Overview
This report documents the research performed on the project. Detailed recommendations and guidance are provided in the Guidebook, which is structured for providing transportation engineers and planners assistance in developing and maintaining a comprehensive freeway performance monitoring program. In the research, multiple aspects of freeway performance were considered, but congestion and mobility performance was emphasized because of the lack of guidance and experience in this area. Other aspects included safety, operational efficiency, ride quality, environmental, and customer satisfaction. A review of current practice was conducted, including a review of the private sector as well as 11 benchmarking interviews with state and local transportation agencies. Based on these results, the Guidebook was structured to answer four primary questions about freeway performance: 1) what measures should be used; 2) how can the measures be developed with data and models; 3) how should freeway performance be communicated; and 4) how can freeway performance measures be used in decision-making. The draft Guidebook was developed as a series of nearly 400 annotated slides which were reviewed in five additional interviews with state and local agencies. The final Guidebook presents step-by-step procedures addressing the four primary issues associated with freeway performance monitoring. Ongoing freeway performance monitoring of recent trends is emphasized although the use of performance measures across project evaluations and analysis also is covered.