hour. Finally, cost is modeled as the sum of preliminary engineering, right of way and construction costs. Once the objectives are quantified, they can be graphically displayed in a Project Comparison Chart. Examples for applying this approach are given in the text and in the accompanying workbook.
| Author | : James H. Lambert |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 58 |
| Release | : 2003 |
| Genre | : Highway engineering |
| ISBN | : |
Under the Virginia Transportation Act signed into law in April 2000, more than $10 billion would have been invested in highway construction, public transportation, airports, and ports during the following 6 years. However, recent budgetary constraints will result in a delay in investing more than $2 billion in road projects for more than a decade. In the current study, a previously developed comparison tool was extended to bring quantitative evidence of safety and categorical evidence of broad motivations to planners, engineers, and the public in comparing the benefits of proposed transportation projects. The extended tool developed in the current study provides visual devices for presenting multifaceted information about project attributes. Policymakers and planners may find the presentation useful in assessing what types of projects are being undertaken and what projects to prefer to others. The extended tool represents project information including cost, average daily traffic, and crash rates for comparison and prioritization of the 1,500 candidate projects that constitute the development plan of Virginia highways. The extended tool is flexible to accommodate applications such as project selection (planning) and programming. Several sources of information include the crash databases of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and project plans for districts and localities. The extended tool enables planners to identify principal motivations for various projects based on categories defined by the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. The tool introduces summary reports of criteria including project aggregate costs and counts of projects with particular motivations, facilitating system-level analyses and project ranking. The summary reports can be useful to interpret outcomes of human deliberation or multicriteria rating and ranking processes, some of which are demonstrated in this study in the body of the report and in a substantial appendix. The major innovation of the extended comparison tool is its ability to synthesize the relevant quantitative and categorical information on a large and diverse portfolio of highway investments, bringing more evidence to the table earlier in the planning process. Three case studies demonstrate the application of the extended comparison tool in short-, medium-, and long-term transportation plans. These case studies are the VDOT-Culpeper District Transportation Development Plan (a 6-year plan), long-range financially constrained plans of selected small Virginia localities, and the long-range plan of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. The incremental data to assess over 100 projects in a VDOT District Six-Year Plan were collected in 90 minutes, providing an advantage over typical methods that can require several hours or more per project. Recommendations are given for implementation of the extended comparison tool and further development of the software prototype.
| Author | : Virginia. Department of Highways and Transportation |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : |
| Release | : 1977 |
| Genre | : Highway planning |
| ISBN | : |
| Author | : K. E. Lantz |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 43 |
| Release | : 2008 |
| Genre | : Project management |
| ISBN | : |
Transportation project scoping is a process where the project's purpose and need, budget, schedule, and scope are developed. Interviews conducted with 27 staff representing VDOT, FHWA, and regional planners, coupled with a review of related literature and federal legislation, suggested 10 options for improving Virginia's scoping process. Although implementation of the first 8 options may involve, to varying degrees, both central office and district staff, the decision regarding whether or not to implement them as a matter of policy rests with VDOT's Chief Engineer. Six options regard changes in process that have already been implemented in some VDOT districts or are under consideration: (1) Select a monthly project day statewide; (2) Delineate scoping-day decisions from other activities in the scoping process; (3) Consider initiatives that have already been deployed successfully in one or more VDOT districts such as the use of a risk assessment page; (4) Allow electronic submission of the scoping report; (5) Provide resources to perform scoping prior to programming (and use this information to influence which projects are placed in the transportation program); (6) Support efforts to link planning and programming. Two options regard specific products: (1) develop a single primer that explains to an outside audience how the scoping process influences project development and is designed to improve the quality of the discussion among VDOT, localities, and other agencies regarding project scoping, and (2) consider database enhancements suggested by interviewees. The final two options regard suggestions for further research. The report gives the rationale for each option, detailing interviewees' descriptions of how scoping is done, challenges that arise when scoping specific projects, and enhancements to scoping that have been considered in individual districts.
| Author | : |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 124 |
| Release | : 2003 |
| Genre | : Highway planning |
| ISBN | : |
Well-implemented public involvement programs have many potential benefits for transportation agencies including enhanced credibility with the public, decisions reflecting community values, and reduced risks of litigation (O'Connor et al., 2000). The objectives of this study included a broad assessment of the Virginia Department of Transportation's (VDOT's) public involvement practices and the development of a public involvement "toolkit" for use by VDOT staff. The toolkit describes an array of techniques that may be used from the earliest planning stages of transportation projects through their construction, noting advantages, disadvantages, special considerations in the use of each technique, and references and website links for further reading. The assessment of VDOT's current public outreach practices included information gathering from citizens and VDOT staff. A total of 948 citizens attending several types of VDOT meetings and hearings completed written surveys that included questions about how they prefer to be notified about upcoming VDOT meetings, how they prefer to be informed about projects, and how they prefer to be updated on the status of plans or projects. Focus groups and written "self evaluation" surveys provided information on the perceptions of VDOT staff about the effectiveness of VDOT's public involvement approaches and their suggestions for improving communication with the public and public involvement... Study recommendations include the following: VDOT staff should use the toolkit and a soon-to-be released interactive public involvement tool by the Federal Highway Administration to choose effective public involvement approaches; VDOT divisions should collaborate on ways to increase the public's understanding of the planning, project development, and public involvement processes; and as soon as the state budget situation permits, the Outreach Section of VDOT's Office of Public Affairs proposed by the Governor's Commission on Transportation Policy should be staffed to provide greater in-house strategic communications planning and evaluation capability for major projects.
| Author | : |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 202 |
| Release | : 2002 |
| Genre | : State government publications |
| ISBN | : |
| Author | : James Hamilton Lambert |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 106 |
| Release | : 2005 |
| Genre | : Resource allocation |
| ISBN | : |
This effort demonstrates business process modeling to describe the integration of particular planning and programming activities of a state highway agency. The motivations to document planning and programming activities are that: (i) resources for construction projects are used effectively; (ii) employees know where projects are in their construction life cycles and how projects may have been changed; (iii) the time of agency employees is used effectively; and (iv) the employees are working together to complete transportation projects in a reasonable time. The effort adopts the IDEF modeling capability of the BPWin software (also known as the AllFusion Process Modeler). IDEF modeling encourages consistent documentation of who generates what information, products, services; for whom; how; and for what reasons. Across the agency, the modeling is useful in prioritizing processes for change and maintenance. The modeling empowers employees at all levels, makes institutional knowledge relevant and accessible, and removes bottlenecks. It also encourages the development of integrated systems along functional lines, including administration, engineering, and operations, and focuses agency personnel on the good rather than the perfect system. Highway agencies have multiple business processes that can benefit from an integrated description of business and technology in process models. For example, the information technology division of a large highway agency maintains and develops around sixty software applications at any one time. Business process modeling helps the division improve their allocation of resources and priorities to these applications. This document provides the purpose and scope of the effort, the method behind IDEF modeling and the AllFusion software, the results and discussion of the effort, the deliverables, and the recommendations for future work. Twelve appendices provide the technical results. The authors identify some significant benefits that can be realized by an implementing agency in exchange for modest costs.
