**TRANSPORTATION OPERATIONS:**

**AN ORGANIZATIONAL AND**

**INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE**

**[JOSEPH M. SUSSMAN]{.smallcaps}**

**[JR East Professor]{.smallcaps}**

**[Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering]{.smallcaps}**

**[and Engineering Systems]{.smallcaps}**

**[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]{.smallcaps}**

**[Cambridge, Massachusetts]{.smallcaps}**

**[phone: 617.253-4430]{.smallcaps}**

**[fax: 617.258-5942]{.smallcaps}**

**[sussman@mit.edu]{.smallcaps}**

**[December 21, 2001]{.smallcaps}**

**[transportation operations:]{.underline}**

**[an organizational and institutional PERSPECTIVE]{.underline}**

**[Table of Contents]{.underline}**

Introduction 1

Driving Forces Toward an Operations Focus 3

The Case for Organizational and Institutional Change 6

Why Institutional Issues Arise 6

Some Organizational and Institutional Considerations in Transportation 9

What We Need to Be Successful in an Operations Mission 10

Focus Change 22

The Agenda 23

A Closing Word 24

Afterword 26

Appendix A: Literature Review 27

Appendix B: Companion Papers 37

Appendix C: Definitions 42

Appendix D: The Regional Perspective 44

References 48

**[transportation operations:]{.underline}**

**[an organizational and institutional PERSPECTIVE]{.underline}**

[Joseph M. Sussman]{.smallcaps}

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts

**[Introduction]{.underline}**

The essence of this paper is simple. Because of the need for customer
and market focus in providing surface transportation, and constraints on
building conventional infrastructure, the emphasis in modern surface
transportation systems must be on *operations*, enabled by new advanced
technologies. This operations focus, together with the new technologies,
in turn, requires change to transportation organizations dealing with
what to many is a new mission. We argue that operations are most
appropriately and effectively carried out at the regional scale, with
information-sharing and responsibility-sharing among these changed
organizations. This, together with changes in funding patterns
reflecting shifts from capital to operations expenditures, requires
institutional change in the relationships among these organizations.
Institutional changes at all levels of government \-- federal, state,
regional and local \-- and the private sector are a *required
precondition* for an operations, customer-oriented focus. These
relationships are captured in the following diagram.

**[Customer Focus \-- Constraints on Building]{.smallcaps}**

**[Surface Transportation as a Market Conventional
Infrastructure]{.smallcaps}**

**[Operations Focus Technology]{.smallcaps}**

**[Need for]{.smallcaps}**

**[Organizational Change \*]{.smallcaps}**

**[Funding Changes]{.smallcaps}**

**[(private-sector, federal,]{.smallcaps}**

**[state, local government)]{.smallcaps}**

> **[Information Sharing]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[and Responsibility Regional]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Institutional Sharing among Scale of]{.smallcaps}**

**[Change Autonomous Operations]{.smallcaps}**

**[Organizations]{.smallcaps}**

**[\* e.g., Human Resource Development, Reward and Incentive Structure
for Operations-Oriented Professionals]{.smallcaps}**

This paper focuses on the specifics of the organizational and
institutional change required by the emerging focus on transportation
operations, and some ideas about how that can be achieved in practice.

The overarching context for this paper is the re-authorization of
TEA-21, currently several years in the future. This omnibus
transportation bill has historically set the tone for transportation
investment, priorities and institutional change, as witness ISTEA in
1991 and TEA-21 in 1997. The intent of this paper is to identify and
discuss important ideas, relating to transportation operations and the
associated institutional and funding changes, so as to contribute to the
informed debate leading up to TEA-21 re-authorization. Certainly a key
aspect of this debate is the notion of congestion relief as a *federal*
responsibility. Orski notes that, while

> "There is much to be said against "federalizing" every new problem
> that confronts the nation. Recent experience, however, suggests that
> when travel delays reach an unacceptable level, Congress will not
> hesitate to intervene."[^1]

Operations as a mission relates to other important potential policy
initiatives within TEA-21 re-authorization. One is the concept of
*sustainable transportation* \-- developing a transportation system
which provides for the mobility needs of our people, while at the same
time, avoiding critical negative environmental impacts. Sustainable
transportation is defined as follows:

> *A sustainable transportation system is one that:*

-   *allows the basic access needs of individuals and societies to be
    met safely and in a manner consistent with human and ecosystem
    health, and with equity within and between generations.*

-   *is affordable, operates efficiently, offers choice of transport
    mode, and supports a vibrant economy.*

-   *limits emissions and waste within the planet's ability to absorb
    them, minimizes consumption of non-renewable resources, reuses and
    recycles its components, and minimizes the use of land and the
    production of noise.*[^2]

We suggest that the operations focus will contribute in substantial ways
to a sustainable transportation system.

This refocus of the transportation enterprise first toward emphasizing
operations and not simply a sole emphasis on conventional
infrastructure, and second toward a dual focus on mobility and
sustainable transportation and away from a sole focus on mobility, will
require substantial organizational and institutional changes. We
recognize at the outset that organizational and institutional change is
inherently difficult. Yet it is essential if the operations mission
before us is to be effectively addressed. The purpose of this paper is
to identify and describe important issues\
vis-à-vis this organizational and institutional change and suggest ways
to create it. We deal with the practicing professional and the
organizations within which s/he works, and the relationships among those
organizations. These organizational and institutional changes are
strategic in nature. To accomplish them we need to understand the
barriers to such change. This paper, building on the work of many
authors in the field, discusses what those barriers are and what can be
done to overcome them.

We begin by explaining why emphasis on transportation operations is
important and what drives that emphasis. The reader is invited to read
Appendix C for detailed definitions of various terms.

**[Driving Forces Toward an Operations Focus]{.underline}**[^3]

The emerging emphasis on transportation operations (as opposed to
capital investment in transportation facilities) is driven by several
important factors.

The transportation world is increasingly customer-driven. Following the
lead of the Internet society, our transportation systems must
increasingly take a customer perspective. The days of "one size fits
all" in provision of transportation service is fading. Surface
transportation must be viewed as a market with a heterogeneous customer
mix. An early example is HOT lanes, where customers willing to pay a
premium price for the use of highway infrastructure, do so and receive a
premium service. The customer orientation *requires* an operations
perspective.

> **[What Our Customers Need]{.underline}**
>
> The needs of traveler and freight customers is our overarching
> concern. From a strategic point of view, our customers are concerned
> with quality of life from an economic and environmental perspective,
> and with sustainable economic development. Concern with safety and
> security is also a primary customer need. Safety *is* an operating
> question, as identified by Olmstead[^4] when he relates the operation
> of variable message signs and traveler information systems as
> statistically linked to positive changes in safety performance on
> highways. Security, highlighted by September 11, 2001's tragic events,
> will doubtless be of increasing concern.
>
> From a tactical point of view, our customers are concerned with
> mobility and accessibility. Our customers want transportation choices
> and real-time information about those choices. Improved travel time
> and congestion relief have been identified by our customer base. More
> subtly, customers desire a minimization of *unpredictable* delays,
> emphasizing the "*reliability*" of the transportation enterprise.
> Customers may be willing to live with longer travel times; they find
> it more difficult to live with high variability of those travel times
> on a day-to-day basis. This concept has long been understood on the
> freight operations side. Research on service reliability in the rail
> industry goes back many decades.[^5] It is relatively recently,
> though, that performance measures for highway systems have begun to
> incorporate this day-to-day variability or unreliability in traffic
> operations.[^6]

The increased focus on operations also results from the limits of our
ability to provide conventional infrastructure, particularly in urban
areas. Here the social, political, economic and environmental forces
mitigate against our traditional "build our way out of it" approach to
providing transportation capacity. Fortunately, more effective
operations provide an alternative path.

The focus on operations is enabled by a set of new technologies \--
especially Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). These technologies,
which permit an electronic linkage between vehicle and infrastructure,
create an environment in which management of transportation operations
can take a major leap forward. These technologies also drive the need
for organizational and institutional change.[^7]

> **[ITS and Operations]{.underline}**
>
> While ITS provides important technologies to support transportation
> operations, ITS and operations are not identical concepts. There are
> operational issues which have little or no tie to the technologies of
> ITS. On the other hand, some components of ITS relate more to planning
> than to operations.
>
> Nonetheless, many of the organizational and institutional barriers
> that ITS faces are close to or identical to issues in the broader
> operations theatre. For example, the funding issues associated with
> ITS deployment are closely related to the difficulties public agencies
> have in obtaining support for continuing operations, as opposed to
> large-scale capital projects. So, in this paper, while recognizing
> that ITS and operations are not identical, we are still able to
> utilize the ITS experiences in building our understanding of the
> organizational and institutional barriers to the broader operations
> questions.

Operations can now be deployed at the scale of the metropolitan-based
region. There is an increasing consensus that the unit of economic
competition in our global economy is the metropolitan-based region and
not the nation. Strategists such as Michael Porter and Rosabeth Kanter
from the Harvard Business School emphasize this regional perspective in
their writings. Also, to be effective, environmental issues \-- e.g.,
clean air and water, land use \-- need to be addressed at the regional,
not simply the urban, scale. The ITS technologies noted above can allow
the transportation system to be managed at that same regional scale[^8].
So a further driving force is our ability to operate and manage
transportation systems at the same regional geographic scale at which
economic competition and environmental concerns take place.

This change to an operations mission at a regional scale requires new
approaches in *technology, systems* and *institutions*. In the author's
view, we have the technology in hand to create effective operations. Our
understanding of broad-based systems and their behavior is fast
approaching the level of knowledge that we require for complex system
operations. However, on the *organizational and institutional*
dimension, *major change is required* to work at a regional scale
because of the information- and responsibility-sharing inherent in this
scale. And these kinds of changes are difficult to achieve.

Further, *institutional change* will be required by the different
funding forms required by this operations focus. Operations requires
continuing, reliable year-to-year funding to be successful, unlike the
more front-loaded, one-time funding for capital projects. This
continuing funding has usually been more difficult to obtain for public
agencies and is often the first victim of cuts in difficult economic
times. To achieve operating success, an institutional structure which
assures continuing and reliable funding will be needed.

We will need change and leadership at various levels. We will need
regionally-scaled organizations to deal with transportation and related
issues at that geographic scale. We will need changes at the federal
level to create funding mechanisms for operations to these
regionally-scaled organizations that, in turn, need mechanisms whereby
they can effectively accept and disburse these funds. What is required
is federal leadership of the sort that existed in the early days of the
Federal Aid Highway Program and the development of the Interstate
program decades later.[^9] Leadership comparable to that provided by the
states throughout the 20^th^ century will also be needed to put together
the regional coalitions so critical to the operations focus.

We know that mission change and new technology require organizational
and institutional change. Witness what the mission change for the U.S.
military since the end of the "Cold War" has required organizationally
and institutionally. Witness what the advent of containerization
technology has meant for the structure of the global freight system.
These changes occur at a much slower pace than we see in technology or
systems, but to be successful in building an operations perspective, we
need to provide a professional and political environment that can
expedite the adoption of technology and systems needed for the
operations mission.[^10]

**[The Case for Organizational and Institutional Change]{.underline}**

If one accepts the need for an operations mission at a regional scale
around the United States, the need for organizational and institutional
change to deliver on that mission is compelling. As effective as our
state and local transportation organizations have been in delivering the
infrastructure-intensive surface transportation systems of the last
century, they are not designed, for the most part, to deliver on the
operations mission for the 21^st^ century. This section lays out the
arguments, first by explaining why institutional issues occur, and then
by focusing more explicitly on various organizational and institutional
considerations.

> **[Why Institutional Issues Arise]{.underline}**[^11]
>
> At this point, it is useful to do a "first-order" identification of
> some fundamental reasons institutional issues arise. Among those
> reasons are:

-   *Concern with autonomy*. Creating linkages among organizations and
    potentially creating new organizations, be they virtual or real, can
    lead to a loss of autonomy for the participating organizations.
    Those organizations may feel they are unable to discharge the
    responsibilities they were chartered to do if that autonomy loss
    occurs.

-   *Mission mismatch*. Different organizations such as state DOTs,
    MPOs, law enforcement agencies, and so forth, have different core
    missions. The missions may, in fact, be complementary, but the
    different mindsets these organizations bring to the table may cause
    institutional difficulties.

-   *Differences in resources*. Budgets may be different in various
    jurisdictions, leading to difficulty in all organizations being able
    to perform as equal partners.

-   *Funding sources*. Institutional issues will occur if funding
    sources are not consistent with the organization's mission. If
    traditional funding sources are directed to, say, capital spending
    and an additional mission focuses on operations, that disconnect
    generates an important institutional issue between funder and
    fundee.

-   *Ideology*. Noted earlier in this paper is the idea of considering
    surface transportation as a market with differentiated service and
    prices for customers with different needs and willingness to pay.
    This point has ideological content, particularly in an environment
    in which a traditionally public service \-- highway and public
    transportation \-- is being offered. Such a conceptual change to
    basic principles will certainly generate institutional concerns.

-   *Technology*. Different organizations take different technological
    approaches to meet their missions. This may lead to difficulties in
    making technical systems interface properly. Further, these
    organizations may have different staff capabilities in technical
    areas, making sharing responsibilities equitably difficult.

-   *Information*. The operations mission runs on information. There may
    be concern among various organizations about sharing that
    information, and in some cases there may be difficulties (or
    reluctance) for some organizations in delivering the necessary
    information to their partners. Integrating information may present a
    difficult technical problem.

> The City of Bangkok has long been plagued by major traffic problems,
> since the development of wealth in that country led to dramatic rates
> in growth of automobile ownership that far outstrip the ability of
> conventional infrastructure to serve it. In one attempt to deal with
> traffic issues, the Bangkok Traffic Department deployed SCAT, an
> Australian-developed traffic management system for its traffic signals
> in downtown Bangkok. SCAT attempts to globally optimize vehicular
> traffic by setting traffic signals, changing cycle times, red and
> green splits, and so forth.
>
> For political reasons, and presumably in response to
> emergency-preparedness requirements, individual police officers on
> various street corners were permitted, in times of "emergency", to
> take the signals at their intersection off central control and manage
> their intersection manually. What actually happened was that police
> officers, with some pride in the operation of "their" street corner,
> would remove the signals not only at times of emergency, but when
> congestion appeared to them to be "excessive" (which could be rather
> often). And, indeed, these police officers would often be successful
> in clearing their intersection; however, they would wreak havoc on the
> traffic system at-large. Central management of traffic could not cope
> with individual police officers taking their intersection into their
> own hands, however well-meaning that tactic might have been.
>
> The lessons:
>
> 1\. This is an institutional issue \-- in this case, between the
> Bangkok Police Department and the Bangkok Traffic Department \-- as
> they both worked with good intentions toward curbing the congestion
> beast in one of the world's biggest and most congested megacities.
>
> 2\. Suboptimization can be destructive of even the most sophisticated
> centrally-controlled systems. People can trump technology if not
> properly instructed.
>
> 3\. Operations requires *discipline*. While there may be circumstances
> in which a true emergency warrants putting an intersection on manual
> control, this is a rare event. Mere congestion is not such an event.
>
> Institutional issues arise, even in straightforward situations. In
> Appendix A, this author discusses a paper by James A. Powell[^12]. Mr.
> Powell's paper is quite interesting, albeit discouraging. He describes
> the need to coordinate among three major metropolitan areas \-- Gary,
> Indiana, Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin \-- and other
> transportation organizations on a corridor project. He identifies 41
> coordination issues, most of which struck this author as quite
> straightforward; yet the institutional difficulties in getting them
> resolved was extraordinary. The tenacity of these issues and of the
> organizations that contest them is often disproportionate to their
> importance, and seem rather to be organizational battles for
> prerogatives rather than concern for the common good.
>
> **[Some Organizational and Institutional Considerations in
> Transportation]{.underline}**[^13]
>
> In this section we highlight some important organizational and
> institutional considerations specifically germane to transportation.

-   The division of labor among federal, state and local transportation
    organizations needs to be re-examined and likely changed. In many
    metropolitan areas, the state DOT runs the freeways (sometimes with
    operations tools like main-line detection devices, ramp metering,
    etc., and sometimes not) and a state or suburban county runs the
    intersecting arterials. It would seem that, at the least, some
    proactive, positive system for coordinating these
    separately-operated systems needs to evolve, in the interests of
    both effectiveness and efficiency.

-   Also, the federal role needs study. With a single focus since 1916
    on capital investment in pursuit of national goals, such as
    interstate commerce and defense, an operations role and funding
    mechanisms for operations vis-à-vis state and local agencies needs
    to be defined. Steps to achieve this rebalance are underway. The
    idea of making transportation operations a core mission of the FHWA
    is moving forward, with the administration having "announced a
    restructuring and reorganization, the depth and breadth of which
    have not been undertaken in several decades"[^14]. Illustratively,
    *Public Roads*, an FHWA magazine, in its May/June 2001 issue, had
    three articles on operations-related issues.[^15]

-   In considering operations vs. construction, our public-sector
    transportation organizations have understandably developed a culture
    over many decades in which construction is at the professional
    pinnacle and operations takes the table scraps. From a historical
    viewpoint, going back to "getting the farmers out of the mud" and
    the extraordinary (and successful) investment in the Interstate over
    a 45-year period, the construction focus was appropriate. Now, it
    needs to change. To change, we need to attract the best
    transportation professionals to the operations arena. Incentives,
    visibility and opportunity for promotion will need to attend any
    institutional change that will give a higher profile to operations.

-   Our transportation organizations, particularly in the highway area,
    have focused on the provision of physical infrastructure and have
    developed a set of stakeholders, consultants and contractors who
    support the endeavor of new construction. With an operations
    perspective, these institutional relationships will need to change.
    With information about the transportation system being central to
    real-time operations and control of that system, the role of
    private-sector independent service providers is already emerging.
    The electronic linkage between vehicle and infrastructure requires
    cooperation between the public and private sector in the provision
    of high technology so that investments in infrastructure and in
    in-vehicle equipment will be compatible. The role of the public
    sector as decisionmaker and the private sector as the doer of their
    bidding is changing. Private-sector for-profit opportunities and
    public/private partnerships will need to be part of our
    transportation institutional structures and operations mission.

-   Our transportation agencies tend to be primarily modally-oriented.
    For example, the U. S. DOT has very strong modal administrations
    (FHWA, FAA, FTA, etc.) and a significantly more modestly-scaled
    Office of Intermodalism. However, transportation services for both
    travelers and freight, and the operations that support these
    services, are increasingly necessarily intermodal to provide
    high-quality service at a reasonable price. To accommodate this, our
    transportation agencies must reflect this intermodal perspective,
    and important changes within these organizations, as well as in the
    relationships among them, will be required.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   We need to develop regionally-scaled transportation operating
    organizations, which will require previously unlinked organizations
    working together, sharing responsibilities and data. Further, these
    organizations need to be collectively capable of receiving and
    effectively dispersing funds for operations.[^16]

> This suggests a natural question: in this regional context, what then
> is the role for the *metropolitan planning organizations* with
> regionally-scaled responsibilities? Can we turn to them for the region
> operations mission? As Steve Lockwood notes, "...most MPOs have no
> tradition of involvement in operations-oriented projects..." and after
> all, these organizations were established as planning organizations.
> Can they transcend a TIP perspective?
>
> The answer is some can and some cannot. The Metropolitan
> Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area can lay claim
> to being an operating organization. Some other MPOs are unlikely to be
> able to transition. If that transition is to occur, organizational
> *incentives* for change and the *resources* to perform are clear
> pre-conditions.

**[What We Need to Be Successful in an Operations Mission]{.underline}**

Operations needs to be ***3F/3I/3R***.

-   **[F]{.underline}UNDED: First and fundamentally, of vital importance
    is *continuing reliable financial support for operations*.**

> *Funding for Operations:* The following figure contrasts the costs and
> benefits over time for infrastructure and operations.
>
> Organization Costs User Benefits
>
> over Time over Time
>
> Costs Benefits
>
> Infrastructure planned
>
> Projects maintenance
>
> Time Time
>
> Costs Benefits
>
> Operations
>
> Initiatives
>
> Time Time
>
> Conventional infrastructure projects have front-loaded costs for
> construction; then maintenance costs occur cyclically. Benefits accrue
> to users, but then may deteriorate between maintenance cycles and
> during maintenance procedures. The "coalition" for a conventional
> infrastructure project need be put together but once. A continuing
> stream of funds is not necessary, except for maintenance.
>
> Operations funding is of a different character. Some up-front costs
> may be needed \-- for example, some initial capital investment for ITS
> \-- then there are year-to-year operations costs associated with
> transportation operations center staffing and the like. We suggest
> here that benefits associated with such initiatives may grow over
> time, in the sense that an operations focus allows modification to
> network processes as conditions change, while conventional
> infrastructure systems are unable to respond flexibly.
>
> However, essential to this model is a continued flow of funds from
> year to year for operations. It is all too easy, as we have learned
> over the years, from deferred maintenance of conventional
> infrastructure, for operations funds to be cut in time of financial
> difficulty. It is quite difficult to extract value from an
> already-built piece of infrastructure and, conversely, quite simple to
> make a "temporary" cut in operations. If that occurs, the
> operations-based transportation services will quickly atrophy and
> customer service will deteriorate.
>
> Boyden, et al.,[^17] emphasize the need for a change in U.S. federal
> funding policy for operations. They note that we must do more than
> simply change organizations to deal with congestion on a regional
> geographic scale; we also need a change in the federal government, and
> specifically their funding mechanisms for highway operations. The
> authors note that the federal government does fund operations in
> transit, but in highways the funding mechanisms have been directed,
> for the most part, toward construction and maintenance.

-   **[F]{.underline}LEXIBLE: Operations are different every day. We
    need organizations that can respond flexibly to the many, diverse
    issues that arise. O*perations* *planning* is the way this
    flexibility is achieved.**

> There are substantial differences between transportation planning and
> transportation operations. Most critically, they differ in time frame.
> Operations are ongoing; every day, operations begin anew. Planning
> deals with the strategic shaping of the transportation system. The
> product of planning is documents, while the product of operations is
> successful performance for another day's traffic.
>
> However, within the planning framework, we should make an additional
> distinction between *strategic planning* and *operations planning*.
> Strategic planning deals with the development of plans that will guide
> the deployment of the transportation system over long periods of time,
> perhaps decades. Operations planning is planning for actually
> operating the transportation system. Operations planning guides the
> day-to-day operation of the transportation network.
>
> On June 26, 2001, *The Advocate* of Stamford, CT, printed a news story
> headlined, "Trapped Passengers Blast Metro-North", filled with
> complaints from passengers trapped in a Metro-North train for more
> than three hours. These passengers said the railway needed to "improve
> the way it responds to lengthy service delays".
>
> "'It was like this had never happened before and there wasn't even a
> plan,' said Wilton resident John Polich, who became stranded when the
> 10:53 a.m. train from Stamford to Grand Central Station snagged a wire
> about a mile east of Harrison, New York. 'The fact that they were
> behaving like this had never happened before was kind of shocking.'"
>
> The article goes on to discuss the inability of the railroad to
> indicate how long the delay would last. Some crowd control problems
> arose.
>
> Problems will happen with any complex transportation system, but
> *operations* *planning* \-- designing mechanisms for responding
> quickly and effectively when those problems occur \-- is fundamental.
> Mr. Polich's comment that "there wasn't even a plan", if correct, is a
> shortcoming of Metro-North. Operations means having contingency plans
> when things go wrong, and being able to respond in real-time with
> information and procedures to return to normal operations.
>
> The parallel between transportation and manufacturing can be helpful
> to us in understanding how the operations mission changes
> organizational needs. Many authors, including seminally Arnoldo Hax
> and Harlan Meal[^18], have written about the hierarchy of decisions in
> production planning, from design at a strategic level, to planning at
> a tactical level, and to operating decisions such as scheduling and
> dispatch. This notion of hierarchical production planning can be
> applied to the transportation field as well, where we have a
> comparable hierarchy of strategic network planning, tactical planning
> for operations, and transportation operations themselves.
>
> **[TRANSPORTATION]{.underline} [MANUFACTURING]{.underline}**
>
> **[Strategic Planning Product Design]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Operations Production]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Planning Planning]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Operations Operations]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[(e.g., ETC, (e.g., Schedules,]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Incident Management) Dispatch)]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[[PLANNING VS. OPERATIONS]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

-   **[F]{.underline}OCUSED: Discipline and focus is the required
    organization ethos for operations. This is a part of the 24/7
    operations mindset.**

> *Operations Are Different:* There are critical differences between
> operations planning and the act of *operations* itself. Organizations
> that have focused on strategic planning and operations planning may
> well have to undergo substantial organizational change to permit them
> to be effective *operators* of the transportation system. Operations
> are a fundamentally different set of activities and require a
> different organizational approach when compared with planning,
> construction or maintenance.
>
> *The Operations Mindset:* A transportation system is a Complex,
> Large-Scale, Integrated, Open System \-- a CLIOS. Operating it on a
> day-to-day basis is a difficult and complex undertaking. The system is
> subject to considerable uncertainty (e.g., weather), changes in
> demand, and variability in supply (e.g., because of road maintenance).
> Actions that one may take to ameliorate congestion in real-time may
> have counterproductive impacts on other parts of the system.
>
> CLIOS (Complex, Large-Scale, Integrated, Open Systems) is defined as
> follows[^19]:
>
> A system is *complex* when it is composed of a group of related units
> (subsystems), for which the degree and nature of the relationships is
> imperfectly known. Its overall behavior is difficult to predict, even
> when subsystem behavior is readily predictable. Further, the
> time-scales of various subsystems may be very different (as we can see
> in transportation \-- land-use changes, for example, vs. operating
> decisions).
>
> CLIOS have impacts that are *large* in magnitude, and often
> *long-lived* and of *large-scale* geographical extent.
>
> Subsystems within CLIOS are *integrated*, closely coupled through
> feedback loops.
>
> By "*open"* we mean that CLIOS explicitly include social, political
> and economic aspects.
>
> Often CLIOS are counterintuitive in their behavior. Often the
> performance measures for CLIOS are difficult to define and, perhaps,
> even difficult to agree about, depending upon your viewpoint. In CLIOS
> there is often human agency involved.
>
> Importantly, there is a *different mindset* associated with operations
> than the mindset associated with various planning functions. Since the
> latter is what many transportation organizations have traditionally
> done, we need to understand that distinction.
>
> Simply put, the operations mindset is 24/7. It never stops. Although
> some difficulties are predictable (e.g., very heavy traffic the
> Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving), other events are not, and we
> must always be ready.
>
> The June 24, 2001 edition of *The New York Times*, in an article
> headed by "Repairs to Bridge on I-80 Will Mean Long Traffic Delays",
> discussed the damage to a small bridge on Interstate 80 caused by a
> major crash involving a gasoline tanker, and a subsequent fire. This
> dramatic event on a major roadway will doubtless have important and
> negative impacts on traffic in the New York Metropolitan area for
> weeks, if not months, to come. It is a critical operations issue.
>
> Yet all such problems are not of this major variety. In that same
> edition of *The New York Times*, an article on the opposite page was
> headed, "You Can't Get There from Here; Summer Brings Lots More Road
> Work". This article talked about much less dramatic, but nonetheless
> disruptive, *planned* operations in the New York Metropolitan area. A
> variety of streets are closed, as workers "dig, repair and repave".
> Maneuvering around these locally affected areas can be frustrating and
> time-consuming.
>
> Both these situations require an operations perspective, even though
> they differ in magnitude and nature. The first is concerned with an
> accident with damage to one structure on a major transportation link,
> Interstate 80, while the other refers to a great number of small,
> *planned* disruptions due to the need to repair street infrastructure.
> While different, they both require coordination among many
> organizations. This suggests the development of a plan for
> counteracting disruptions due to those link closures and the
> development of information that will allow effective operational
> planning to take place. So, for dramatic or mundane situations, we
> need an effective operations response and organizations that *can*
> respond.
>
> The operations mindset involves what Matthew Edelman, Director of
> TRANSCOM, calls "blue collar regionalism", involving relationships
> between transportation operating organizations and police, fire,
> emergency vehicle organizations, and so forth. As Michael Ascher, head
> of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, has said, "You are only
> as good as your last rush hour." Operations are every day. They happen
> in real time. They require decisive action and discipline to make the
> difficult operating problems routine.
>
> Consider the difference between a dermatologist and an emergency room
> physician. The dermatologist's patients "don't die, don't get better
> and never call in the middle of the night"[^20]. The emergency room
> physician is 24/7, with life on the line every day. The professional
> mindsets of these two specialists are clearly fundamentally different.

-   **[I]{.underline}NTEGRATED: An integrated organizational response is
    required to deal with operations in complex, geographically-diffuse
    transportation networks.**

> The interconnections \-- physical, informational and political \-- in
> our regionally-scaled transportation enterprise determine their
> performance. Feedback dominates the mechanisms by which the
> transportation system creates value for customers. This suggests that
> operations for the transportation systems needs to be similarly
> integrated. This is a challenge. Organizations that have previously
> operated independently will now have to consider themselves as part of
> an integrated team, and perhaps additional feedback loops will need to
> be put in place. While difficult, this integration is a precondition
> for effective system performance.

-   **[I]{.underline}NTERMODAL: Operations should be based on an
    intermodal concept. Our traveler and freight customers often view
    our services as intermodal, so we need to deal with transportation
    operations on this basis as well.**

> For many years on the freight side, and more recently on the passenger
> side, the idea of creating superior customer service through effective
> intermodal operations has gained currency. Each mode has its
> distinctive advantages and disadvantages. The challenge of
> transportation operators is to put those modes together in such a way
> that advantages are maximized and disadvantages are minimized for each
> mode. An integrated trip chain is constructed. To achieve this, our
> operations focus must include an explicitly intermodal perspective.
>
> The Achilles heel of intermodalism has always been that the
> "hand-offs" between the modes are less than effective, thereby
> dissipating the inherent advantages of each mode. But new technologies
> \-- and especially information and communications technologies \--
> allow these "hand-off" questions to be effectively addressed. The next
> section gives us our "third I" \-- [I]{.underline}nformation \-- as a
> critical component of the operations focus.

-   **[I]{.underline}NFORMATION- AND CUSTOMER-BASED: New technology has
    put into our hands the ability to collect, process and disseminate
    information to our *customers* and to the *partner agencies*
    concerned with operating the transportation network.**

> This information provides an important opportunity to measure our
> performance using *customer-oriented metrics* and to greatly improve
> the quality of the service we provide.
>
> *Customer-Oriented Performance and Metrics:* Our customers observe
> performance through the lens of operations.
>
> **[Infrastructure]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Building, Preservation]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[and Maintenance]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Operations]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Performance]{.smallcaps}**
>
> Planning and constructing the transportation network are *not*
> performance as seen by our customers. A Transportation Improvement
> Program (TIP) is a pre-condition to performance, but is not
> performance in and of itself. Yet many transportation organizations
> are geared to infrastructure planning and construction productivity
> metrics for measuring success. Changing that mindset requires
> organizational change to evolve to customer-based performance metrics,
> derived directly from the operations theatre.
>
> Thinking through what specific performance metrics should be used is
> critical. It is well-known that what gets measured gets emphasized by
> the people within the organization and that, further, what does not
> get measured tends not to be worked on, *even if it is important*.
>
> Some important characteristics of performance metrics are as follows:

-   performance metrics should be designed such that managers can affect
    them. The manager needs to know *how* to change performance on that
    dimension.

-   performance metrics should matter to the customer of the system, and
    further, should be something the manager is convinced matters to the
    customer.

-   performance metrics should be easy and practical to measure.

> Simply installing these performance metrics, no matter how cleverly
> drafted, will not be sufficient unless managers understand why these
> performance metrics are being implemented. Of course, through these
> performance metrics we are trying to induce managers to operate more
> effectively. In practice, it may be necessary to educate managers on
> how they, in an operational sense, can best respond. All the
> incentives in the world will not matter if we do not provide managers
> with some insight into how best to achieve better performance as
> measured by these metrics.
>
> The new technologies available to us through ITS can be a great help
> in customer-oriented performance measurement. At the same time, it is
> important to *ask the customers* how they think the system is
> performing on various dimensions from time to time, and to ask them
> how *they* would measure performance from their perspective. Periodic
> surveys and focus groups are mechanisms for getting at the customer
> viewpoint.

-   **[R]{.underline}EGIONAL: Operations need to be conducted at a
    regional scale, preferably using a regionally-scaled platform to
    support technical systems.**

> Valerie Briggs describes how regionally-scaled organizations "note
> improvements in transportation emergency management and greater
> efficiency in operation", suggesting the criticality of that scale for
> operations management.[^21] For further regional perspectives, the
> reader is invited to read Appendix D.
>
> *A Typology of Regional Operating Institutional Structure:*[^22] Here
> we present a typology of possible regional institutional structures.
> There are a variety of forms that regional operating institutional
> structures can take. We suggest here that there are four primary axes
> along which such structures may be characterized, as shown in the
> following figure.
>
> **[Private]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Individual
> \^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Modal \^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ \^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ \^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~ Integrated \^\^\^\^\^\^\^]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ Intermodal \^\^ Public]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ Centralized
> Distributed]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ Control]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[\~\~]{.smallcaps}**
>
> **[Advisory]{.smallcaps}**
>
> Any institutional structure can be represented on these four
> dimensions. First, it can be an integrated intermodal structure,
> including, for example, highway, public transportation, rail, and so
> forth. The antithesis of such a fully integrated structure are
> individual modal organizations with very loose or perhaps non-existent
> institutional connections. Of course, this is a continuum. Many
> institutional structures do not exist at either extreme, but rather
> somewhere between them.
>
> The same continuum idea is applied to the other three dimensions. The
> structure can be a highly-centralized structure or it can be
> distributed, both physically and logically. The structure can be
> composed only of public agencies at one extreme, or only of private
> firms on the other, with a likely configuration in modern
> transportation systems being public-private partnerships. Finally, the
> structure can be based upon control of the transportation system (in
> the sense of command and control, as the military uses the term) or it
> can be simply advisory. In the latter case, the regional institutional
> structure provides advice to individual organizations within it, but
> they need not follow it.
>
> Any institutional structure can be characterized by its position on
> the four axes. The institutional issues that we must deal with as well
> as issues within individual organizations are a function of the
> characteristics of a particular structure.
>
> For example, one could characterize the New York Metropolitan area's
> TRANSCOM as

-   Public

-   Distributed (although virtually centralized)

-   Advisory

-   Modal (for the most part)

> Houston's TranStar would be characterized in this typology as

-   Public

-   Centralized

-   Control (for the most part)

-   Intermodal

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   **[R]{.underline}EAL-TIME: Operating situations are ongoing, dynamic
    and driven by random factors. Real-time is the temporal scale on
    which operating organizations need to respond.**

> Professional activity in transportation has long focused on strategic
> planning \-- based on the time-scale of years or even decades \-- and
> tactical planning \-- recognizing that the Fourth of July fireworks or
> the ballgame may require special treatment of traffic on the next day.
> But now our operations focus requires a real-time perspective as our
> response to changing conditions must be very fast if congestion and
> safety and security hazards are to be ameliorated or avoided.
> Fortunately the technology exists, and more and more is in place to
> allow us to do real-time operations, but a change in professional
> training and in organizational and institutional perspective will be
> necessary for the real-time vision to be achieved.

-   **[R]{.underline}OUTINE: While individual stresses on the operating
    environment cannot be predicted, we can plan for generic kinds of
    service interruptions and treat them in a routine and decisive
    manner.**

> We should minimize ad hoc-ism in our response to operating situations.
> Operations require planning. Knowing the chains of command and having
> contingency plans for "standard" situations is fundamental to
> transportation operations. If *performance* is to be achieved, the
> operations mindset, supported by effective *operations planning*, is a
> requirement.
>
> The \$14 billion Central Artery/Tunnel project in Boston (the "Big
> Dig") is a major traffic challenge as its decade-long construction
> period proceeds. Keeping Boston running given the massive disruptions
> caused by the construction is a difficult undertaking.
>
> For five years the author chaired the "Traffic Mitigation" Committee
> of the Artery Business Committee, intended to be a watchdog on the Big
> Dig to minimize the effect of the construction process on traffic.
>
> Both the Central Artery/Tunnel project and the Boston Traffic
> Department have traffic operations centers (TOCs) intended to monitor
> traffic flows and to take appropriate action in the case of service
> interruptions due to incidents. Perhaps someday these will be
> coordinated, but currently they operate independently.
>
> One day several years ago, a contractor working on a section of the
> Artery south of Boston was slow in getting the traffic barriers taken
> down after the night shift and it adversely affected northbound flows
> into the city during the morning rush hour period. Huge back-ups and
> delays were created.
>
> As it happened, the day following this event, the Traffic Mitigation
> Committee met. The chief of the Central Artery/Tunnel traffic
> operations center and the chief of the Boston Traffic Department's
> traffic operations center both served on the committee. Both arrived
> at the meeting in high spirits. They proceeded to tell the story of
> how, through their joint efforts, they had allowed the city to recover
> from this major traffic disruption during rush hour. Without repeating
> the story in great detail, it involved these two senior officials
> running from site to site, speaking by cell phone in order to properly
> focus surveillance cameras to ascertain what was going on, getting
> senior police officials out of bed early in the morning to achieve a
> modicum of traffic control, and so on. These two senior officials were
> jubilant about the success they had achieved in limiting the delays
> caused by the bottleneck. But in thinking about traffic *operations*,
> to me, it represented a failure.
>
> We must aspire to *routine* traffic operations. Disruptions should not
> require the first-in-commands of two TOCs to coordinate in an ad hoc
> fashion. The chain of command needs to be impeccably clear. People
> should know what to do. In short, *a routine disruption should be
> handled in a routine way*. This is achieved through *operations
> planning*. We should not need Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, guns
> (or cell phones) blazing, to rectify the situation.
>
> While this ad hoc collaboration between the Boston Traffic Department
> and Big Dig officials is somewhat understandable and likely temporary
> (given the Big Dig disruption), this is *not* a model for what we
> should aspire to in agencies charged with traffic operations.

**[Focus Change]{.underline}**

But 3F/3I/3R does *not* say it all \-- we need a fundamental change in
focus to achieve our goals.

-   **THE SYSTEMS APPROACH:** Operations is a *systems engineering
    concept* (as noted by Lockwood[^23]). Our transportation
    organizations have not built strengths in this discipline.
    Initiatives by universities to provide this systems focus will be
    helpful (e.g., the focus on the systems approach in professional
    master's programs in transportation) but are long-term by their
    nature.[^24] Continuing education of current transportation
    professionals is an important part of the focus change advocated
    here.

-   **ACCOUNTABILITY:** Operating organizations must be *accountable*
    for their performance and need to self-assess to assure that
    performance. Organizational transparency is an important element of
    focus change.

-   **INCENTIVES:** Organizational inertia and conservatism is a fact of
    life and it is sad but true that it is difficult to change the
    direction and mission of an organization simply because "it's the
    right thing to do". *Incentives* to lubricate change will be needed.
    Often, but not always, these incentives are financial in nature.
    *Federal financial incentives* are a vital part of focus change.

-   **LEADERSHIP:** Visionary *leadership*, of the kind that gave us the
    organizations that produced the Interstate, is a key element of
    focus change \-- and the success from earlier missions ironically
    makes the job of those change leaders all the more difficult.

**[The Agenda]{.underline}**[^25]

The agenda for organizational and institutional change must be a
strategic one, given the inherently slow pace of this change.
Nonetheless, it is important that we embark on the course of evolving
our transportation organizations and the relationships among them to
create the *required* focus on operations. This agenda for change occurs
at three levels: 1) the individual transportation professional; 2) the
transportation organization; and 3) connections among these
organizations and new organizations \-- institutional change.

> 1\. **Professional Capacity Building.** We need to be explicitly
> concerned with the development of a new cadre of transportation
> professionals, focused on operations. These "New Transportation
> Professionals"[^26], skilled in the technology and systems aspects of
> the transportation field, must have a sense of the institutional
> change required to achieve an operations focus in transportation
> organizations.
>
> 2\. **Internal Changes to Transportation Organizations.** The
> magnitude of necessary change will vary among our current
> organizations. Some transportation agencies, at the state level
> especially, have had an historical focus on intercity issues, i.e.,
> stitching the state and its neighbors together and leaving the issues
> within its metropolitan areas to others. Other agencies have
> emphasized building of facilities, with a corresponding de-emphasis on
> their operation. And still others have conducted transportation
> operations for years \-- the latter largely at the metropolitan scale.
> The change required for a core operations mission in each of these
> kinds of organizations will be different in terms of time and
> resources needed, the challenge to leadership, and staff education and
> re-training needs. A fundamental mindset change is required. These
> changes will require strong leadership within these organizations,
> reflecting a substantial mission shift and a strong vision for the
> future of the role of that organization within the overall
> transportation system, as well as within our broader
> socio-economic-political system.
>
> 3\. **Institutional Change.** While transportation organizations need
> to change their focus, with all the attendant difficulties in doing
> so, an even more difficult problem is redefining the relationships
> among the transportation organizations \-- i.e., institutional change.
> Here, issues of control, budget, etc., rear their heads, but if we are
> to be truly effective in instilling an operations perspective, it is
> necessary that we create the interorganizational structures that can
> most effectively operate the transportation system, especially given
> our need to provide transportation services at a regional scale. These
> regional *partnerships* *are* new institutions and the change process
> is long-term.
>
> Regional approaches have worked in some situations with respect to
> land use planning, infrastructure planning and even operations. We
> should learn from these successes. (See Appendix D.)
>
> Change at the federal level will be necessary as well, as new funding
> mechanisms for operations are developed to provide financial support
> for the regional operations mission. These operating funds must be
> protected from cuts during budget downturns. This will require a new
> perspective on the part of FHWA and a changed perspective in the
> Congress on federal support for surface transportation; the latter
> should be embodied in the re-authorization of TEA-21. Federal
> leadership in creating incentives for regionally-scaled organizations
> to coalesce is an important step.

**[A Closing Word]{.underline}**[^27]

A focus on transportation operations is critical to the future of
transportation. With limits on providing conventional infrastructure, an
operations perspective that utilizes that existing infrastructure as
effectively as possible is critical. Serendipitously, the technologies
to allow us to do this, namely ITS, are now widely available. But the
organizations that can take that operations perspective are, for the
most part, still a gleam in our collective eye.

This operations perspective is required if transportation in the 21^st^
century is to be customer-oriented, using performance metrics of
relevance to travelers and shippers. This includes providing premium
services to particular customers who are willing to pay a premium price
for those services. The organizational and institutional implications of
this change to a customer perspective are profound.

Moving toward the organizational and institutional change that will be
needed is a long-term and difficult venture. It will require strong
leadership and a vision for the future, in terms of how organizations
are internally structured, how they relate institutionally to other
organizations, and how they are funded. It will require substantial
education and professional capacity building at various levels, and it
will require viewing transportation at a regional scale. Indeed, Dr.
Christine Johnson has suggested we need nothing less then a 3-C program
for operations.

The changes we advocate are at three levels. Change at the individual
level, where professional capacity building to develop "new
transportation professionals" for our new organizations, will be
essential. Our organizations must change internally to

give greater emphasis to operations. Change needs to occur through new
institutional connections to other organizations.

We call for a fundamental rethinking of our transportation organizations
for the future \-- at all levels of government and including the private
sector \-- asking them to participate in regionally-scaled
transportation *operations*, utilizing new kinds of public-public and
public-private partnerships and funding structures to create intermodal
services for travelers and freight. This is no small thing to
accomplish. Facilitating that kind of change through education and
through strong and visionary leadership is central to the future success
of the transportation field.

**[Afterword]{.underline}**

Since the first draft of this paper was written in July 2001, the world
has surely changed in the wake of the tragic events of September 11,
2001. In the context of transportation, the urgency of that event
emphasizes even more the need for an operations focus. The triplet of
*security*, *reliability* and *safety*, which came out of the National
Operations Summit in October 2001, *requires* an operations focus.
Preparedness and system redundancy to provide secure, reliable and safe
travel at a regional scale is all the more important.

Further, we have seen a continuing trend towards regional operations.
Just one example is the article on AZTech in the *Newsletter of the ITS
Cooperative Deployment Network*, entitled "AZTech Morphs into a Regional
Operating Entity". [^28] AZTech and others are showing the way in
dealing effectively with the institutional and cultural requirements of
operating transportation systems at a regional scale: recognizing the
needs of customers, providing capacity without relying only on the
building of conventional infrastructure, and introduction of new
technologies. These regional organizations do not accept the status quo,
as new partnerships are formed and institutional barriers are overcome.
Leadership organizations are providing strong and positive examples of
how to change our focus to transportation operations throughout the
entire country. As noted above, education and strong and visionary
leadership is critical if transportation is to continue to make its
contributions to society in this suddenly more uncertain world. But
there is ample evidence that our leadership is up to the task, and we
are confident the barriers outlined in this document can be overcome
through perseverance and a new vision for transportation operations.

**[[Appendix A]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

**[[Literature Review]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

The recent literature on institutional issues related to operations
provides some useful insights.

*Stephen Lockwood* is a long-time and keen observer of the institutional
scene in the transportation world. Some of his work over the last
several years is particularly germane to the questions this paper
focuses on.

Lockwood in 1998 did an extensive report for AASHTO about state DOTs in
the U.S.[^29] In that report he notes the relatively slow rate of change
of those state DOTs.

"In the United States, changes in the roles, organization, and processes
of surface transportation institutions appear to be less dramatic (than
in other countries). State departments of transportation (DOTs) are the
dominant owners/operators of the principal surface transportation
infrastructure. [Their institutional context has been characterized by a
long period of stability and a high degree of standardization, supported
by a successful national program oriented to roadway system development
and preservation have characterized their institutional
context.]{.underline}"

Lockwood further notes the challenge to changing these stable
organizations. He suggests that among the toughest challenges are

"  Defining performance in customer-relevant fashion;

-   Installing organizational incentives for change;

-   Maintaining staff capability; and

-   Institutionalizing mechanisms for continuous change."

He closes this report optimistically, suggesting that there is "the
emergence of new models of organization, process, and relationships that
reflect the special technical and institutional setting of surface
transportation." Lockwood says that some of the key features in a
changed state DOT would include:

"  Emphasis on real time operations of upper level systems using the
best available ITS technology for reliability, safety, and security in
conjunction with new multi-jurisdictional operating entities \--
authorities or private corporations; ...

> .
>
> .
>
> .

-   Increased utilization of market mechanisms responding to customer
    willingness to pay (partnerships, tolls, commercialization) together
    with contemporary financial technology such as infrastructure
    banking, revolving funds and debt financing accessing nationally
    securitized capital markets;

-   Incorporation of the best available technology in process activities
    (information systems), product development (material and process),
    and real time operation (intelligent systems); ..."

In a subsequent paper, Lockwood talks about ITS deployment[^30]. Now, as
noted earlier, while ITS is only a subset of an operations perspective,
we argue much of what he says about issues in deploying ITS could be
generalized to the operations context. He notes that an ITS program
would be "substantially at odds with the current conventions of state
and local transportation institutional arrangements with their major
capital-improvement focus and related institutional arrangements and
program structure". Lockwood calls for "a systems-engineering
initiative, multistakeholder coordination and commitment to real-time
operations" and suggests that such a change "cannot easily be
accommodated within the institutional status quo". He goes on to discuss
the challenges facing ITS and, by this author's inference, all of
operations.

"These institutional challenges facing ITS can be described in terms of
six 'preconditions' or factors that should be present, including:

> 1\. An understanding of ITS concepts, elements and strategies, and the
> rationale for institutional change;
>
> 2\. An authorizing environment formalizing the mission and providing
> the leadership, decision-making support and organizational structure;
>
> 3\. New roles and relationships among various stakeholder agencies and
> entities necessary for effective ITS deployment and operations.
>
> 4\. A planning and programming process adjusted to accommodate
> ITS-related strategies and investments competing for available
> resources;
>
> 5\. Technology, staff and financial resources sufficient to support
> the deployment and operations of an ITS program; and
>
> 6\. New public-private relationships as well as new private-sector
> business models responding to the specific potential of ITS.

There is no single institutional model through which these institutional
challenges can be met. But there is no doubt that change is involved \--
change that must begin with a vision and education and end in
articulated, supportable programs."

There is much to be learned from reading Lockwood's work that is germane
to this study of institutions and operations. He recognizes that
substantial organizational as well as institutional change will need to
take place for operations to be integrated into the mission of
transportation organizations; that a systems engineering approach is
fundamental to such a change; that there is no one right answer to what
kinds of changes should be implemented; and financial resources will be
essential to achieving any of these goals.

Lockwood has also written an extended chapter in the *Intelligent
Transportation Primer*[^31], which gives a great deal of detail about
his perspectives on ITS and institutional change. For in-depth treatment
of the issues noted above, this author suggests a careful reading of
that chapter.

*Gifford and Stalebrink*[^32] contribute to the transportation
institutional literature by studying voluntary consortia and the concept
of "learning organizations" considering the E-Z Pass consortia as an
example.

*Gifford, et al.*[^33], consider the issues that arise in a
regionally-scaled traffic signal preemption and priority system in the
Washington, DC, region. Preemption deals with allowing emergency
vehicles and public transportation vehicles to preempt traffic signals,
while priority allows for signal changes for specific vehicles (e.g., a
bus which is behind schedule).

The authors trace the differences between the deployment in Virginia and
Maryland, which have different institutional structures, and identify
various system requirements needed to overcome institutional barriers to
a deployment of these kinds of systems on a regional scale. These
systems requirements include accountability (concern for unwarranted use
by emergency personnel), interoperability (assurance that the systems
can operate across jurisdictional boundaries), flexible and adjustable
("significant leeway in terms of its installation, its operations and
the conditions for granting preemption"), ease of maintenance (concern
that the system be "easily accessible and easily and inexpensively
repaired or replaced"), clear control of operations and maintenance
(simple coordination activities and responsibilities among the various
traffic, transit and emergency agencies was viewed as critical).
Further, "interference with the traffic community's ability to maintain
and operate signals or require lengthy coordination between agencies for
routine maintenance" was anathema. Clearly the cooperating organizations
wanted coordination among them to be as simple as possible.

Political issues arose in the deployment of this system. For example,
some jurisdictions were concerned about granting priority to
*underutilized* buses, causing problems with the general traffic flow. A
critical issue was the interference of these preemption and priority
systems with normal traffic light coordination.

Another useful paper was authored by *Wendell C. Lawther*[^34]. Lawther
emphasizes that there are many facets of operations, each of which may
create different operating and institutional questions. He lists traffic
light coordination, preemption/priority at traffic lights, freeway
management, incident management, transit management, electronic toll
collection, electronic fare payment, and regional multimodal traveler
information, as components of an operating system.

Each of these operating tasks has different institutional issues
associated with it. For example, preemption/priority of traffic lights,
described above in the Gifford, et al., paper, will have different
concerns associated with it as compared with electronic toll collection,
where allocation of funds collected may be an issue .

Lawther emphasizes the need for *continuing funding for operations*,
noting that these funds are quite different than capital funds. It is
important to be successful in obtaining funds year-in and year-out to
allow operations and maintenance to continue effectively, unlike capital
funds, for which you need to develop a successful funding coalition only
once.

Lawther also includes a useful and comprehensive discussion, along with
good definitions, of various kinds of public-private partnerships.

Another paper of interest is by *James L. Powell*[^35]. He examines
variable message sign, highway advisory radio operations in the
Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee corridor and considers the institutional
questions concerned with deploying such a system in a three-state region
with two major metropolitan areas. This system involved over 100
variable message signs and 12 separate highway advisory radio systems.
The various stakeholders identified no less than *41* coordination
issues. The paper goes on to describe those issues and how they were
finally adjudicated among the stakeholders (in most cases).

In some ways Mr. Powell's paper is rather discouraging with respect to
institutional issues. The 41 coordination issues seemed to this author
to be mostly rather straightforward, dealing with uncomplicated
technologies \-- variable message signs and highway advisory radios. Yet
the amount of coordination that was required, and the difficulty in
reaching consensus was often daunting. This author was left with the
feeling that if we have such difficulty in dealing with these seemingly
straightforward issues, what hope is there for overcoming the deployment
of more complex operations technology requiring much more
autonomy-sharing and coordination?

While the shift to an operations mission and the deployment of ITS
technologies implies important organizational and institutional change,
we should recognize this is not the first time that the transportation
field has faced such dynamism. A recent article by *Richard F.
Weingroff*[^36] traces the development of the American Association of
State Highway Officials (AASHO) beginning in 1914 (now the American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)) and
the development of the Federal Aid Highway Program several years later.
Issues between the federal government and state government in those days
included 1) the allocation of funds to individual states and an
equitable formula for that allocation; and 2) the designation of
"experimental post roads" as a mechanism to permit flow of federal funds
to the states for highway purposes. Indeed, the federal Office of Public
Roads and Rural Engineering (OPRRE) worked directly with many states to
"draft state highway bills based on the OPRRE model state highway bill".
It was noted that "OPRRE, which had been organized mainly for research
and dissemination of information, would have to adapt to its major new
responsibilities, which included the establishment of an engineering
branch and a management and economics branch", changes comparable to
those needed today.

So with the signing by President Woodrow Wilson of the Federal Road Act
of 1916, an important partnership between the federal and state
governments was formed, overcoming many organizational and institutional
barriers. "As *Southern Good Roads* magazine said at the time, 'It will
strengthen relations between the states and the nation, making them
active partners in a great work for the common good.'" That partnership
has endured over the decades. Certainly we can overcome some of the
organizational and institutional issues associated with our mission
changes as well, here early in the 21^st^ century.

*Valerie Briggs* has written several articles that inform our thinking
on operations at a regional scale. In the Fall 1999 issue of *ITS
Quarterly*, Briggs outlined a number of factors that are important in
considering new regional organizations, including the partnership
structure, the management structure, the role of state DOTs, the role of
metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and the regional framework
(architecture).[^37] She suggests that regions that have developed
regionally-scaled organizations "note improvements in transportation
emergency management and greater efficiency in operation". She suggests
that these organizations are "largely the result of local activity by
authorities that operate transportation systems", rather then top-down
imposition of such structures by the federal government.

Briggs has also written a short ITE paper, entitled "Operations in a
Regional Transportation Organization Environment"[^38], which emphasizes
that institutional relationships are needed not only among
transportation organizations (although these are important); an
institutional design must also consider fire operations, emergency
vehicles such as ambulances, law enforcement agencies, HAZMAT activities
and towing companies. She emphasizes that real-time coordination and
communication among the various organizations are important elements of
operations. Briggs also discusses various organizational designs, which
include physically centralizing the participating organizations under
one roof, as is the case in Houston's TranStar, vs. the New York
metropolitan area's TRANSCOM, which she characterizes as a "distributed,
virtual transportation management approach".

In another more recent paper, entitled "Regional Operating
Organizations: An Executive Guide"[^39], Briggs defines three
organizational types, including the virtual organization, the private
corporation and regional government/authority, and describes the
advantages and disadvantages of each. She develops case studies of
TRANSCOM in the tri-state New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area,
TransLink in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Metropolitan Transit
Commission (MTC) in the San Francisco Bay Area, the ITS Priority
Corridor in Southern California, TranStar in Houston, and AZTech in
Phoenix. She emphasizes the need for *integration* of resources,
personnel, systems and institutions in order to achieve both user and
institutional benefits. Briggs suggests that critical regional needs
must be identified to develop support for regional operations. Such
needs include congestion mitigation, environmental concerns, emergency
response, and program implementation. She suggests that the inability to
act upon those needs because of a lack of regionally-scaled
organizations, will motivate the formation of such organizations.

Briggs also identifies the need for *funding*, especially for ongoing
operations. She describes the decisionmaking structure of the various
case study regions and focuses on the need for systems integration to
deploy an effective operating system. She concludes with the statement
that there are "multiple effective approaches to regional operations.
The best approach will vary for each region depending on the
transportation needs, available resources, and existing policies,
procedures and institutional relationships of partners within the
region."

*John Wolf* of CALTRANS has written an insightful and even inspiring
paper about how to develop a transportation operations perspective
within existing transportation organizations[^40]. He makes a strong
case for the operations perspective, calling it a "new world order",
based on the *need for performance* of our transportation system. He
discusses the importance of performance measure as a precondition for
effective operations; his performance measures include
mobility/accessibility, reliability, cost-effectiveness, sustainability,
environmental quality, safety and security, equity, customer
satisfaction, and economic well-being. Among the lessons Wolf identifies
from his experiences at CALTRANS are the importance of data
availability, integration across jurisdictions with local/regional
efforts, ability to be truly modally-blind (that is, an
intermodal/multimodal approach), thinking of the customer as a
co-manager of the system, and internalizing all externalities (if one is
to achieve livable communities and sustainability).

*Larry Dahms and Lisa Klein*, of the San Francisco Bay Area's
Metropolitan Transportation Commission, describe the MTC's approach to a
regionally-scaled system for managing transportation in the Bay
Area[^41]. The MTC has long been viewed as in the leadership in
development of a regional approach. They emphasize new institutional
structures to meet new management needs and the overarching criticality
of *dedicated* funding for operations. This theme persists in the papers
about many regional organizations \-- *the requirement that money be
available to achieve the operations focus at a regional scale*.
Operations monies are often difficult to obtain in the public sector,
where the norm is capital expenditures for infrastructure.

This author notes that a reason for the success of MTC may result from
the fact that it has had long-term continuing strong leadership in the
person of Larry Dahms, who, until his recent retirement, had served at
the head of MTC for 20 years. This author is reminded of the well-known
case of the design of the public transportation system in Curitiba,
Brazil, viewed as a model system, and one in which land-use planning and
public transportation systems are closely integrated. Jaime Lerner, in
various political capacities in Curitiba, served continuing for several
decades, providing ongoing leadership, which allowed the deployment of
these innovative systems.

*Allan DeBlasio*, in his contribution to "What Have We Learned About
ITS?"[^42] indicates some of the institutional challenges involved in
deploying ITS and in developing an operations focus. The issues he
emphasizes are:

-   Awareness and perception of ITS

-   Long-term operations and maintenance

-   Regional deployment

-   Human resources

-   Multi-organizational relationship

-   Ownership and use of resources

-   Procurement

-   Intellectual property

-   Privacy

-   Liability

These issues arose in the analyses done of the model deployment
initiative programs, various non-technical barrier studies, and
interviews with ITS deployment project managers. As noted earlier, ITS
is not equivalent to operations. However, many of these institutional
barriers, and especially regional deployment, human resources and
multi-organizational relationships, ring true in the operations context.

DeBlasio emphasizes that these barriers can be overcome and gives
examples of situations in which they have been. He also emphasizes the
long-term nature of these barriers and suggests "...that they will
always be present in one form or another." He further emphasizes that
the institutional changes required include new relationships between the
public and private sectors and not simply public-public partnerships.
DeBlasio cites especially the often difficult relationships between
large public bureaucracies and small entrepreneurial firms that operate
with different missions and different clock speeds.

DeBlasio further suggests the need for various organizations to cede
some autonomy in regional coalitions and emphasizes the difficulties
that often exist in accomplishing that.

In 2000 a workshop chaired by *Steven Gayle* was convened by the FHWA to
consider linkages between planning and operations. Participants included
state DOTs, MPOs, municipalities, transit authorities, and the FTA, as
well as AASHTO, APTA, AMPO, ITE and PTI.

The group began by defining system management as follows[^43]:

> " Effective transportation system management *maximizes transportation
> system performance* through a *coordinated and integrated
> decisionmaking approach* to 1) construction, 2) preservation, 3)
> maintenance, and 4) operation of transportation facilities, with the
> goal of safe, reliable, predictable, and user-friendly
> transportation."

The workshop participants noted that they had considered operations as
subsumed within the overarching definition of system management.

The participants asked the question, "Why is system management not
better integrated with transportation planning?" Various reasons were
identified, including the following:

> 1\. Transportation professionals have a project mindset \-- or a
> "project culture" rather than a management culture.
>
> 2\. "The constituencies for system management are very different than
> those for planning."
>
> 3\. There is a fragmentation of operations responsibilities within
> transportation organizations. The workshop participants called this
> "fragmented ownership".
>
> 4\. "The profession does not have adequate analysis tools to assess
> the effectiveness of system management strategies."
>
> 5\. Often decisionmakers do not recognize the importance of system
> management, especially at the regional scale.
>
> 6\. Transportation planning professionals have a variety of demands
> placed upon them: "environmental justice, air quality analysis,
> economic development, quality of life, etc." System management would
> just be one more thing "to be addressed by an already very busy
> planning staff".

Nonetheless, the workshop concluded that it was important that system
management be a central function of transportation organizations, noting
that a number of past initiatives (TOPICS, TSM, TDM, incident
management, ITS) had taken place. System management focuses on
performance and the public is demanding accountability for
non-performing transportation systems. Various "big events", like the
Olympic Games, show that we are able to perform the system management
function when required to do so. The workshop urged a focus on
*performance measures* for system management.

Finally, the workshop recommended pilots that could demonstrate the
importance and impact of good system management. "The concept of market
leaders focuses on those states and metropolitan areas that come close
to the vision of integrated system management and planning as described
above. Mini-case studies on national/regional symposia with
representatives from these locations would highlight the message that
linking system management and planning can be done and, most
importantly, that it works!"

**[Literature on Organizations]{.underline}**

There is an extensive literature on organizations. Understanding how
organizations are *really* managed and how that may differ from that
depicted by conventional organizational charts is the subject of
research by *Henry Mintzberg and Ludo Van der Heyden*, documented in a
*Harvard Business Review* paper[^44], which suggests that the
organizational chart is a poor way of understanding how companies work.
They comment that "Indeed, using an org chart to 'view' a company is
like using a list of municipal managers to find your way around the
city\... The fact is, organizational charts are the picture albums of
our companies, but they tell us only that we are mesmerized with
management. No wonder they have become so irrelevant in today's world."
The authors define "organigraphs" as new ways of understanding how
companies really work; this author suggests that this concept can be
used in public-sector organizations as well.

They define the concepts of sets, chains, hubs and webs, and show
examples of a petrochemical company, a newspaper company and a bank to
illustrate how these concepts can be used to better understand the
information flows and decision structures in organizations.

As we think about the new operations mission facing state departments of
transportation, MPOs and other transportation organizations, it behooves
us to integrate modern management thinking, such as that illustrated in
this paper, into our organizational designs.

Other management literatures worthy of consideration in this context
are:

> 1\. Agency theory dealing with risk and responsibility sharing when
> the parties (e.g., organizations) have different attitudes toward risk
> and different goals.[^45]
>
> 2\. Technology-related strategic planning. [^46]

**[[Appendix B]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

**[[Companion Papers]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

As part of the same initiative that led to the writing of this paper, a
number of other authors were also commissioned to write related papers
about operations from various viewpoints. This section summarizes those
papers, specifically from the perspective of the institutional issues
identified by those authors.

"Highway Funding: It's Time to Think Seriously about Operations", Edith
Boyden, Allan DeBlasio, Eric Plosky, Volpe National Transportation
Systems Center, Cambridge, MA, July 2001.

> In this paper, the authors emphasize the need for a change in U.S.
> federal funding policy for operations. They note that we must do more
> than simply change organizations to deal with congestion on a regional
> geographic scale; we also need a change in the federal government, and
> specifically their funding mechanisms for highway operations.
>
> The authors note that the federal government does fund operations in
> transit, but in highways the funding mechanisms have been directed,
> for the most part, toward construction and maintenance. There have
> been earlier operations efforts, such as the TOPICS program.
>
> The authors suggest some institutional issues, including:

-   Defining operations;

-   Developing institutions for operations to counterbalance the
    construction constituencies;

-   The definition of new kinds of partnerships.

"Description of Transportation Systems Operations and Management", Steve
Lockwood.

> In this paper Steve Lockwood identifies the *fragmentation* of
> operations within many transportation organizations as an important
> institutional issue. He focuses on the need to integrate those
> operations, and the further need to develop performance measures
> focused on customers. Further, Lockwood discusses the importance of
> information-sharing among various organizations and the requirement
> for real-time response in the operations theater.

"Measuring System Performance: The Key to Establishing Operations as a
Core Agency Mission", Michael D. Meyer, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Atlanta, GA.

> Michael Meyer focuses on major policy issues associated with the use
> of performance measures. He notes the importance of a shift toward a
> customer perspective; the implications of that shift include the need
> for accountability, efficiency, effectiveness, communications, clarity
> and continuous improvement over time. He cites various examples from
> around the country, including Minnesota, California, Florida, and
> Albany, New York. Meyer emphasizes system reliability as a relatively
> new performance measure in the highway transportation area.

"Data, Guns, and Money: A New Partnership for Highway Operations", Kevin
Dopart, Mitretek Systems, Inc., Washington, DC, June 2001.

> In this paper Kevin Dopart considers the institutional barriers
> preventing the formation of a partnership between those organizations
> interested in *transportation operations* and those interested in
> *public safety*. He suggests that the public safety community *does
> not* see mobility as a priority, and discusses the lack of often even
> rudimentary communications among public safety and transportation
> organizations. Dopart argues that there are major advantages in more
> effective cooperation between these organizations. He suggests the
> need for incentives, possibly FHWA-provided incentives, to create an
> effective and leveraged partnership such that public-safety
> organizations recognize the desirability of mobility benefits in
> addition to their own direct responsibility for public safety.

"A Summary of Transportation Operations Data Issues", Rick Schuman,
PBS&J, Winter Park, FL, July 2001.

> In this paper Rick Schuman emphasizes the linkage between better data
> and better operating decisions. To create exceptional performance,
> good data is essential, he argues. He notes the prevalence of "data
> gaps", by which he means coverage in both breadth and depth of the
> transportation network, and the lack of high-quality data available
> for decisionmaking. He argues for the need to "establish the
> environment that encourages innovation in data collection, sharing and
> use". He suggests the possibility of the public sector funding an
> initial "backbone" for ultimately public-/private-sector partnerships.
>
> He also focuses on data-sharing, particularly between the public and
> private sectors, and public and private roles in this process.
>
> "• *Data Sharing*. One of the key issues to a data collection program
> is the sharing of data between the public and private sectors. Who has
> the data? Who needs the data? What kinds of policies are in place to
> maintain the integrity of the data amidst the data sharing? Is there
> reluctance on the part of the public sector to share with the private
> sector? Under what limitations will the public sector allow the
> private to use the regional data? What are the constraints in sharing
> data between public sector agencies or the private sector sharing
> their data with the public sector? With the opportunity for multiple
> uses of data by multiple public and private organizations, data
> sharing has emerged as a major issue."
>
> "• *Public/Private Roles*. Until recently, much of the network status
> data that has been discussed has largely been generated by public
> sector organizations using public resources. New data collection
> techniques, such as cellular phone probes or floating car data will
> likely be owned and operated by private sector data providers. Also, a
> federally sponsored program is facilitating the establishment of
> privately owned and operated roadside data collection infrastructure.
> How will the mixture of public and private data collection systems
> evolve? Can we create an environment that leverages public and private
> investment to improve the breadth, depth and quality of data?"[^47]

"Traffic Congestion and Travel Reliability: How Bad Is the Situation and
What Is Being Done about It?", Tim Lomax, Shawn Turner, Mark Hallenbeck,
Catherine Boon, Rich Margiotta, July 2001.

> This paper, authored by Tim Lomax, Shawn Turner, Mark Hallenbeck,
> Catherine Boon and Rich Margiotta, considers *why* congestion exists
> and tracks freeway performance as it has evolved over the last several
> decades. The authors note the condition of sprawl as a driver of
> congestion is, in and of itself, an institutional issue as local
> control over land-use leads to very spread-out land-use patterns in
> metropolitan areas. They suggest that traffic operations is a minor
> player in the sprawl game, with other factors being substantially more
> important. At the same time, they note that construction alone will
> not ameliorate the congestion problems that exist in our great urban
> metropolises
>
> They consider operational and management strategies being pursued to
> relieve congestion, identifying the triplet of construction, improved
> operations and managing travel demand. Construction, of course, is
> difficult to rely upon, particularly in already-crowded urban areas.
> They cite operations strategies, including advanced traffic management
> systems, incident management systems, traveler information and managed
> lanes. They note that each of these can be helpful, but generally
> achieve only modest reductions in congestion.

"Operations in the 21^st^ Century \-- Address by President at the 25^th^
Annual Meeting of ITS America, July 4, 2025", Steve Lockwood.

> Finally, Steve Lockwood, in the guise of a hypothetical speech by the
> President of ITS America in 2025, imaginatively describes the
> transportation world as it might be in 2025. He emphasizes the
> customer orientation of the 2025 system, together with "value
> pricing", used to make surface transportation more of a
> market-oriented system. He emphasizes the institutional changes that
> "have" taken place in that time interval, including "spanning the
> stovepipes" as "state and local governments took a variety of paths to
> aligning the operational elements of their existing programs". He also
> describes "institutionalizing new institutional roles", suggesting
> that
>
> " The lure of federal transportation funds passthroughs stimulated new
> levels of collaboration among state and local governments including
> the law enforcement, fire and emergency services communities. These
> relationships rapidly progressed down the partnership spectrum from
> cooperation to consolidation. As they gained experience the concept of
> combined operations seemed less threatening and many smaller
> jurisdictions were happy to join forces as part of new regional
> operating entities. Even modal barriers were overcome, with transit
> and highway agencies sometimes taking on responsibilities for each
> other's services. Pressures to reduce government costs and size
> continued and outsourcing of facility operations and maintenance and
> TOC manning became standard practice in many areas. These arrangements
> provided the basis for important private sector investments and
> innovations." [^48]
>
> He goes on to say that financial incentives "were" helpful to achieve
> institutional change.
>
> " Many institutional ideas, long discussed and dismissed, surprisingly
> gained momentum after demonstrations proved their benefits to skeptics
> (and blunted the objections of those vested in the status quo). Some
> of these included: the willingness of jurisdictions to consolidate
> operational management where substantial cost savings were available;
> the voluntary adoption of incident management practices by police and
> EMS agencies where reductions in autonomy were accompanied by
> significant subsidies from transportation." [^49]
>
> All in all, Lockwood presents an imaginative and plausible view of how
> institutions will change over the next quarter-century to provide an
> effective operations and customer-oriented surface transportation
> system.

**[[Summary]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

To summarize the companion papers, the key points are as follows:

-   To achieve effective operations, institutional change on the federal
    level, specifically with respect to funding for operations, is
    necessary.

-   Operations are currently fragmented within transportation
    organizations. Consolidating operations will have an efficacious
    effect on services provided.

-   Integration of transportation operations and public safety can lead
    to benefits for both activities.

-   As a general proposition, there is a need for financial incentives
    to create institutional change, as in the one noted immediately
    above.

-   The collection of high-quality data, so essential for good
    operations, presents institutional issues that need to be overcome
    \-- again, financial incentives is a mechanism for doing so.

Many of the papers refer to the customer orientation that drives
operations and the recognition of the importance of this in surface
transportation as an enabler for the organizational and institutional
changes needed to produce an operations-oriented surface transportation
system.

**[[Appendix C]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

**[[Definitions]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

In this section we define some basic terms as they are used in this
paper.

**Organizational change:** By organizational change, we mean
modifications to the structure and functionality of some organization
from an *internal* perspective. For example, a change in management
structure such that the "Chief of Operations" reports directly to the
State Secretary in a state department of transportation, would be an
example of an organizational change.

**Institutional change:** Here we refer to changes in the relationships
among organizations. The design of new communications and operations
relationships relating organizations in a particular metropolitan-based
region would be included here.

Also included here would be the formation of new organizations that
serve to integrate the functions of existing organizations. So the
formation of TRANSCOM in the New York metropolitan area would represent
an institutional change, as it was at the time, a new organization.
Further, the new interconnections between TRANSCOM and, say, New York
State DOT, would be another institutional change, but a new structure
within the New York State DOT to accommodate that new interaction with
TRANSCOM would be characterized as an organizational change for the New
York State DOT.

**Customer:** A customer is any user of transportation services,
including travelers and passengers, and organizations and people
concerned with moving freight.

**Stakeholder:** Stakeholders include customers, but also encompass
non-customers such as environmental interest groups, regional planning
organizations, chambers of commerce, and so forth.

**Operations:** One of the dictionary definitions of operations is "to
carry on operations in war; to give orders and accomplish military acts,
as opposed to staff work". This definition seems consistent with our
distinction between "planning" (a staff function) and "operations"(more
of a line function).

Phil Tarnoff's and Dennis Christiansen's paper[^50] defines
transportation operations as follows: "Transportation operations can be
defined as the application of techniques to facilitate the flow of
vehicles, travelers and good on the existing surface transportation
infrastructure". So here a distinction is made between adding to the
transportation infrastructure, as opposed to day-to-day operations of
facilities.

**Operations (an extended definition):** Operations of the surface
transportation system covers a variety of functions. In this extended
definition, we consider *operating the infrastructure* \-- the supply
side of transportation; *managing demand* for transportation services;
the management cycle of *measuring* performance, *reviewing* that
performance, and *modifying* it appropriately; the communications
functions with customer and stakeholders, and the *public relations and
marketing* function. The list of activities is shown in the following
table:

**[Operating Functions]{.underline}**

-   Operating the Infrastructure

-   Transportation Operations Centers (TOCs)

-   Electronic Toll Collection (ETC)

-   Network Management

-   e.g., Coordination of freeways and surface streets

-   Traffic Light Control

-   Emergency Response

-   Work Zone Management

-   Incident Management

-   Detection

-   Response

-   Removal

-   Intermodal Coordination

-   Managing Demand

-   Road Pricing

-   Environmental Pricing

-   Traveler Information Systems

-   Performance Measurement, Review and Modification

-   Communication with Customers and Stakeholders, including Public
    Relations and

> Marketing Function

**[[Appendix D]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

**[[The Regional Perspective]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

Perhaps the most difficult institutional issue we face is creating
regionally-scaled transportation operations. In this appendix, we
examine *ways of thinking* about the regional challenge. We consider the
concept of *regional architectures* as a way of designing institutional
structures that meet particular regional needs. Also, we suggest in the
final sections, that while the emphasis of this paper is operations,
there can be other viable and complementary approaches to organizing
regional transportation.

**[Regional Architectures: An Expanded Institutionally-Oriented
View]{.underline}**

In transportation, system architecture was originally a technical
ITS-based concept to permit effective and technical interoperability of
ITS deployments. (ITS adapted this concept from large military and
aerospace contractors.) These system architectures were then used to
create regional architectures, which also were technical in nature. Each
region was asked to specify, through the architecture concept, the
manner in which the technical elements of their system would interact,
the required information flows, and the channels through which
communications would take place.

But some authors have considered regional architecture to be more than a
technical concept. They have defined it as an organizational and
institutional concept as well. The idea has been used to characterize
how *organizations* should interact within a regional framework to do
planning and provide services. Jon Makler[^51] defines the idea of a
comprehensive regional architecture composed of a regional planning
architecture (RPA) and a regional service architecture (RSA). The RPA
and RSA define the ways in which organizations within a region interact
for planning and service provision purposes, respectively.

**[Comprehensive Regional Architecture]{.smallcaps}**

[Regional Service Regional Planning]{.smallcaps}

[Architecture Architecture]{.smallcaps}

from Makler, Jonathan, "Regional Architectures and
Environmentally-Based\
Transportation Planning: An Institutional Analysis of Planning\
in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area", Master's Thesis,\
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, June 2000.

The figure shows overlap between the regional service architecture and
the regional planning architecture since some of the same organizations
may participate in both planning and service provision. As Makler notes,
"A state department of transportation, for example, is likely to be a
very active participant in planning activities and is also likely to be
an important manager of transportation services, making it part of both
RSA and RPA. However, it is possible that the office or division of DOT
that participates in the RSA is a different unit of DOT than that which
participates in the RPA. When communication between the RSA and RPA is
important, it may be incorrect to assume that the presence of one
organization in both subsets provides a reliable link."

A detailed discussion of how either an RPA or an RSA would be developed
is beyond the scope of this paper, but in outline form the process has
the following steps[^52]:

[Stage One: Identifying the Organizations]{.underline}

We generate an inventory of existing organizations with various
responsibilities. Organizations from the public, private and
non-governmental sectors should be included.

[Stage Two: Characterizing the Organizations]{.underline}

Organizations can be characterized on a geographic scale, according to
its accountability to the body politic, and its management philosophy.

[Stage Three: Characterizing the Linkages]{.underline}

Here the information and control flows among organizations need to be
defined, as do decision-making hierarchies, as applicable. This step
allows one to assess the *capacity* of the collective organizations in
the region.

[Stage Four: Prescribing New Institutional Needs]{.underline}

Looking collectively at these organizations allows one to consider
whether a new organization need be formed, which would be a radical
institutional change, or whether, by changing the mission of the
individual organizations and changing the linkages among them, one can
meet the goals of the region for providing effective and efficient
transportation services. The typology described in the previous section
can be helpful in this stage.

"The concept of regional architecture suggests that all of the
\[organizations\] can be represented as nodes on a network and the
relationships among them as links between the nodes. The product of the
methodology is a set of prescriptions for the architecture that improves
the capacity of the institutions or creates new institutions and
linkages among them to facilitate \[transportation operations\]." [^53]

**[Various Regional Approaches Oriented to Operations, Land-Use and
Infrastructure]{.underline}**[^54]

Regions have taken different approaches to regional transportation
management. TranStar is a regional organization based in Houston, Texas,
that has innovated institutionally. This organization coordinates
*operations-oriented mobility strategies* among a number of different
public-sector transportation and emergency response organizations,
including the City of Houston, Harris County, Texas Department of
Transportation, and METRO (which is the metropolitan transit company).
This organizational innovation is focused on *operation*, with a broad
regional scope and rather indirect political accountability.

While TranStar's innovation in institutional relations focused on
*operations*, the main focus of this paper, it is useful to recognize
that other regions have innovated institutionally on other dimensions.

For example, in Portland, Oregon, the organizational innovation is
through METRO (Portland's MPO), which focuses on *land-use* planning at
the scale of the Portland metro-based region; METRO has direct political
accountability. In Atlanta, through the Georgia Regional Transportation
Authority (GRTA), the Atlanta metro-based region coordinates
*infrastructure* development across the region, breaking the
stranglehold that local municipalities and counties have traditionally
had over transportation infrastructure development at a regional scale.
GRTA is given veto power over certain local (county) planning decisions.
Its political accountability is indirect in nature.

One can see that these organizational innovations differ on several
dimensions. First, as noted above, they differ in terms of philosophy,
with Houston focusing on operations, Portland on land-use, and Atlanta
on infrastructure, as the foundation of their overarching regional
strategy. Related to this, the timeframes within which those
philosophies operate differ as well. Houston's timeframe, given its
operations focus, is short; Portland's is quite long, with a 40-year
land-use plan in place; and Atlanta, with its focus on infrastructure,
can be characterized as medium-term.

Further, the organizations charged with implementing these philosophies
have varying levels of direct accountability to the public. The
following table summarizes the approaches of these regions.

  -------------------------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------- ----------------------------------
  **[Region]{.smallcaps}**   **[Organization]{.smallcaps}**   **[Philosophy]{.smallcaps}**   **[Time                **[Accountability]{.smallcaps}**
                                                                                             Frame]{.smallcaps}**   

  **Houston**                TRANSTAR                         Operations                     Short                  Very Indirect

  **Portland**               METRO                            Land Use                       Long                   Direct

  **Atlanta**                GRTA                             Infrastructure                 Medium                 Indirect
  -------------------------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------- ----------------------------------

We recognize that these three philosophies can be complementary \--
using ideas from all can be a useful regional approach. And, of course,
in Houston, Portland and Atlanta, ideas from each are used. The intent
here was to contrast the philosophical differences.

**[References]{.underline}**

Baker, William, "The ITS Public Safety Program: Creating a Public Safety
Coalition", *Public Roads*, May/June 2001.

Booz-Allen Hamilton, "Regional Operating Organizations: An Executive
Guide", April 2001.

Boyden, Edith, Allan DeBlasio and Eric Plosky, "Highway Funding: It's
Time to Think Seriously about Operations", Volpe National Transportation
Systems Center, Cambridge, MA, July 2001.

Briggs, Valerie, "New Regional Transportation Organizations", *ITS
Quarterly*, Fall 1999.

Briggs, Valerie, "Operations in a Regional Transportation Organization
Environment", *ITE Journal*, January 2001.

Bunch, James A., "ITS and the Planning Process", Chapter 26 in
*Intelligent Transportation Primer*, Institute of Transportation
Engineers, Washington, DC, 2000.

The Centre for Sustainable Transportation. *A Definition and Vision of
Sustainable Transportation*, July 2001.
[http://www.cstctd.org/CSTmissionstatement.htm]{.underline}.

Christensen, Clayton M., Fernando F. Suárez and James M. Utterback,
"Strategies for Survival in Fast Changing Industries", *Management
Science*, Vol. 44, No. 12, Part 2 of 2, December 1998.

Conklin, Christopher, "Regional Architectures, Regional Strategic
Transportation Planning and Organizational Strategies", Master's Thesis,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, August 1999.

Dahms, Lawrence and Lisa Klein, "The San Francisco Bay Area's Approach
to System Management", *ITE Journal*, September 1999.

DeBlasio, Allan J., "What Have We Learned About Cross-Cutting
Institutional Issues?", Chapter 8 in "What Have We Learned About
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)?", U. S. Department of
Transportation, Washington, DC, 2000.

Dopart, Kevin, "Data, Guns, and Money: A New Partnership for Highway
Operations", Mitretek Systems, Inc., Washington, DC, June 2001.

Eisenhardt, K. M, "Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review", *Academy of
Management Review*, Vol. 14, 1989, pp. 57-74.

Fleischer, Peter B. and Robert Hicks, "Operations and Management: What
Does It Mean for Local Agencies?", *Public Technology, Inc.*,
FHWA-OP-00-028, 2000.

Gifford, Jonathan, Danilo Pelletiere, John Collura and James Chang,
"Stakeholder Requirements for Traffic Signal Preemption and Priority:
Preliminary Results from the Washington, DC, Region", ITS America Annual
Meeting, 2001.

Gifford, Jonathan and Odd Stalebrink, "Remaking Transportation
Organizations for the 21^st^ Century: Consortia and the Value of
Organizational Learning", *Transportation Research A: Policy and
Practice* (accepted for publication), 2001.

Gómez-Ibáñez, J. A. and J. R. Meyer, *Going Private: The International
Experience with Transport Private Delivery*, The Brookings Institute,
Washington, DC, 1993.

Hanshaw, Stephanie and Steven Shapiro, "Benefits of Privatizing
Operations Centers: The VDOT Model", ITS America Annual Meeting, 2001.

Hax, Arnoldo and Harlan Meal, "Hierarchical Integration of Production
Planning and Scheduling", in M. Geisler (editor), *TIMS Studies in
Management Science*, Volume 1, Logistics, New York, Elsevier, 1975.

Johnson, Christine M., "Transportation Operations: A Core Mission of the
FHWA", *ITE Journal*, December 1999.

Lawther, Wendell C., "Effective Public-Private Partnership Models in the
Deployment of Metropolitan ITS", ITS America Annual Meeting, 2001.

Lockwood, Stephen, "The Changing State DOT", AASHTO, Washington, DC,
October 1998.

Lockwood, Stephen, "Description of Transportation Systems Operations and
Management".

Lockwood, Stephen, "The Institutional Challenge: An Aggressive View",
Chapter 24 in *Intelligent Transportation Primer*, Institute of
Transportation Engineers, Washington, DC, 2000.

Lockwood, Stephen, "Operations in the 21^st^ Century \-- Address by
President at the 25^th^ Annual Meeting of ITS America, July 4, 2025".

Lockwood, Stephen, "Realizing ITS: The Vision and the Challenge", *ITE
Journal*, December 1999.

Lomax, Tim, Shawn Turner, Mark Hallenbeck, Catherine Boon and Rich
Margiotta, "Traffic Congestion and Travel Reliability: How Bad Is the
Situation and What Is Being Done about It?", July 2001.

Makler, Jonathan, "Regional Architectures and Environmentally-Based
Transportation Planning: An Institutional Analysis of Planning in the
Mexico City Metropolitan Area", Master's Thesis, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA, June 2000.

Meyer, Michael D., "Measuring System Performance: The Key to
Establishing Operations as a Core Agency Mission", Georgia Institute of
Technology, Atlanta, GA.

Mintzberg, Henry and Ludo Van der Heyden, "Organigraphs: Drawing How
Companies Really Work", *Harvard Business Review*, Cambridge, MA,
Sept-Oct 1999.

NCHRP Synthesis 296, Transportation Research Board, National Research
Council, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001.

Olmstead, Todd, "The Effects of Freeway Management Systems and Motorist
Assistance Patrols on the Frequency of Reported Motor Vehicle Crashes",
Doctoral Thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, May 2000.

Orski, Kenneth, "Congestion Relief Should Become an Explicit Objective
of the Federal Surface Transportation Program", *Innovation Briefs*,
Vol. 12, No. 5, Sep/Oct 2001.

Paulson, S. Lawrence, "5-1-1: Traffic Help May Soon Be Three Digits
Away", *Public Roads*, May/June 2001.

Powell, James, "Implementing Coordinated VMS/HAR Operations in the
Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor", ITS America Annual Meeting, 2001.

Reichelstein, S., "Constructing Incentive Schemes for Government
Contracts: An Application of Agency Theory", *The Accounting Review*,
Vol. 67, 1992, pp. 214-237.

Schuman, Richard, "A Summary of Transportation Operations Data Issues",
PBS&J, Winter Park, FL, July 2001.

"Summary of Workshop on Linking System Management/Operations with
Transportation Planning", FHWA, 2000.

Sussman, Joseph M., "Educating the 'New Transportation Professional'",
*ITS Quarterly*, Summer 1995.

Sussman, Joseph M., *Introduction to Transportation Systems*, Artech
House Publishers, Boston and London, 2000.

Sussman, Joseph M., "ITS Deployment and the 'Competitive Region'",
"Thoughts on ITS" Column, *ITS Quarterly*, Spring 1996.

Sussman, Joseph M., "The New Master of Science in Transportation Degree
Program at MIT", Paper submitted to TRB, July 2001.

Sussman, Joseph M., "Transitions in the World of Transportation: A
Systems View", MIT Engineering Systems Division Working Paper,
Cambridge, MA, June 2001.

Sussman, Joseph M., "What Have We Learned About Intelligent
Transportation Systems (ITS)?", Chapters 1 and 9, Synthesis report for
the series of papers,\
EDL \# 13316,
http://www.itsdocs.fhwa.dot.gov/jpodocs/repts_te/@5901!.pdf,\
U. S. Department of Transportation, Washington, DC, 2000.

Sussman, Joseph M. and Christopher Conklin, "Regional Architectures,
Regional Strategic Transportation Planning and Organizational
Strategies", ITS America Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, May 2000.

Sussman, Joseph M. and Joseph Folk, "Unreliability in Railroad Network
Operations", a chapter contributed to *Analytic Foundations of
Engineering Problems: Case Studies in Systems Analysis*, Richard de
Neufville and David Marks, eds., January 1973.

Sussman, Joseph M., David Hensing and Douglas Wiersig, "Transportation
Operations and the Imperative for Institutional Change", Working Paper
for ITE Annual Meeting, Irvine, CA, April 2000.

Sussman, Joseph M. and Jonathan Makler, "A Tale of Three
Metropolitan-Based Regions: Their Mobility Philosophies and 'Regional
Architectures'", ReS/SITE Working Paper, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1999.

Tarnoff, Phil and Dennis Christiansen, "Moving Toward a National Agenda
of Transportation Operations and Mobility Research: Report of the
Operations and Mobility Working Group", November 2000.

Thompson, Morton, *Not as a Stranger*, New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1954.

Weingroff, Richard F., "For the Common Good: The 85^th^ Anniversary of a
Historic Partnership", *Public Roads*, March/April 2001.

Winn, Melissa A., "Handling the Worst Crash Ever in Virginia", *Public
Roads*, May/June 2001.

Wolf, John, "Performance Measurement and Integrated Transportation
Management Systems: A Traffic Operations Perspective", CALTRANS.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ , "AZTech Morphs into a Regional Operating
Entity: A Discussion with Tom Buick and Dale Thompson", *Newsletter of
the ITS Cooperative Deployment Network*, Fall 2001.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ , "Saving Lives, Time and Money Using
Intelligent Transportation Systems: Opportunities and Action for
Deployment", Prepared by ITS America, February 2000.

[^1]: Orski, Kenneth, "Congestion Relief Should Become an Explicit
    Objective of the Federal Surface Transportation Program",
    *Innovation Briefs*, Vol. 12, No. 5, Sep/Oct 2001.

[^2]: The Centre for Sustainable Transportation. *A Definition and
    Vision of Sustainable Transportation*, July 2001.
    [http://www.cstctd.org/CSTmissionstatement.htm]{.underline}.

[^3]: This section draws upon Sussman, Joseph M., David Hensing and
    Douglas Wiersig, "Transportation Operations and the Imperative for
    Institutional Change", Working Paper for ITE Annual Meeting, Irvine,
    CA, April 2000.

[^4]: Olmstead, Todd, "The Effects of Freeway Management Systems and
    Motorist Assistance Patrols on the Frequency of Reported Motor
    Vehicle Crashes", Doctoral Thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge,
    MA, May 2000.

[^5]: Sussman, Joseph M. and Joseph Folk, "Unreliability in Railroad
    Network Operations", a chapter contributed to *Analytic Foundations
    of Engineering Problems: Case Studies in Systems Analysis*, Richard
    de Neufville and David Marks, eds., January 1973.

[^6]: Lomax, Tim, Shawn Turner, Mark Hallenbeck, Catherine Boon, Rich
    Margiotta, "Traffic Congestion and Travel Reliability: How Bad Is
    the Situation and What Is Being Done about It?", July 2001.

[^7]: See, for example, NCHRP Synthesis 296, Transportation Research
    Board, National Research Council, National Academy Press,
    Washington, DC, 2001.

[^8]: Sussman, Joseph M., "ITS Deployment and the 'Competitive Region'",
    "Thoughts on ITS" Column, *ITS Quarterly*, Spring 1996.

[^9]: Weingroff, Richard F., "For the Common Good: The 85^th^
    Anniversary of a Historic Partnership", *Public Roads*, March/April
    2001.

[^10]: The transportation field is subject to many changes here in the
    early years of the 21^st^ century. The paper "Transitions in the
    World of Transportation: A Systems View" (MIT Engineering Systems
    Division Working Paper, June 2001), is based on a talk given by the
    author at the April 2001 ITS Summit held in Washington, DC. Its
    theme of "transitions" provides a basis for thinking about the
    organizational and institutional changes that must occur in the
    transportation field.

[^11]: Some of the extensive literature on institutions and operations
    in transportation is reviewed in Appendix A. The companion papers
    developed in parallel to this one are reviewed in Appendix B.

[^12]: Powell, James, "Implementing Coordinated VMS/HAR Operations in
    the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor", ITS America Annual Meeting,
    2001.

[^13]: This section draws upon Sussman, Joseph M., David Hensing and
    Douglas Wiersig, "Transportation Operations and the Imperative for
    Institutional Change", Working Paper for ITE Annual Meeting, Irvine,
    CA, April 2000.

[^14]: Johnson, Christine M., "Transportation Operations: A Core Mission
    of the FHWA", *ITE Journal*, December 1999.

[^15]: Paulson, S. Lawrence, "5-1-1: Traffic Help May Soon Be Three
    Digits Away", *Public Roads*, May/June 2001;\
    Baker, William, "The ITS Public Safety Program: Creating a Public
    Safety Coalition", *Public Roads*, May/June 2001;\
    Winn, Melissa A., "Handling the Worst Crash Ever in Virginia",
    *Public Roads*, May/June 2001.

[^16]: Those interested in a deeper understanding of ways to think about
    *regionally-scaled* transportation operations are directed to
    Appendix D.

[^17]: Boyden, Edith, Allan DeBlasio, Eric Plosky, "Highway Funding:
    It's Time to Think Seriously about Operations", Volpe National
    Transportation Systems Center, Cambridge, MA, July 2001.

[^18]: Hax, Arnoldo and Harlan Meal, "Hierarchical Integration of
    Production Planning and Scheduling", in M. Geisler (editor), *TIMS
    Studies in Management Science*, Volume 1, Logistics, New York,
    Elsevier, 1975.

[^19]: Sussman, Joseph M., *Introduction to Transportation Systems*,
    Artech House Publishers, Boston and London, 2000.

[^20]: Thompson, Morton, *Not as a Stranger*, New York: Charles
    Scribner's Sons, 1954.

[^21]: Briggs, Valerie, "New Regional Transportation Organizations",
    *ITS Quarterly*, Fall 1999.

[^22]: This work is informed by Sussman, Joseph M. and Christopher
    Conklin, "Regional Architectures, Regional Strategic Transportation
    Planning and Organizational Strategies", ITS America Annual Meeting,
    Boston, MA, May 2000.

[^23]: Lockwood, Stephen, "The Institutional Challenge: An Aggressive
    View", Chapter 24 in *Intelligent Transportation Primer*, Institute
    of Transportation Engineers, Washington, DC, 2000.

[^24]: Sussman, Joseph M., "The New Master of Science in Transportation
    Degree Program at MIT", Paper submitted to TRB, July 2001.

[^25]: This section draws upon Sussman, Joseph M., David Hensing and
    Douglas Wiersig, "Transportation Operations and the Imperative for
    Institutional Change", Working Paper for ITE Annual Meeting, Irvine,
    CA, April 2000.

[^26]: Sussman, Joseph M., "Educating the 'New Transportation
    Professional'", *ITS Quarterly*, Summer 1995.

[^27]: This section draws upon Sussman, Joseph M., David Hensing and
    Douglas Wiersig, "Transportation Operations and the Imperative for
    Institutional Change", Working Paper for ITE Annual Meeting, Irvine,
    CA, April 2000.

[^28]: "AZTech Morphs into a Regional Operating Entity: A Discussion
    with Tom Buick and Dale Thompson", *Newsletter of the ITS
    Cooperative Deployment Network*, Fall 2001.

[^29]: Lockwood, Stephen, "The Changing State DOT", AASHTO, Washington,
    DC, October 1998.

[^30]: Lockwood, Stephen, "Realizing ITS: The Vision and the Challenge",
    *ITE Journal*, December 1999.

[^31]: Lockwood, Stephen, "The Institutional Challenge: An Aggressive
    View", Chapter 24 in *Intelligent Transportation Primer*, Institute
    of Transportation Engineers, Washington, DC, 2000.

[^32]: Gifford, Jonathan and Odd Stalebrink, "Remaking Transportation
    Organizations for the 21^st^ Century: Consortia and the Value of
    Organizational Learning", *Transportation Research A: Policy and
    Practice* (accepted for publication), 2001.

[^33]: Gifford, Jonathan, Danilo Pelletiere, John Collura and James
    Chang, "Stakeholder Requirements for Traffic Signal Preemption and
    Priority: Preliminary Results from the Washington, DC, Region", ITS
    America Annual Meeting, 2001.

[^34]: Lawther, Wendell C., "Effective Public-Private Partnership Models
    in the Deployment of Metropolitan ITS", ITS America Annual Meeting,
    2001.

[^35]: Powell, James, "Implementing Coordinated VMS/HAR Operations in
    the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor", ITS America Annual Meeting,
    2001.

[^36]: Weingroff, Richard F., "For the Common Good: The 85^th^
    Anniversary of a Historic Partnership", *Public Roads*, March/April
    2001.

[^37]: Briggs, Valerie, "New Regional Transportation Organizations",
    *ITS Quarterly*, Fall 1999.

[^38]: Briggs, Valerie, "Operations in a Regional Transportation
    Organization Environment", *ITE Journal*, January 2001.

[^39]: Booz-Allen Hamilton, "Regional Operating Organizations: An
    Executive Guide", April 2001.

[^40]: Wolf, John, "Performance Measurement and Integrated
    Transportation Management Systems: A Traffic Operations
    Perspective", CALTRANS.

[^41]: Dahms, Lawrence and Lisa Klein, "The San Francisco Bay Area's
    Approach to System Management", *ITE Journal*, September 1999.

[^42]: DeBlasio, Allan J., "What Have We Learned About Cross-Cutting
    Institutional Issues?", Chapter 8 in "What Have We Learned About
    Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)?",\
    U. S. Department of Transportation, Washington, DC, 2000.

[^43]: "Summary of Workshop on Linking System Management/Operations with
    Transportation Planning", FHWA, 2000.

[^44]: Mintzberg, Henry and Ludo Van der Heyden, "Organigraphs: Drawing
    How Companies Really Work", *Harvard Business Review*, Cambridge,
    MA, Sept-Oct 1999.

[^45]: Eisenhardt, K. M, "Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review",
    *Academy of Management Review*, Vol. 14, 1989, pp. 57-74.\
    Reichelstein, S., "Constructing Incentive Schemes for Government
    Contracts: An Application of Agency Theory", *The Accounting
    Review*, Vol. 67, 1992, pp. 214-237.

[^46]: Christensen, Clayton M., Fernando F. Suárez and James M.
    Utterback, "Strategies for Survival in Fast Changing Industries",
    *Management Science*, Vol. 44, No. 12, Part 2 of 2, December 1998.

[^47]: Schuman, Rick, "A Summary of Transportation Operations Data
    Issues", PBS&J, Winter Park, FL, July 2001, p. 14.

[^48]: Lockwood, Steve, "Operations in the 21^st^ Century \-- Address by
    President at the 25^th^ Annual Meeting of ITS America, July 4,
    2025", p. 5.

[^49]: Lockwood, Steve, "Operations in the 21^st^ Century \-- Address by
    President at the 25^th^ Annual Meeting of ITS America, July 4,
    2025", p. 6.

[^50]: Tarnoff, Phil and Dennis Christiansen, "Moving Toward a National
    Agenda of Transportation Operations and Mobility Research: Report of
    the Operations and Mobility Working Group", November 2000.

[^51]: Makler, Jonathan, "Regional Architectures and
    Environmentally-Based Transportation Planning: An Institutional
    Analysis of Planning in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area", Master's
    Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, June
    2000.

[^52]: Sussman, Joseph M. and Jonathan Makler, "A Tale of Three
    Metropolitan-Based Regions: Their Mobility Philosophies and
    'Regional Architectures'", ReS/SITE Working Paper, Massachusetts
    Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1999.

[^53]: Sussman, Joseph M. and Jonathan Makler, "A Tale of Three
    Metropolitan-Based Regions: Their Mobility Philosophies and
    'Regional Architectures'", ReS/SITE Working Paper, Massachusetts
    Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1999.

[^54]: This section draws upon Sussman, Joseph M. and Jonathan Makler,
    "A Tale of Three Metropolitan-Based Regions: Their Mobility
    Philosophies and 'Regional Architectures'", ReS/SITE Working Paper,
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1999.