Jason Bittner

The fourth national transportation asset management workshop

This paper gives an overview of the 4th National Transportation Asset Management Workshop: Taking the Next Step in Asset Management. The event was held from September 23-25, 2001, and allowed participants to share ideas, successes, and challenges related to the use of asset management in transport agencies. 270+ people attended the function which was hosted by the Midwest Regional University Transportation Center in Madison, Wisconsin. 60 speakers shared their experiences and ideas in 6 presessions, 4 general sessions, and 9 parallel breakout sessions.

Managing Low-Volume Roads with Wisconsin Information System for Local Roads

Managers of low-volume roads face numerous challenges, including budgeting, maintenance decision making, and developing best practices. States such as Wisconsin have recently taken a proactive approach in assisting local officials in their roadway asset management activities. Aspects of the Wisconsin Information System for Local Roads (WISLR) that benefit local road managers by enhancing their asset management capabilities are discussed. Also offered are suggestions for future work to enhance roadway management tools for low-volume roads. WISLR originated with a Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) effort to create a web-based geographic information system (GIS) that would provide both the state agency and the 1,922 local units of government with accurate tracking of roadway mileage and pavement conditions for the more than 100,000 mi of roads and streets under local government control. The sizes of local road systems vary widely by municipality, from less than 9 mi to more than 600 mi of roadway. Many of these roads fall into the low-volume category, particularly in the smaller jurisdictions. WisDOT hoped to provide municipalities with a powerful tool to track roadway mileage and conditions, as well as to aid in system management decisions. WISLR offers a unique opportunity for local governments to capitalize on the powerful tools made available by this application. WISLR combines GIS technology with database application tools based on the Pavement Surface Evaluation Rating system, allowing municipalities to perform long-range planning.

Developing an Asset Management Tool to Collect and Track Commitments on Environmental Mitigation Features

Wisconsin has constructed many environmental mitigation projects in conjunction with transportation projects under the National Environmental Policy Act. These projects offset or replace certain environmental function(s) lost as a result of a transportation project. Examples include storm water management facilities, wetland replacements, stream restorations, reforestation, construction of sound walls, replacement of parklands, and wildlife crossing structures. For environmental mitigation projects to provide the long-term functionality intended when they were first constructed, they must be properly maintained and, when necessary, rehabilitated or reconstructed. These environmental mitigation features should be considered as assets, similar to other transportation facilities. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) identified the need to track these selected features in the overall scheme of project development and ongoing maintenance. This paper explores the current state of environmental mitigation project activities, discusses the literature on existing environmental inventory and asset management programs, presents an inventory of selected environmental mitigation features for Wisconsin, and develops a tool to track commitments. The tool was designed to assist WisDOT in monitoring the long-term performance of mitigation features. The research approaches used to develop the tracking tool, the list of priority features, and the inventory included interviews with WisDOT and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources staff, a review of WisDOTs environmental records—such as environmental impact studies and environmental assessment documents—and a literature survey covering best practices for environmental tracking and asset management systems being used by other state agencies.

Incorporating Urban-Area Truck Freight Value into the Urban Mobility Report

For more than 30 years, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) has developed methodologies and appropriate performance measures for estimating congestion performance and communicating them to technical and nontechnical audiences. TTIs Urban Mobility Report (UMR) has historically focused on passenger car congestion (i.e., congestion caused by the average commuter). However, roadway traffic congestion certainly affects both commuters and goods movement. With the documented growth of freight shipments and value, particularly in trucking, researchers developed and applied a methodology to include in UMR the truck freight commodity value that is affected by congestion in urban areas. The methodology uses data from FHWAs Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) and Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS). Commodity values supplied by the FAF are integrated into truck vehicle miles of travel calculated from the HPMS roadway inventory. Researchers estimated that

Transportation Asset Management in For-Credit Higher Education Course Offerings

7 trillion worth of commodities were trucked on Americas urban streets and highways during 2010. At the urban-area level, the results of the truck value measure appear to be intuitive, as bigger cities consume more goods and the greater consumption means a higher value of freight movement. The addition of a truck value to the UMR provides another dimension to inform policy makers and decision makers about the congestion problem. This addition also serves to inform trucking stakeholders with an estimate of the amount of truck value that is affected by congestion. Researchers will continue to include the truck freight value performance measure in subsequent releases of the UMR.

Longer combination vehicles : an estimation of their benefits and public perception of their use.

Transportation asset management is a systematic process of operating, maintaining, and upgrading transportation facilities cost-effectively. It combines engineering and mathematical analyses with business practice and economic theory. Asset management systems are goal driven and include components for data collection, strategy evaluation, program selection, and feedback. The asset management model explicitly addresses integration of decisions made across all program areas. The purpose is simple: to maximize the benefits of a transportation program to its customers and users, on the basis of well-defined goals within available resources. This concept is emerging prominently in several state and local transportation agencies. In 2005 a study was commissioned by the Michigan Asset Management Council and the FHWA to develop a thorough catalog of existing training opportunities in the field of transportation asset management. Part of that effort included an analysis of university-based courses or programs refl...