Research Idea Details

Research Idea Scope

This research would take steps toward the ultimate goal of developing a nationally accepted manual on transportation demand management (TDM) effectiveness in line with the Highway Capacity Manual. This could use a variety of factors to indicate anticipated performance from a package of TDM strategies based on historical data. Here are some suggested research steps that could move us toward that goal:

• Develop a set of consistent methodologies for measuring the performance of TDM programs.
• Develop a set of factors that influence the performance of TDM programs.
• Assess the availability of existing quantitative data for TDM projects to apply these methods and determine quantitative performance. Assess the influencing factors of these TDM projects.
• Analyze the effect various factors have on the performance of TDM programs.

Urgency and Payoff

Setting targets and quantitatively measuring performance of transportation demand management (TDM) programs is an emerging concept. Although there are no established industry standards guiding these efforts, methods have evolved over time and vary from region to region and program to program. By comparison highways and fixed route transit services have well established data driven approaches used in transportation planning, design and construction. Transportation demand management programs need a similarly credible set of methods to establish expected performance.

Growth continues to outpace our limited resources for expanding roadway capacity and demand management is a critical piece to a comprehensive transportation solution. To gain public acceptance and support for TDM programs, standard performance expectations are needed for program planning and alternatives analysis.