Enhancing State DOT Data and Planning: Achievements, Challenges, and Future Directions

1. Implementation of the New Federal Performance-based Planning Requirements: Data and Information Needs of State DOTs Data Collection and Analysis in Washington State Department of Transportation Elizabeth Robbins, Manager, Planning Policy Innovations and Partnerships AASHTO Joint Policy Conference: Connecting the DOT’s July 18, 2018

2. Here’s what I’ll kick us off with • What WSDOT and our MPOs did • What went well • Data we used • Where we’re going next • Challenges and things WSDOT needs to improve • Some important questions for us

3. What we did Collaboration structure • Framework group • WSDOT/MPO technical team • WSDOT technical team for each performance measure • CMAQ Emissions technical team Collaboration memorandum

4. What went well • getting our information out in plain talk in the form of technical folios • keeping these updated and online with target info as it was developed • documenting our efforts through a collaboration memo

5. Data we used • existing internal databases such as collision, pavement, bridge, VMT, freight • modal system plans and WSDOT’s Corridor Capacity Report • data from the American Community Survey • RITIS (INRIX data)

6. Where we’re going next • Ensuring that responsible offices understand their role with upcoming and on-going MAP-21 operational efforts in addition to target setting processes • Making our information accessible to partners: ArcGIS Online tools (Community Planning Portal) and other tools • Exploring off-the-shelf tools like SugarAccess that can help us understand and use more multimodal accessibility data and information that may not be traditional • Creating a Performance Framework to explicitly consider how the transportation system is a means to larger economic and social objectives such as economic vitality, public health, social equity • Augmenting our data collection for HPMS purposes with cellphone data from INRIX’s NPMRDS data set in RITIS platform (University of Maryland). • Subscribing to StreetLight data for a year to provide a tool to regional planning staff to analyze congested corridors: carryout origin-destination analyses at segment level, look at travel times on parallel street etc. by time of day, look at the trend in volume, and travel time etc. over time. • Testing Mio-vision cameras at present and testing CLR technology to observe vehicle profiles with single loop soon. • Creating TracFlowsoftware to process loop data on freeways to develop performance metrics for freeways in Seattle and Vancouver urban areas with the help of University of Washington’s TRAC

7. Challenges and things we need to improve • Find more accessible methods of sharing our data and analysis, particularly for asset management • How to prioritize across functional and funding programs • Incorporating local systems reporting • Dealing with and updating legacy databases • Shifting how WSDOT is seen by others, from just a money source to a true partner in managing people’s ability to get where they need to go

8. Some important questions for us • Who in our agency (which office) has lead responsibility to make sure that progress in being made? It’s not always in the Planning Office. • How does this affect various programming and/or budgeting parts of WSDOT and to create alignment between the performance outcomes and the funding that is available and/or needed to make the desired performance progress? • Are the leads connected to the appropriate long-range planning work, or flipping this, are the long-range planning processes truly contributing to and relevant to decision-making (from planning through implementation)?

9. Now, let’s talk!