T4America Blog

New technical assistance opportunity for MPOs interested in performance measures

Today T4America is launching a new technical assistance program to help metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) go further with measuring and quantifying the multiple benefits of transportation spending decisions to help ensure that every dollar is aligned with the public’s goals and brings the greatest return possible for citizens.

Similar to the Transportation Leadership Academy we did in partnership with FHWA last year, this new technical assistance program is geared toward helping a handful of metro areas implement a data-driven approach to assessing the costs and benefits of transportation spending — a process known as performance measurement.

MAP-21, the federal surface transportation law passed in 2012, created new requirements for metro regions to start using performance measures that are largely focused on the highway network on conventional things like safety, condition of roads & bridges, etc. (Though the included measures for traffic congestion, as we’ve shown, have a huge impact on how we choose to “solve” that particular problem.)

USDOT finalized the requirements for all of the new measures on January 18, 2017 and will require all 400-plus MPOs and 50 state departments of transportation (DOTs) to develop transportation performance measure frameworks.

Our team has designed a suite of tools to help MPOs not only satisfy the modest new federal requirements, but also go beyond them into other areas such as public health, access to opportunity, social equity; and to help them translate their big picture targets and goals into specific criteria for choosing and prioritizing what transportation projects to build and where.

Find out more and apply today.