Highways

Highways Highways

Highways Division’s Mid-Range Transportation Plan By: Richard Wollenbecker

Why is the Mid-Range Transportation Plan needed? The Mid-Range Transportation Plan will be the Highways Division’s new tool for prioritizing projects developed to address the diverse needs of the State Highways System.

Currently, programs develop lists of recommended projects based on the needs and priorities within their individual program.

Each program could recommend dozens, sometimes hundreds of projects requiring millions to billions of dollars to implement. How will the Mid-Range Transportation Plan help?

Because of the large number and diverse types of projects, comparing priorities across the programs is a difficult task.

It is also not possible, of course, to implement all the recommendations from the programs as they greatly outweigh available resources.

Here are some example projects from various programs: The Mid-Range Transportation Plan will refine how projects are evaluated and provide a more effective method of comparing projects from across programs and evaluating funding scenarios.

It will have a 10-year horizon with its first four years feeding the Highways Division’s shortrange budgets: the federally required Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), the Capital Improvement Program, and the Special Maintenance Program.

Having a 10-year horizon that is data driven and transparent will also help the Highways Division be better able to plan for, develop, and deliver projects by, for example, identifying project delivery issues earlier (therefore reducing delays), aligning needs within the same corridor, and improving scope definition.

See PLAN on page 18

Highways

PLAN continued from page 17

How does the Mid-Range Transportation prioritize these projects?

Criteria for project prioritization were developed based on the Highways Division’s priorities and the goals and objectives found in the long range land transportation plan.

These criteria were developed in coordination with the program managers and branch managers within Highways Division.

After being weighted, the criteria were then used to build a decision-making tool called multi-objective decision analysis or MODA. What will the end product of this effort look like?

Ultimately, the MidRange Plan will be a web-based application to allow for an improved and automated process for entry and scoring of projects.

MODA is a decision-making framework that is designed to help align different priorities by using a system of weights and normalization.

Mid-Range Plan Criteria

1. Improve Safety 2. Foster System Preservation 3. Multimodal Integration 4. Encourage Economic Vitality 5. Improve System Efficiency 6. Resiliency 7. Other Considerations

Once projects have been scored through the MODA system, harmonization begins.

This phase considers factors relating to programming or project development and delivery such as project readiness and federal mandates. that the scores generated by the MODA process align with current division-wide priorities and adjustments are made, if needed.

This will allow for quick iterations of either evaluating prioritization or fiscal constraints to see how best to invest into the transportation system.

Dashboards can be created to be able to quickly review the number (or spending) of projects by type or by District.

In building the web-based application, the project will also implement an e-STIP.

Many other State DOTs are implementing e-STIPs and seeing the benefits of improved efficiency in terms of streamlining the process for approvals, amendments, and modifications and improved transparency and access to project information.

When is the Mid-Range Transportation Plan expected to be completed?

Completion of the Mid-Range Transportation Plan is expected by the end of 2021.