Guide to Improving Capability for Systems Operations and Management

The purpose of this guide is to support transportation agencies in developing institutional arrangements suitable to the special demands of congestion management, now emerging as a new transportation agency priority. In particular, the strategy conventions appropriate to effective management of nonrecurring congestion (NRC) present new challenges for agency policy, organization and staffing, resources, and partnerships, as well as for basic agency culture and leadership. This guide focuses on these special institutional challenges in the form of a change management tool called the Institutional Capability Maturity Model. The guide is based on real-world experiences of transportation agencies, especially state departments of transportation, across a range of levels of application of the conventional strategies that focus on NRC, which is responsible, on average, for about 50% of delays in metropolitan areas. The research included a review of key features of the typical congestion management program activities and the technical and business processes that characterize the more effective programs. From this analysis, the institutional preconditions most supportive of the more effective programs were identified and incorporated into the guide.