Transportation Agency Officials, Experts Tout Importance of Performance Management
WASHINGTON — Performance management, long a staple of the private sector, is increasingly common in the world of transportation agencies. That reality, which was jump-started by MAP 21 becoming law in 2012, was applauded by officials from those agencies as well as other experts at a Transportation Research Board session on Jan. 8.
“As a transportation community, we’re starting to understand that performance management is just good business practice,” said Mike Patterson, executive director of Oklahoma’s Department of Transportation. “It’s what we should have been doing and what we should do in the future. Agencies are starting to understand the benefits of measuring their performance and documenting their performance.”
The Federal Highway Administration defines Transportation Performance Management as a strategic approach that uses system information to make investment and policy decisions to achieve national performance goals, provides key information to help decision makers understand the consequences of investment decisions, and ensures targets and measures are … based on data.
Emil Frankel of the Eno Center for Transportation said a big change from when he was Connecticut’s DOT Secretary in the 1990s is that performance management today is focused more on results, not just internal operations.
“Performance management is a critical tool in ensuring transparency and accountability,” Frankel said. “We’re seeing a maturation … recognizing that transportation is a means to an end, in most cases [the] economic performance of states or metropolitan region.”
FHWA is responsible for meeting six of MAP 21’s nine major requirements. The rulemaking on bridge and pavement conditions was finally cleared by the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 6, leaving just the one that includes freight movement to be finalized.
"MAP 21 was an important step, a good first step, but there’s still a lack of real clarity and prioritization of national goals,” Frankel said. “You’re setting targets. Are you achieving them? Are they related to the proper public purposes? If we’re really going to have accountability, there have to be consequences whether those are rewards [for meeting targets] or loss of funds.”
Bud Wright, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said the states aren’t integrating performance management into their decision making at the same pace.
“As with any cultural change, it’s going to take time and it’s going to be inconsistent across our 52 members,” Wright said. “But I think over time we’re going to see it being used not just as a check the box [requirement], but [as] something that drives how decisions are being made.”
Todd Lang of Baltimore’s Metropolitan Council, one of more than 400 MPOs nationwide, said performance management’s transparency is also a positive.
“If you’re afraid of transparency, you really shouldn’t be [in] your job,” Lang said. “You should be able to explain why you’re making certain investment decisions.”
Added Wright, “Telling the story your way rather than having it told for you is going to be critical, communicating to the public and to legislators what you’re able to do and not able to do, given the resources available.”
However, as Patterson noted, “Our customers don’t really know whether it’s a city street, a county road or a highway. They just want good transportation.
