Skip to main content

FHWA proposes new performance measures to reduce highway congestion

The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) today released a proposed regulation outlining new performance measures to assess travel reliability, congestion, and emissions at a national level. It calls for an increased level of transparency and accountability in establishing and achieving targets for performance impacting commuters and truck drivers. The measures address the concerns outlined in the USDOT report Beyond Traffic, which examines the trends and choices facing
April 19, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The 324 US Department of Transportation’s 831 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) today released a proposed regulation outlining new performance measures to assess travel reliability, congestion, and emissions at a national level.  It calls for an increased level of transparency and accountability in establishing and achieving targets for performance impacting commuters and truck drivers.

The measures address the concerns outlined in the USDOT report Beyond Traffic, which examines the trends and choices facing America's transportation infrastructure over the next three decades, including a rapidly growing population, increasing freight volume, and the need to mitigate environmental impacts.  The proposed regulation also invites comment on the potential to establish a performance measure to address reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.  

The proposed new rule – National Performance Management Measures; Assessing Performance of the National Highway System, Freight Movement on the Interstate System, and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program – is a requirement under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21).  Major provisions involve requirements for all states to evaluate and report more effectively and consistently on transportation system performance, including travel time reliability, delay hours, peak-hour congestion, freight movement, and on-road mobile source emissions.

FHWA’s National Performance Management Research Data Set, a relatively new data tool that collects actual travel times from vehicles, will be used by states to monitor system performance. All state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organisations would be required to use travel time data to establish performance targets and report on progress.

In addition, the reduction in criteria pollutants resulting from federally funded projects will also be estimated and reported.   FHWA is also seeking comment on whether and how to establish a greenhouse gas emissions measure.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Automatic signal control to prevent emergency vehicle collisions?
    March 14, 2012
    Field trials under way in Arizona promise eradication of accidents between emergency vehicles at intersections – as part of a national focus on ‘intelligent signal’ infrastructure. Collisions between police cars, ambulances and fire crews as they reach intersections at the same time, with equal priority given by all signals set on red, are as serious as they sound absurd. For emergency teams and those in need of their help, the consequences are dire. The solution could come from application of connected veh
  • Adding intelligence to transportation
    November 6, 2012
    Restarting city transportation systems following a natural disaster can take time. The impact of a storm cannot be predicted, but transportation systems and fleets of vehicles with embedded intelligence can provide the knowledge needed to get up and running faster. Machine to machine (M2M) technology can help collect and process information to better monitor and manage transportation systems on an ongoing basis. In the event of a disaster, technology could provide cities with critical data about bridges, r
  • Mobility pricing offers new tools for managing mobility
    November 23, 2017
    Mobility pricing is the best way of sustaining and enhancing mobility, argues Moving Forward Consulting’s Josef Czako. Mobility pricing (MP) is effectively the culmination of the ‘user pays’ principle and has been referred to in many policy discussions about electronic toll collection, road user charging (RUC), and pricing. MP not only reflects the ‘use more, pay more’ nature of RUC, it also takes account of the external cost of journeys including pollution, noise, the cost of congestion and accidents.
  • Peter Norton: ‘We can reintroduce freedom of choice in transportation’
    April 22, 2022
    Funding for transit, cycling and walkability can be politically divisive – so why not bypass politics by letting toll payers themselves choose how a fraction of their toll is spent, asks Peter Norton