Proprietary & confidential. © Decision Lens 2012

Modeling Best Practices in Transportation

Jon MalpassDirector, Decision Solutions

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Agenda

Common Decision Lens usesTransportation model review & analysisA model templateChallenges in using Decision Lens

Decision Lens uses

Capital planningLong range transportation plansTransportation improvement programsVendor selectionsEngineering design selectionPerformance management

For what other kinds of decision have you used Decision Lens?

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Summary of Model Analysis

Conducted review of 14 transportation industry models from 12 organizations focusing on capital investment, transportation improvement and long range plansMixture of transit agency models and those from state/local transportation organizations (DOTs and MPOs/RPOs)Many models had similar concepts represented, but not always at the same level of the hierarchy or explicitly using the same wordsRequired a bit of abstraction to higher level concepts based on common clustering

Commonly Used Criteria

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Criterion usage and weights

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# Average Low Low* HighSafety & Security 14 30.6% 7.1% 7.1% 58.9%Service Quality 14 18.3% 4.2% 4.2% 39.0%State of Good Repair/Condition 13 17.6% 0.0% 8.7% 30.6%Environmental 11 4.8% 0.0% 1.1% 13.0%Financial Efficiencies 9 8.0% 0.0% 3.8% 26.7%External Impacts 9 7.6% 0.0% 1.1% 29.9%Readiness/Success 5 4.4% 0.0% 2.9% 20.9%Supports Plans/Strategies 5 3.8% 0.0% 1.7% 30.3%Usage Volume 3 1.6% 0.0% 2.8% 13.1%Increase Ridership 2 2.2% 0.0% 10.7% 20.2%Employee Impacts 2 1.1% 0.0% 3.9% 10.8%

Low* indicates the lowest value for those models that used the criterion.

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Cause and effect

Decision Lens modeling often forces clients to grapple with chicken or egg-type quandariesCriteria may have cause and effect relationships, where one criterion might impact or benefit anotherDistinction can make a difference in a model by resulting in overweighting

Safety & Security

How do you differentiate between safety and security?Where does response factor in?Sometimes also focused on who (patron, employee, system) as opposed to what

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Measuring the Impact of Safety & Security

How does one measure the impact of a safety and security-focused investment? Often scales for these concepts were quite generic Makes it difficult to differentiate the amount of the impact

• What about a broad impact that’s unlikely?• A narrow but severe impact?

Better scales will… Reference documented safety & security issues Differentiate between the scope and impact of the potential

risk or solution

Service Quality

Specifics are tailored to each customer need, but the concept of improving the service provided is commonMost used children include: Meeting performance objectives Accessibility & mobility Customer satisfaction System improvements

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State of Good Repair / Condition

Definitions related to SGR varied Replaces an asset at or past its useful life Evaluates the project need based on asset condition Keeps assets in SGR ensuring safety and customer wellbeing Rehabs, upgrades or replaces assets to maintain serviceability Lifecycle status of an investment based on pre-determined life

expectancy and conditionsStarted research into what this means – and therefore how we think it should be used in models

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What does SGR mean?

Maintaining the nation's bus and rail systems in a State of Good Repair (SGR) is essential if public transportation systems are to provide safe and reliable service to millions of daily riders.In a country where public transportation is increasingly looked to as a necessary and critical mode of travel, ensuring that local transit systems are maintained in a “state of good repair” to provide efficient, reliable, and safe service is more important than ever.

Source: FTA, Transit State of Good Repair , Beginning the Dialogue, October 2008

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FTA Working Group Definition

SGR is a framework based on four attributes: Age of the asset Asset condition Asset performance Backlog of maintenance/deferred maintenance

Does this framework create an overlap with other criteria in the model?How can we differentiate?

Do you need SGR to be…

Safe?Reliable?Efficient?Environmentally friendly?

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SGR

Service Quality

Safety

Environmental

Financial Efficiencies

Environmental Impact

Criterion seeks to lower the overall impact of transportation system on the environment Focus areas include resource conservation or reduction in

use of natural resources Reduction in VMT – in both transit and transportation models Impact of the project on the community environment

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External Impact

Speaks to the larger set of benefits that a strong transportation system can provide outside of the moving of people from one location to another Partnerships Community investment Economic return Livability Impact to public

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Financial Effectiveness

Financial impact or benefit from the investment within the systemFocuses predominately on the extent to which the project would increase revenue or reduce costsAlso includes ability to improve efficiencies within the organization providing the service

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Notes & Comments on Other Criteria

Volume & route significance only appeared in transportation models, not transit. Why?Increased ridership only explicitly appeared in two models as evaluation criteria but also as parent criteria in two other models. Does this have the same dependency as seen before?

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What does a comprehensive model look like?

Includes many of the most common and important criteriaRequires children criteria and specific definitions to differentiateDoes not need to be the largest model to be comprehensiveUses scales to define breadth and depth of criterion

Dealing with large models – model size

Models are often revised year to year, even with the same decision or typeCommonly used to reduce the time it takes to use the Decision Lens processHow to improve your model while downsizing? Improve your definitions Build better scales

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Dealing with large models - ratings

Rate all alternatives in a group session - Ideal

Next best options – get as close to that ideal as possible Have people rate on their own, but still rating each alternative for

each criterion; conduct discussion for cases of extreme outliers/disagreement

Break your evaluations by criteria, alternatives or a combination

Challenges faced when using Decision Lens

What were your main challenges?How did you overcome them?What do you plan to do differently next time?

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