01518976

Component

A significant gap in transportation infrastructure management practices has been the alignment of performance measurement with cross-asset resource allocation. Predicated by Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), performance-based asset management provides a framework for linking performance goals and objectives with the planning and programming of transportation improvement projects. In practice, project selection has often been based within asset “silos” - that is, projects are chosen within individual management systems given a predetermined budget allocation that is not typically aligned with the performance goals of the transportation agency. Instead, the allocation of resources across asset classes (e.g., bridges vs. pavements) is often determined based on historical proportions or by legislated formula and is subject to changes due to political pressures. Consequently, agencies are at risk for pursuing and implementing less than optimal programs that waste valuable resources and are less defensible to the public and stakeholders. Recent studies in tradeoff analysis have attempted to quantify the sensitivity of such allocation decisions, but no methodology has been developed to-date that identifies which cross-asset allocation optimizes system-wide performance. To demonstrate the advantages of a performance-based, cross-asset resource allocation approach, this paper provides a MAP-21 compliant baseline framework (developed for current National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project 08-91) and a case study of varying programming policies. Through a comprehensive decision science approach, it is shown that the ideal resource allocation and obtainable performance targets can be arrived at by optimizing system performance via a combination of agency preferences with quantitatively scored projects pooled across asset classes.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABC40 Transportation Asset Management.

01503729

14-4642

English

17p

2014

Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Asset management; Case studies; Construction projects; Decision making; Methodology; Performance measurement; Transportation system management

Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act

Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General); I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2014 Paper #14-4642

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 3:37PM