Advancing Transportation Systems 

Management and Operations

Through Scenario Planning
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Dear Colleagues,

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) supports the use of scenario planning as 

a valuable resource for developing robust long-range, multimodal transportation plans. 

Scenario planning is an enhancement of the planning process that enables more effective 

decisions by formally considering the “what-ifs?” of tomorrow to support a more resilient 

and desirable future. While scenario planning is widely recognized as a valuable resource in 

this regard, FHWA believes that scenario planning also has potential to be an equally useful 

tool for advancing longer term approaches to the way we want to have our transportation 

systems managed and operated in the face of changing demands, situations, conditions, and 

perspectives. 

Planning for the way that we want to manage and operate the transportation system is uniquely 

tied to several factors that are often difficult to predict. For example, travel information, 

smartphones, and connected vehicle systems may have a significant effect on the way we 

manage and operate our systems over the next several years. Scenario planning methods can 

help planners and system managers examine the expanding interplay of issues, technologies, 

and stakeholders involved in making our transportation systems work more reliably, safely, and 

effectively. Scenario planning provides a structured approach for consensus-building among 

multiple agencies, jurisdictions, and stakeholders. 

Through this primer, FHWA capitalizes on the strengths of scenario planning and applies its 

principles to advancing better longer term approaches to the way we want our transportation 

systems to be managed and operated. It is intended to assist planners, operators, and other 

partners to make more robust decisions and plans. We look forward to receiving your 

feedback, reactions, and experience with these concepts. Please direct any comments or 

suggestions to Mr. Wayne Berman at wayne.berman@dot.gov or 202-366-4069. To download 

a copy of this report or learn more about the Planning for Operations program, please visit 

http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/plan4ops/index.htm. For more information on FHWA’s overall 

Scenario Planning Program, please visit http://www.planning.dot.gov/scenario.asp or contact 

Ms. Rae Keasler at rae.keasler@dot.gov or 202-366-0329.

 Sincerely yours,

Robert Arnold Kenneth N. Petty II

Director, Office of Transportation Management Director, Office of Planning

1200 New Jersey Ave., SE

Washington, D.C. 20590

In Reply Refer To:

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FHWA-HOP-16-016

Advancing Transportation Systems Management and 

Operations through Scenario Planning

COTM: Mr. Wayne Berman, Federal Highway Administration

The intent of this primer is to inform planners, operators, and other transportation systems man- agement and operations (TSMO) partners on the potential use of scenario planning to advance 

TSMO. It builds upon the long standing scenario planning guidance that continues to be advanced 

by FHWA’s Office of Planning, Environment, and Realty. The primer includes an explanation of 

the “why” behind the use of scenario planning in transportation and presents hypothetical examples to prompt thinking about the “when” and the “how” scenario planning might be used for 

TSMO. This includes discussions about how to apply scenario planning at multiple geographic 

scales and in support of several TSMO-focused planning activities, such as developing work zone 

management or statewide freight mobility plans. While this primer does not provide detailed 

guidance on how to conduct scenario planning for a specific TSMO effort, it does offer a deeper 

understanding of scenario planning opportunities and a framework that readers can adapt to their 

specific needs and use as a guiding tool as they embark upon scenario planning to enhance their 

TSMO planning and programming decisions.

Leidos, 11251 Roger Bacon Dr., Reston, VA 20190

Renaissance Planning Group, 1901 North Moore Street, Suite 1204

Arlington, VA 22209

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United States Department of Transportation

Federal Highway Administration

1200 New Jersey Ave., SE

Washington, DC 20590

Jocelyn Bauer (Leidos), Katharine Ange (Renaissance Planning 

Group), Hannah Twaddell (ICF) 

Transportation systems management and 

operations, scenario planning, operations, plan- ning, metropolitan, statewide, local, corridor, 

analysis tools.

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iii

Table of Contents

Section 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Section 2: Understanding Scenario Planning and Its Use in Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What is Scenario Planning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The Origins of Scenario Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Scenario Planning in Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Using Scenario Planning in Performance-Based Planning and Programming . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Section 3: Applying the Scenario Planning Approach to Planning for Transportation Systems 

Management and Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework Applied to Transportation 

Systems Management and Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Phase by Phase: Process, Participants, and Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Analysis Tools and Data to Support Scenario Planning for Transportation Systems 

Management and Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Section 4: Opportunities for Scenario Planning to Advance Transportation Systems Management 

and Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Regional Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Statewide Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Corridor Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Opportunities to Consider Implications of Emerging Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Section 5: Illustrations of Scenario Planning for Transportation Systems Management and 

Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Southcom Coalition: Planning for Operational Resilience during Tropical Storms . . . . . . . . 51

Corridor Q: Development of a Multimodal Corridor Operations Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Fairview Metro Plan: Development of Regional TSMO Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Section 6: Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
iv

List of Figures

Figure 1. Illustration. The Federal Highway Administration’s 

Six-Phase Scenario Planning Framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Figure 2. Diagram. Transportation-Related Performance Target For Plan Bay Area. . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Figure 3. Diagram. Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s

Performance-Based Planning Framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 4. Diagram. The Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework Adapted to 

Transportation Systems Management and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Figure 5. Diagram. Phase 1 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Figure 6. Diagram. Planning Horizons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Figure 7. Diagram. Phase 2 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Figure 8. Diagram. Phase 3 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Figure 9. Diagram. Phase 4 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Figure 10. Diagram. Phase 5 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Figure 11. Diagram. Phase 6 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
v

List of Tables

Table 1. Costs and Benefits of Scenario Planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Table 2. Transportation Systems Management and Operations Planning

Contexts and Sample Scenario Planning Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Table 3. Scenario Planning Focal Questions and Outcomes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Table 4. Example Driving Forces to Shape Scenario Logic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Table 5. Sample Operations Objectives for Use in Scenario Planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

1

What is TSMO?

Transportation systems management and 

operations (TSMO) encompasses a broad set 

of strategies that aim to optimize the safe, 

efficient, and reliable use of existing and 

planned transportation infrastructure for all 

modes. TSMO is undertaken from a systems 

perspective, which means that related TSMO 

strategies are coordinated with each other 

and across multiple jurisdictions, agencies, 

and modes. TSMO includes both efforts to 

operate the multimodal transportation system 

and activities to manage travel demand. The 

following are examples of TSMO strategies:

• Traffic incident management.

• Traffic signal coordination.

• Transit signal priority.

• Freight management.

• Work zone management.

• Special event management.

• Road weather management.

• Congestion pricing.

• Managed lanes.

• Ridesharing programs.

• Parking management.

Section 1: Introduction

Robust transportation planning and programming decisions are based on a thorough 

consideration of how conditions may change in the future and how those changes may influence 

transportation needs. Future conditions ranging from near- to long-term are subject to a range 

of different influences including financial, technological, political, socioeconomic, and climate 

factors as well as others. This primer introduces a scenario planning approach that can be 

used by planners and operators to examine variable 

future conditions, develop more robust plans, and 

make better decisions for transportation systems 

management and operations (TSMO) investments. 

The transportation planning process typically involves 

assessing needs and making recommendations based 

on considerations of historic trends and forecasts, 

resulting in a single “most-likely” estimate of future 

conditions. While this approach works well in some 

settings, the “predict and plan” method does not 

enable consideration of how future conditions might 

change and thereby affect transportation needs. The 

single forecast method also limits planners’ ability 

to .simultaneously look at the interplay of different 

factors on traveler behavior and levels of travel 

demand and how those factors can be optimized 

to achieve broader public policy goals such as 

livability. To address the limitations of predict and 

plan methods, transportation planning professionals 

are increasingly using scenario planning as a method 

to inform better decisionmaking. Scenario planning 

provides a framework to help planners and interested 

stakeholders consider issues and opportunities 

associated with uncertain futures or new desirable 

futures that are very different from conditions today. 

Scenario planning in transportation is not focused on utopian or ideal futures, rather it is a 

method that enables a more effective decisionmaking process that takes into account the 

“what-ifs?” and the longer term strategies needed to help make transportation investment 

decisions that support a more resilient and desirable future. Scenario planning is an enhancement 

of the planning process rather than a replacement. It can result in a reconfirmation of existing 

goals, objectives, policies, and investment decisions and it can highlight the need to make policy, 

programming, or investment priority changes.
2

Scenario planning in transportation is typically applied to a long-range transportation planning 

process. Often led by metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), scenario planning in 

transportation most often is used to support community efforts to establish visions that help 

identify specific development and transportation policies and investments that can in turn help 

support long term goals. However more recently, MPOs and departments of transportation 

(DOT) have begun using scenario planning to provide insights on the potential impacts of 

evolving technology, climate change, shifting traveler behavior, financial uncertainty, failing 

infrastructure, natural and man-made events, and other unknowns so that they can be factored 

into planning and programming decisions. Scenario planning is also being used in response 

to changing public policies and a call for new measures of transportation performance that 

address broader livability goals, such as increasing 

transportation choices or improving accessibility 

rather than simply looking at measures to reduce 

congestion or enhance vehicular mobility. 

As the use of TSMO strategies expands in States 

and regions across the United States, the importance 

of making effective planning and programming 

decisions for TSMO increases. To date, most 

scenario planning for transportation occurs over 

a longer term horizon, but scenario planning can 

also enhance shorter term planning and investment 

decisions. It has not been applied to TSMO-focused 

planning efforts, but given the benefits to long-range 

transportation planning, scenario planning holds 

promise for improving planning for TSMO as well. 

Planning for the management and operation of the 

transportation system is uniquely tied to several 

factors that are difficult to predict. For example, 

TSMO is supported by rapidly advancing technology, 

which will soon include connected vehicle systems. In 

addition, the Nation’s aging infrastructure conditions 

and climate change present planning challenges for 

TSMO in maintaining safety and mobility during and 

after unplanned events such as a hurricane or bridge failure. Addressing issues of uncertainty in 

TSMO planning could include the development of scenarios that look at different response times 

to major weather incidents, or look at system-level operational needs if a large shift to automated 

vehicles occurs in the next 10 years. 

Transportation systems management 

and operations proactively addresses 

transportation system user needs by:

• Influencing travel demand in terms of 

location, time, and intensity of demand.

• Managing trips effectively.

• Anticipating and responding to planned and 

unplanned events such as traffic incidents, 

work zones, inclement weather, and special 

events.

• Providing travelers with high quality 

information.

• Ensuring that the unique needs of the 

freight community are considered and 

included in all of the above.

Source: Federal Highway Administration, Office of 

Operations, The Operations Story, Presentation, 

2012, Jeffrey A. Lindley.
3

Scenario planning also offers opportunities to revisit common TSMO performance measures 

with a focus on improving the safety, efficiency, and reliability of travel and goods movement 

through a broader set of multimodal management and operational strategies. It also offers an 

opportunity to identify new measures (e.g., multimodal accessibility) and potentially new data 

needs that can address the growing importance and interest in the transportation user experience 

and transportation on demand. In sum, scenario planning offers TSMO practitioners a new 

framework for planning that can facilitate better transportation decisionmaking.

Purpose 

The intent of this primer is to inform planners, operators, and other TSMO partners on the use 

of scenario planning to advance TSMO including why and when to use it and how to apply the 

phases of scenario planning to TSMO. This primer is also meant to promote thinking about the 

broad range of opportunities for using scenario planning for TSMO by providing hypothetical 

examples and discussions about applying it at multiple geographic scales and for several 

TSMO-focused planning activities, such as developing work zone management or statewide 

freight mobility plans. While this primer does not provide detailed guidance on how to conduct 

scenario planning for a specific TSMO effort, it does promote a deeper understanding of scenario 

planning opportunities and offers a framework that readers can adapt to their specific needs and 

use as a guidance tool as they embark upon scenario planning to enhance their TSMO planning 

and programming decisions. This primer does not focus on the use of scenarios to direct realtime operations decisions such as where traffic should be rerouted when a traffic incident blocks 

all lanes of a specific part of a highway. While using scenarios to create response plans is a 

common and useful effort, it is different than the more strategic level of planning described in 

this primer and does not require the scenario planning framework described here. 

The audience for this primer is anyone who may lead or participate in an effort to plan for TSMO, 

either formally or informally. This includes transportation planners, operations professionals, 

and stakeholders at the statewide, metropolitan, rural, corridor, and local levels who contribute to 

decisions on how the transportation system should perform in terms of reliability, efficiency, and 

accessibility and what is necessary to reach that level of performance. Professionals whose work 

involves integrated corridor management (ICM), advanced transportation and demand management 

(ATDM), traffic incident management, transit operations, work zone management, road weather 

management, transportation management center (TMC) operations, travel demand management, 

and many other areas of TSMO will also find this primer useful. Finally, this primer is also 

intended to address the needs of those who engage in scenario planning to support the development 

of long-range transportation plans and other transportation plans that include TSMO.
4

Overview

This document is organized around six sections that help to give the reader a clear understanding 

of scenario planning and how they can use it to advance TSMO.

Section 1: Introduction provides the context and motivation for the use of scenario planning for 

TSMO. It also orients the reader to the purpose of the primer and its intended audience.

Section 2: Understanding Scenario Planning and its Use in Transportation discusses 

what scenario planning is and its origins. It also examines how scenario planning is used 

in transportation planning with an emphasis on its role in performance-based planning and 

programming.

Section 3: Applying the Scenario Planning Approach to Planning for Transportation 

Systems Management and Operations lays out a framework for using scenario planning for 

TSMO in six phases from “How should we get started?” to “How will we reach our desired 

future?”

Section 4: Opportunities for Scenario Planning to Advance Transportation Systems 

Management and Operations explores the range of opportunities to apply scenario planning to 

TSMO planning efforts.

Section 5: Illustrations of Scenario Planning for Transportation Systems Management and 

Operations provides readers with a step-by-step look at three hypothetical examples of scenario 

planning for TSMO in different contexts, driven by different motivations, and using different 

types of scenario planning.

Section 6: Getting Started concludes the primer and offers a list of questions to help planners 

and operators begin to scope their scenario planning effort for TSMO.
5

Section 2: Understanding Scenario Planning and 

Its Use in Transportation

What is Scenario Planning?

Scenario planning is an approach to strategic planning that uses alternate narratives of plausible 

futures (or future states) to play out decisions in an effort to make more informed choices and 

create plans for the future. From a transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) 

perspective, a future state or condition might include narratives that prompt planners and 

stakeholders to consider what kind of TSMO response might be appropriate to different types (or 

frequency) of significant weather events, a future that assumes a more significant shift in traveler 

behavior to non-auto modes, or a future where 30 percent of the vehicles on the road are essentially 

“driverless.” Considering scenarios like these can result in the identification of new technology or 

data needs, new technology investments, more communication and coordination across emergency 

response stakeholders, new multimodal TSMO strategies, and other insights that can be factored 

into both short- and long-term TSMO plans and programs. 

Scenario planning helps participants to consider the “what-ifs” of tomorrow, whether those 

are desirable or undesirable states. The simple task of imagining a different future can help 

to challenge the status quo and encourage creative thinking, which ultimately can lead to 

the development of more thoughtful and resilient plans. Scenarios are developed to enable 

participants to test out possible decisions, analyze their impacts given the conditions in each 

scenario, and come to an agreement on a preferred course of action. 

There are many definitions for scenario planning throughout literature and there are several 

variants on how to develop and use scenarios. Despite these variations, there are commonalities 

that provide structure to scenario planning. Scenarios are seen as “an internally consistent view 

of what the future might turn out to be – not a forecast, but one possible future outcome.”1

 This 

definition combines three key characteristics of scenarios: 

• Scenarios are internally consistent, depicting an array of conditions that could logically 

co-exist.

• Scenarios are plausible, depicting a future that could evolve from current conditions, 

even if it is very different from the present.

• Scenarios are conjectural rather than factual. They focus on broad implications as 

opposed to detailed predictions. 

Scenarios are neither forecasts nor predictions for a given point in time; instead, they represent 

alternative possible futures. They enable planners to consider a range of possible consequences 

1 M. Porter, Competitive Advantage (New York: Free Press 1985). 
6

of those futures and then to identify robust strategies or policy options that best “hold up” across 

the spectrum of possible future conditions. Scenario planning “formalizes the consideration of 

uncertainty in the planning process.” 2 

Peter Schwartz, an international leader in the field of scenario planning, describes scenarios 

as “the best tool I know to allow the conversation to reflect different perceptions of the 

situation (differentiation), but in such a way to create room for people to consider these 

different viewpoints and gradually align on what needs to be done, and what they want to do 

(integration).” 3 

Scenario planning supports a dynamic planning 

process that can help demonstrate the causal 

relationships of different variables and how they 

combine to create different outcomes. This gives 

people the freedom to imagine that conditions could 

change in the future if given enough time. In the 

public sector, scenario planning is often applied to 

provide a forum for engaging diverse stakeholders, 

illustrating comparisons and discussing tradeoffs, and 

encouraging systems-level thinking that breaks down 

the silos of specialization to address challenging public 

policy issues. It helps people to envision not only what 

the future might be but also what kind of future people 

actually want. Scenario planning is a more deliberate 

process that uses empirical data and quantitative 

analysis to develop plausible scenarios. 

The Origins of Scenario Planning

The origins of scenario planning in modern America are attributed to military planning methods 

that were developed during World War II and extended into the Cold War and beyond. The Air 

Force and other branches of the military would routinely envision possible combat scenarios and 

devise strategies to overcome their opponents.4 In the 1950s and 1960s, the RAND® Corporation 

helped to pioneer the science of scenario analysis, which relies on game theory. By the late 1960s, 

scenario planning was being applied regularly in corporate settings and has remained a common 

practice in business today. One of the seminal scenario planning efforts occurred in the 1970s 

when Royal Dutch Shell used scenario planning to prepare for potential events causing oil prices 

to change. In part due to that effort, Royal Dutch Shell was able react quickly to the fuel shortage 

2 J. Zmud, Transportation Research Board Webinar, “Applying Scenario Methods to Transportation Planning and Policy,” October 23, 2014. 

Slides available at: http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_750v1.pdf.

3 P. Schwartz, as quoted in Kees van der Heijden, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation (New York: Wiley and Sons, 2005).

4 C. Caplice and S. Phadnis, NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight 

Transportation Infrastructure Investment (Washington, DC: National Cooperative Highway Research Program, 2013). Available at: 

http://www.trb.org/main/blurbs/168694.asp.

Advantages of Scenario Planning:

• Accommodates uncertainty and ambiguity. 

• Helps communities prepare for a range 

of plausible futures rather than a single 

forecast. 

• Results in decisions that are more robust in 

a variety of futures.

• Provides a forum for engaging a diverse set 

of stakeholders to identify critical factors.

• Facilitates testing out possible decisions and 

their impacts on multiple future scenarios.

• Encourages system-level thinking.

• Fosters a more adaptive, resilient 

organization.
7

and high oil prices set off by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ oil embargo of 

1973.5 The company continues to practice scenario planning to this day.6 

Scenario Planning in Transportation

In transportation, scenario planning began taking hold in the United States in the early 1990s 

as a method to help support alternative analysis practices developed under the National 

Environmental Policy Act and the “3C” (comprehensive, continuous, coordinated) systems 

planning requirements of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962.7

 In the early 2000s, the 

Transportation and Community and System Preservation Pilot Program (TCSP) resulted in the 

creation of some of the early tools and processes for incorporating scenario planning into the 

development of long-range transportation plans. These early efforts focused almost entirely on 

examining alternative land-use and transportation futures that emphasized desirable stories and 

narratives for how communities wanted to grow. As a result, many of the early scenario planning 

processes resulted in public policy shifts that enabled much stronger links between land use and 

transportation planning. 

More recently, scenario planning in transportation has begun to examine a broader range of 

variable relationships beyond just land use and transportation. These include scenarios that take 

into account goals and objectives related to housing affordability, economic competitiveness, 

adapting to climate change, water conservation, fiscal sustainability, public health, and energy 

conservation. This broadening of factors is generating more integrated plans and policies as 

communities gain a better understanding of the connections between factors such as housing 

affordability and transportation accessibility or reductions in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and 

better public health outcomes.

5 C. Caplice and S. Phadnis, NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight 

Transportation Infrastructure Investment (Washington, DC: National Cooperative Highway Research Program, 2013). Available at: 

http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_750v1.pdf.

6 Shell Global, “40 years of Shell Scenarios,” Web Page. Available at: http://www.shell.com/global/future-energy/scenarios/40-years.html.

7 K. Bartholomew and R. Ewing, Integrated Transportation Scenario Planning, Metropolitan Research Center, University of Utah. July 2010.
8

Key Elements of Scenario Planning

“While scenario planning can be implemented in many ways, the key elements include:

• Use of scenarios to compare and contrast interactions between multiple factors, such as 

transportation, land use, and economic development;

• Analysis of how different land-use, demographic, or other types of scenarios could 

impact transportation networks;

• Identification of possible strategies that lead a State, community, region, or study area 

toward achieving elements of the preferred future; and

• Public engagement throughout the process.

Scenario planning shares common elements with both alternatives analysis and visioning 

exercises, but primarily differs from these processes in examining interactions between multiple 

factors, including both internal and external forces, as a way to assess possible future outcomes.”8

Scenario planning is making a difference in areas where it is used as part of transportation 

planning efforts. Scenario planning can help agencies to convey critical information 

to policy makers and elected officials who make investment decisions. For example the 

Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) addressed the linkages between funding and 

system management performance in its 2035 statewide plan by constructing three investment 

scenarios, each of which forecasted anticipated performance based on investment levels. Given 

forecasted revenues, pavement condition would deteriorate to the point at which only 25 percent 

of roads would be in good/fair condition, while congestion would increase to 70 minutes of 

delay per traveler. CDOT developed alternative revenue scenarios to demonstrate the “cost to 

sustain current performance” and the “cost to accomplish [a] vision” that had been laid out 

in the statewide long-range plan. This valuable information helped decision makers to clearly 

understand how funding shortfalls would affect system performance. 

Scenario planning helps agencies to build relationships and forge partnerships that can 

strengthen their effectiveness and build their capacity. For example, the Champaign-Urbana 

Urban Area Transportation Study (CUUATS), the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) 

for a university town in Illinois, has applied scenario planning techniques to a series of studies 

that engaged an ever-expanding array of interest groups and agency stakeholders. The resulting 

strong relationships with various local and State agencies and other organizations (including the 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) have been critical to CUUATS for obtaining data, 

developing innovative technical analysis tools, leveraging transportation investment funds, and 

building political support for regional initiatives. Long-range planning and scenario planning 

processes have worked smoothly in significant part because of the high degree of collaboration 

and coordination among local agencies.

8 U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Scenario Planning Guidebook (Washington, DC: FHWA, 2011). 

Available at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/scenario_and_visualization/scenario_planning/scenario_planning_guidebook/. 
9

Scenario planning can help transportation practitioners and policymakers better prepare for 

the future by encouraging an examination of different future conditions that get beyond just 

an extrapolation of current trends. As explored in the National Cooperative Highway Research 

Program (NCHRP) Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, there are several key trends 

that will significantly impact transportation in the coming decades. Scenario planning can be a useful 

tool for better understanding the potential impacts of those trends and planning accordingly for system 

resiliency, shifts in travel behavior and travel demand, and the rapid advances in technology.

Scenario Planning to Strategically Address Driving Issues

Affecting the Future of Transportation

The National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) issued NCHRP Report 750: 

Strategic Issues Facing Transportation in an effort to compile research and provide practitioner 

guidance for addressing climate change, socio-demographic shifts, technology advances, 

freight and goods movement, alternative energy and fuels, and sustainability. These six topic 

areas are seen as having a significant impact on how we will plan, fund, build and operate our 

transportation systems in the future. Six separate reports summarize these research efforts: 

Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight Transportation Infrastructure Investment

Volume 2: Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, and the Highway System – Practitioner’s 

Guide and Research Report

Volume 3: Expediting Future Technologies for Enhancing Transportation System Performance

Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies

Volume 5: Preparing State Transportation Agencies for an Uncertain Energy Future

Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand

The documents are available at:

http://www.trb.org/NCHRP750/ForesightReport750SeriesReports.aspx.

Each report addresses issues relevant to long-term thinking about management and operations, 

offering again some key drivers that could help transportation systems management and 

operations (TSMO) planners envision different scenarios and appropriate corresponding 

management and operations responses. For example, Volume 2 provides a practitioner’s guide 

and research on specific weather and climate trends as well as how those conditions may 

potentially impact events on the highway system. It cites several adaptation strategies that will 

likely be needed for transportation agencies with respect to network operations:

• Greater progress in surveillance and monitoring. 

• More sophisticated data management to enable better predictive models of future trends. 

• More effective decision support technology tied to common approaches and treatments 

for mitigating impacts. 
10

Scenario Planning to Strategically Address Driving Issues

Affecting the Future of Transportation (Continued)

• New operational practices for extreme weather events relative to evacuations, detours, 

closings, etc. tied to real-time weather and traffic information. 

• More effective communications and information dissemination.

• Greater advances in agency organizational changes and capacity building to ensure more 

integrated interagency relationships. 

Given the emerging science and research on climate change, scenario planning techniques may 

be useful in helping TSMO planners and other stakeholders determine how best to identify 

and incorporate adaptation strategies into regional TSMO plans. In particular, considering 

that extreme weather events are predicted to increase in many regions across the country, 

scenario planning could be an effective approach to helping States and metropolitan planning 

organizations (MPOs) bring together the interagency stakeholders needed to effectively address 

the issue. Doing so will not only bring the right people to the table, it may also aid in helping 

to set expectations among planners and even the general public on acceptable levels of system 

performance under extreme conditions. Finally, the scenario process might also aid the region in 

better understanding its areas of susceptibility, thereby further helping to refine and strategically 

deploy TSMO strategies. 

The NCHRP Report 750 series not only contains information on some of the driving factors that 

will influence transportation in the future, it also includes specific examples and tools for using 

scenario planning as a means for addressing those factors. 
11

Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework

In 2011, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) published the FHWA Scenario Planning 

Guidebook, which outlines key phases associated with transportation scenario planning, as 

illustrated in Figure 1. 

Figure 1. Illustration. The Federal Highway Administration’s 

Six-Phase Scenario Planning Framework.9

9 U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Scenario Planning Guidebook (Washington, DC: FHWA, 2011). 

Available at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/scenario_and_visualization/scenario_planning/scenario_planning_guidebook/. Identify, Prepare, and Refine Analysis Tools Stakeholder Involvement

How should we get started?

Scope the effort and engage partners.

Considerations: Process goals, objectives, budget, and 

stakeholder roles and responsibilities.

Output: Work plan.

1

Outputs:

Transportation systems 

inventory, land 

suitability analysis, 

evaluation of historical 

trends.

Where are we now?

Establish baseline analysis. Identify factors and trends that 

affect the state, region, community, or study area.

Considerations: Transportation and land supply, suitability, and 

demand; state, regional, community, or study-area trends.

2

Outputs: Set of 

working principles 

that document broad 

state, community, 

region, or study-area 

goals and preferences.

Who are we and where do we want to go?

Establish future goals and aspirations based on values of 

the state, region, community, or study area.

Considerations: Key values and priorities for the state, 

community, region, or study area.

3

What could the future look like?

Create baseline and alternative scenarios. 

Considerations: Scenario types, analysis tools, travel demand 

model.

4 Outputs: Identification 

of appropriate scenario 

analysis tool or 

refinement of travel 

demand model; 

baseline and 

alternative scenarios.

What impacts will scenarios have?

Assess scenario impacts, influences, and effects.

Considerations: Indicators to help evaluate scenario 

performance.

5 Outputs: Refined or 

calibrated analysis tool(s) 

or model(s) if necessary; 

list of indicators to 

compare scenario 

outcomes; qualitative or 

quantitative assessment 

of scenario impacts. 

How will we reach our desired future?

Craft the comprehensive vision. Identify strategic actions 

and performance measures.

Considerations: Stakeholder feedback on scenarios and the 

future blueprint; potential actions, investments, or policies to 

lead the state, community, region, or study area toward the 

comprehensive vision. 

6

Outputs:

Comprehensive vision; 

action steps; 

performance 

measures to assess 

progress; plan for 

monitoring progress.

Data Collection
12

The guidebook offers a structure for scenario planning that aligns well with traditional 

transportation planning processes. The guidebook focuses primarily on how to apply scenario 

planning on a regional scale; however, these same phases and steps can be applied to statewide, 

corridor-level, or neighborhood-level approaches and across short-term or long-term planning 

horizons. Per FHWA, these are suggested phases, but each location using scenario planning has 

unique situations, and these phases can be adjusted to fit each community’s individual needs. 

For example, some communities might be much further along in their data collection efforts and 

could skip Phase 2.

•Phase 1. The leaders of the scenario planning effort 

bring together a broad set of relevant stakeholders 

and scope the effort. 

•Phase 2. Practitioners establish the baseline 

information and data needed to identify 10-, 20-, or 

50-year trends and other information relevant to 

revealing insights into travel demand, economic 

drivers, and other important factors that could 

influence system-wide transportation dynamics. 

•Phase 3. Building upon their understanding of the 

existing public policy context and future trends, the 

leaders of the scenario planning effort work with the 

stakeholders to identify values, goals, and priorities. 

•Phase 4. The scenario planning leaders guide 

stakeholders in creating different narratives or 

scenarios for the future; e.g., 5-, 10-, 20-, or 30-year 

projections. These projections are driven by the public 

policy goals, objectives, and values identified during 

Phase 3 to define a desirable future or futures that take 

into account “what-if” conditions that could arise 

outside of the public policy level of influence (e.g., 

inclement weather, new technology, significant 

financial or economic shifts). This phase also includes 

the development of a set of measures or key indicators 

that can provide quantitative and qualitative analysis 

for scenario comparisons. Following the development 

of scenarios, strategies necessary to bring about each 

potential future must be identified. 

•Phase 5. The relative impacts of each scenario are 

compared and analyzed based on a pre-determined set 

of indicators or performance measures. 

Types of Scenario Planning

Predictive

Allows for modeling or examination of 

different scenarios in response to probable 

trends (e.g., higher population growth, lower 

revenues, etc.). Forecasts have some level of 

probability of occurring within the planning 

horizon. The purpose here is to identify 

scenarios (transportation packages) that are 

effective in light of those probable trends.

Normative

Allows for modeling or examining different 

scenarios that depict desirable future 

conditions (e.g., we want to dramatically 

increase mode split or change development 

patterns, we want to increase the use of 

driverless cars to 50 percent). Scenarios 

describe different visions of desirable future 

conditions and explore different ways of 

achieving each vision. The purpose of the 

process is to build consensus on desired 

future conditions and to identify potential 

policy changes and investment strategies that 

would best support those conditions. 

Exploratory 

Allows for modeling or examining different 

scenarios in response to uncontrollable or 

unknown future conditions (e.g., we want 

to better understand impacts of global trade 

changes, extreme weather, etc.) The purpose 

of this type of planning is to lead stakeholders 

to identify policies, plans, and strategies that 

can work best under all extreme conditions.
13

• Phase 6. The scenario planning process concludes with stakeholders crafting a preferred 

vision, strategies to accomplish the vision, and performance measures to track progress in 

achieving that vision.

This use of scenario planning has several benefits as well as costs in terms of a lead 

organization’s human and technical resources as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Costs and Benefits of Scenario Planning.

Benefits Costs

Human Resources • Deeper expertise.

• Expanded partnerships.

• Broader awareness 

and support for new 

initiatives.

Time, effort, and/or funding required for:

• Capacity building.

• Stakeholder engagement.

• Conflict management.

Technical Resources • Enriched datasets.

• Robust, defensible 

decision support.

Time, effort, and/or funding required for:

• Data development.

• Analysis tools.

Using Scenario Planning in Performance-Based Planning and 

Programming

Scenario planning is an important tool for performance-based planning and programming and is 

specifically encouraged by Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) for the 

development of metropolitan transportation plans.10 The passage of the MAP-21 in 2012 created 

requirements for performance-based planning and programming (PBPP) within metropolitan, 

statewide, and nonmetropolitan decisionmaking. PBPP applies performance management 

principles to transportation planning and programming to achieve desired performance outcomes 

for the multimodal transportation system. This is accomplished by incorporating goals and 

objectives, performance measures and targets, and regular progress reporting into transportation 

decisionmaking. 

Scenario planning can be used at multiple points within the PBPP process to help stakeholders 

determine their desired strategic direction. Starting with a baseline analysis (“where are we 

now?”), scenario planning enables stakeholders to establish future aspirations based on their 

values. This process can involve a specific discussion of goals, supporting objectives, and 

performance measures based on these values.

10 23 USC Section 134(i)(2)(C).
14

The scenario planning approach helps visualize and articulate, in both qualitative and 

quantitative terms, how the combination of strategies would help meet public policy goals and 

performance targets. It allows for the consideration of how various factors, such as revenue 

constraints, demographic trends, economic shifts, or technological innovation, can affect a State 

or region and its transportation system performance. The analysis may allow stakeholders to 

explore the trade-offs between future scenarios, assess the impacts of external factors such as the 

economy and growth, and select a future vision and investment priorities that bring them closest 

to their desired performance outcomes.

Through the use of scenario planning, metropolitan, statewide, and other planning organizations 

are able to take a comprehensive approach to PBPP by exploring multiple potential futures and 

making a well-informed selection of a preferred alternative with the most potential for supporting 

priorities and performance targets. 

The following text box provides two examples of scenario planning applied to broader planning 

contexts in which TSMO is one of multiple solutions brought together to address a problem or 

achieve a vision. 
15

Plan Bay Area

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the metropolitan planning organization 

(MPO) for the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) 

used scenario planning as part of their performance-based planning approach to developing the 

California Bay Area’s integrated land use, housing, and long-range transportation plan, called 

Plan Bay Area. 

First, the agencies developed performance targets for the plan. The transportation-related 

performance targets they identified are shown in the figure below. The agencies then developed 

scenarios containing different combinations of growth patterns, transportation, and land-use 

strategies and analyzed them to see which scenarios came closest to achieving the performance 

targets. The agencies used different tools to analyze each performance target. For Target 9 (see 

Figure 2), MTC’s activity-based Travel Model One was used, and for Target 10, post-processing 

methodologies developed by MTC were used to estimate future road and transit conditions.11

Figure 2. Diagram. Transportation-Related Performance Target For Plan Bay Area.12

MTC and ABAG conducted two rounds of developing and analyzing scenarios, which included 

investments in programs such as a Freeway Performance Initiative (which included intelligent 

transportation systems (ITS), ramp metering, traffic operations systems, arterial management 

strategies) and an express lanes network.13 The quantitative analysis showed that none of the 

scenarios were able to meet all of the specified performance targets, and some of the targets were 

not met by any of the scenarios. In addition, to analyze the scenarios, the agencies conducted 

assessments of all non-committed transportation projects contained within the scenarios.

Several findings resulted from the project-level assessments. First, ITS technologies and 

congestion pricing programs proved to be highly cost effective and met many performance 

targets. In addition, the results showed that express lanes are only moderately cost-effective due 

to high capital costs, and they tend to increase automobile capacity, which negatively impacted 

performance targets.14

11 Association of Bay Area Governments and Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Plan Bay Area – Performance Assessment Report, July 

2013. Available at: http://onebayarea.org/pdf/final_supplemental_reports/FINAL_PBA_Performance_Assessment_Report.pdf.

12 Ibid.

13 Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Transportation 2035. Available at: http://mtc.ca.gov/our-work/plans-projects/plan-bay-area-2040/

transportation-2035.

14 Ibid.

TRANSPORTATION

SYSTEM

EFFECTIVENESS

• Increase non-auto mode share by 10%

• Decrease automobile vehicle miles traveled per capita by 10%

Maintain the transportation system in a state of good repair:

• Increase local road pavement condition index (PCI) to 75 or better

• Decrease distressed lane-miles of state highways to less than 10% of total lane-miles

• Reduce share of transit assets past their useful life to 0%

Source: Adapted from Caltrans Smart Mobility 2010 

Source: Regional and state plans

9

10
16

Plan Bay Area (Continued)

As a result of the project-level assessments, high-performing projects were incorporated into the 

transportation strategy included in the “preferred scenario” developed in the spring of 2012. This 

scenario, called the “Jobs-Housing Connection Strategy,” included a transportation investment 

strategy that “devotes 87 percent of funding to operate and maintain the existing transportation 

network.” 15

Figure 3. Diagram. Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s

Performance-Based Planning Framework.16

15 Association of Bay Area Governments and Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Plan Bay Area – Performance Assessment Report. July 

2013. Available at: http://onebayarea.org/pdf/final_supplemental_reports/FINAL_PBA_Performance_Assessment_Report.pdf.

16 Ibid. 
17

“What Would It Take?” Scenario Study in the National Capital Region

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Transportation Planning Board (TPB) 

conducted the “What Would it Take?” Scenario Study in 2010 to identify strategies to help the region 

achieve its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. To complete the study, the TPB conducted an 

emissions baseline inventory and forecast for the region and determined three sources for reducing 

emissions: fuel efficiency, alternative fuel, and travel efficiency. Then they identified 37 potential 

transportation strategies that could be used to reduce emissions and used sketch planning methods 

to analyze each of these strategies individually for emissions reduction potential, cost-effectiveness, 

and timeframe for implementation. The top scoring strategies were grouped into two categories or 

scenarios based on the level of government that would be implementing the strategies: 17

High Federal Role – Examines the impact of “hypothetical, large-scale action taken by the 

federal government,”18 including enhanced light duty and heavy duty Corporate Average Fuel 

Economy (CAFE) standards and high gas prices. 

State/Regional/Local Action – Examines the impact of current Federal legislation combined with 

short-term and long-term actions undertaken by State and local governments. Short-term (pre2020) actions include strategies such as transit signal priority, incident management, traffic signal 

optimization, and transportation demand management (TDM) programs. Long-term actions 

include increasing non-auto mode share, implementing pricing on new and existing roadways, 

and reducing travel through transit-oriented land-use development. 

The study results showed that while neither category would meet the region’s emissions reduction 

goals, the short-term scenario strategies “position the region toward meeting early targets.”19 The 

study team concluded that meeting the emissions reduction goals would require incorporating 

more aggressive strategies into all of the scenario categories and conducting additional analysis.20

There are many contexts in which scenario planning can be used to advance TSMO. In the Plan 

Bay Area and National Capital Region “What Would it Take?” planning efforts, the scope included 

TSMO as one of many transportation strategies. Alternatively, scenario planning can be used to 

look exclusively at TSMO and answer the questions necessary to create TSMO-oriented plans or 

make decisions about how to move ahead with TSMO goals, objectives, strategies, and investments. 

This primer will discuss several opportunities and hypothetical illustrations of using scenario 

planning for TSMO. As a preview, Table 2 provides a sample of the TSMO contexts for scenario 

planning use that will be covered in later sections.

17 M. Bansal and E. Morrow, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, “Meeting Transportation Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals 

in the National Capital Region: A ‘What Would it Take’ Scenario,” July 2010. Available at: http://www.mwcog.org/clrp/elements/scenarios/

whatwouldittakeTPB_TRB_Resubmit.pdf.

18 Ibid., p. 10.

19 National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, What Would it Take? Transportation and Climate Change in the National Capital 

Region, Final Report, May 2010, p. vii. Available at: http://www.mwcog.org/uploads/committee-documents/kV5YX1pe20100617100959.pdf.

20 Ibid.
18

Table 2. Transportation Systems Management and Operations Planning

Contexts and Sample Scenario Planning Applications.

Transportation Systems 

Management and Operations 

(TSMO) Planning Context Sample Scenario Planning Application

Developing a regional TSMO 

plan to provide input into the 

development of the region’s 

metropolitan transportation 

plan. 

Option 1: Formulate and reach consensus on a set of 

operations objectives for the regional TSMO plan that are 

most effective in helping to achieve the goals from the 

metropolitan transportation plan. Scenarios take into account 

competing priorities.

Option 2: Analyze the effectiveness of different packages of 

TSMO strategies relative to different levels of TSMO funding 

or data availability. This would help to identify TSMO 

strategies that best meet operations given unknown funding 

or data availability levels.

Forming a statewide 

investment plan for TSMO.

Examine three main TSMO investment approaches, drawing 

from nine investment categories and using portfolios to 

describe what the 10- to 15-year outcomes of each approach 

would look like from the traveler’s perspective.

Transportation management 

center (TMC) strategic 

planning for technology 

investments, staffing levels, 

and other costs.

Explore alternative futures with regard to increased extreme 

weather events and vehicle automation and determine how 

best to prepare the TMC for those potential realities.

Creating a work zone 

transportation management 

plan for a significant highway 

reconstruction project.

Identify and analyze the impacts of a few different TSMO 

approaches to managing the travel impacts of the work zone 

and develop a preferred approach based on stakeholder input 

and analysis of impacts.
19

Section 3: Applying the Scenario Planning 

Approach to Planning for Transportation Systems 

Management and Operations

Wherever transportation infrastructure exists, communities face the challenge of planning to 

manage and operate it. Transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) planning 

occurs at all geographic scales, including local, corridor, subregional, regional, metropolitan, 

statewide, and multi-state. TSMO planning efforts range from informal to formal and cover a 

spectrum of temporal scales—from a few weeks to many decades. In addition, the functional 

scope of TSMO planning may be a single TSMO strategy or program (e.g., regional signal 

coordination, transportation management centers, traffic incident management) or all TSMO 

strategies and every combination in between. While the scenario planning approach could 

be used in any of these contexts, this primer will illustrate how scenario planning can be 

incorporated into a handful of TSMO planning efforts. 

Scenario planning can create a more robust and effective approach to planning for TSMO 

in a variety of contexts. The scenario planning approach can confer benefits for all TSMO 

planning efforts, especially in cases where there is a significant level of uncertainty about 

the future or there is a need to resolve conflicts about how a particular area or corridor might 

develop over time. 

The scenario planning approach can be particularly effective for TSMO planning when the 

transportation service providers and other stakeholders must arrive at decisions about operations 

when there are differing assumptions about future events, trends, policies, or other factors that 

will significantly impact the successful outcomes of operations decisions. For example, scenario 

planning can help a region decide how to invest in road weather management or hurricane 

evacuation operations given the uncertain impacts of climate change on weather patterns in the 

region. Alternatively, it could be applied in planning for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) 

equipment investments for a State’s highway system over the next 5 years given the uncertainty 

in the pace and direction of technological innovations. 

Similarly, scenario planning can be effective when the stakeholder visions for an area are 

unclear or there are competing visions and goals about how an area should evolve. For instance, 

a stakeholder community may have differing ideas regarding the purpose and design of a street. 

One segment of the community may push to redevelop the street into a multimodal, suburban 

“Main Street” with development fronting the street, while another faction may be adamant about 

maintaining high-speed mobility for regional travelers by controlling vehicular access to adjacent 

development. Scenario planning could help the stakeholders develop a range of different futures 

that illustrate the tradeoffs of different corridor approaches and help clarify a preferred vision 

that sets the framework for identifying specific TSMO strategies to support that vision. 
20

In a TSMO context, the focus of the effort is not just on the road and land-use development 

patterns per se, but rather the TSMO-specific strategies to help optimize and improve the 

operations and management necessary for meeting travelers’ needs. Typical considerations 

in a TSMO scenario planning process could include identifying strategies that address how 

long it takes to travel along a facility by different modes, what types of design features and 

amenities should be provided to various travel modes, or what new information technology and 

communications could be implemented to provide more accurate real-time travel times or options 

for different users. The primary goal of scenario planning is to identify a set of preferred TSMO 

strategies in response to a robust consideration of tradeoffs associated with different public 

policy goals or future uncertainties. Strategies such as increasing transit service and encouraging 

more non-motorized travel may be part of any solution, and will include the examination of 

multimodal metrics such as auto and non-auto travel time. Looking at these types of metrics will 

help stakeholders identify strategies to support improved transportation system management and 

operations. In addition, scenarios aimed at creating more resilient transportation systems might 

include identification of new investments needs in communication networks or identifying new 

measures or targets for getting the transportation system operational after a major weather event. 

The general approach to scenario planning provided by the Federal Highway Administration 

(FHWA) in its 2011 FHWA Scenario Planning Guidebook21 offers a useful structure to planners 

and operators as they shape their scenario planning effort for TSMO. This section looks closely 

at each phase in FHWA’s scenario planning approach and describes how the scenario planning 

leaders would conduct each phase in the context of advancing TSMO, including the important 

questions to address. This section also distinguishes and clarifies the desired outputs during each 

phase. The end of this section provides an overview of analysis tools and models that could be 

used to support scenario planning for TSMO activities.

Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Applied to Transportation Systems Management and Operations 

Figure 4 depicts the FHWA 2011 scenario planning framework, adapted to apply to TSMO 

planning contexts. The figure uses the same six phases as the FHWA scenario planning approach 

but defines each phase as it applies to TSMO. Instructions or questions to consider in the left 

column provide quick guidance on actions to take or questions to consider during each phase. 

The diagram also shows the primary outputs for each phase. There will be some difference in 

the implementation of this approach for each of the three types of scenario planning: predictive, 

normative, and exploratory. The unique aspects of these three types will be highlighted in the 

explanation of each phase below.

21 U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Scenario Planning Guidebook, 2011. Available at: http://www.fhwa.dot.

gov/planning/scenario_and_visualization/scenario_planning/scenario_planning_guidebook/.
21

Figure 4. Diagram. The Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning Framework 

Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. 

Identify, Prepare, and Refine Analysis Tools

Stakeholder Involvement

How should we get started?

Convene a broad set of relevant stakeholders and scope the effort:

 What do we want to accomplish/address? 

 What is the geographic area and timeframe?

 What are the pressing issues or desired areas of change in operations?

 Who should be involved in these discussions?

 Focal issue and major driving forces influencing the focal issue should 

arise during this step.

Output: Work plan, 

operations stakeholder 

group, focal issue, 

driving forces.

1

Output: Baseline 

information on trends, 

current performance, 

institutional context.

Where are we now?

 Establish the baseline information and data needed to identify trends, issues, 

and opportunities for relevant time horizons (usually 10-30 yrs).

 Data should include travel time reliability, delay, and incident or event 

management statistics as well as factors influencing travel demand. 

 Current operating policy, transportation systems management and 

operations (TSMO)-related institutional collaboration and organizational 

capabilities for the area. 

2

Output: Draft 

operations goals, 

objectives, 

performance measures 

and targets, key local 

factors.

Where do we want to go?

 Establish desired operations goals, objectives, and performance targets in 

light of transportation goals from local, metropolitan planning organization 

(MPO), department of transportation (DOT) plans and policies. 

 Identify performance measures.

 Identify key local factors that could negatively impact reaching those 

desired conditions. 

3

What could the future look like?

 Develop scenario logic (based on driving forces) and create alternative 

scenarios to envision, examine, or explore how the transportation system 

should or could operate under different conditions. 

 Identify TSMO strategies or policies to best achieve future description in 

each scenario.

4

Output: Scenarios 

and TSMO 

strategies or 

policies.

What impacts will scenarios have?

 Alternative scenarios are evaluated according to the operations 

objectives and performance targets identified in step 3, using analytic 

tools, models, and stakeholder input. 

 Iterative consideration of potential outcomes helps stakeholders to refine 

operations objectives and performance targets.

5

Output: Estimated 

impacts of TSMO 

strategies or policies 

for each scenario. 

How will we reach our desired future?

 Stakeholders apply insights from scenario analysis to create a preferred 

scenario or strategic direction to guide operations planning and 

programming.

 Stakeholders develop an action plan to implement the preferred scenario 

or strategic direction, linking to operations objectives. 

6

Output: Action plan, 

TSMO projects, 

programs.

Data Collection
22

Phase by Phase: Process, Participants, and Outputs

The information below describes how each phase of scenario planning could be accomplished in 

the context of TSMO.

Phase 1. How Should We Get Started? 

Figure 5. Diagram. Phase 1 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning 

Framework Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations.

During this phase, the leaders of the scenario planning effort bring together a broad set of 

relevant stakeholders to scope the effort by answering questions such as:

• What do we want to accomplish or address?

• What is the geographic area (state, region, system, corridor)?

• What are the pressing issues or desired areas of change?

• Are there uncertainties we are concerned about?

• Who should be involved in this process, why, and how? 

• What is our time horizon?

One of the perceived challenges of using scenario planning for TSMO is the inherent tension that 

exists in taking what is typically the shorter term (5-10 year time horizons) application of TSMO 

planning efforts, and expanding that view to allow for a longer term (20, 30 or 50+ year horizon) 

examination of potential futures. However, this perceived challenge is actually an opportunity 

to better define short-term, mid-term, and long-term TSMO strategies. It also helps create the 

foundation for TSMO implementation and monitoring to track progress against short- and longterm performance objectives.
23

Figure 6. Diagram. Planning Horizons.

A critical activity during this phase is to pinpoint the specific questions and desired outcomes 

that stakeholders want the scenario planning effort to address. Identifying the target questions 

will help the project leaders to select the type of process best suited to their needs, as shown in 

Table 3. 

Short-term 

Management 

& Operations 

Strategies and 

Performance 

Targets

0-5 years 5-10 years 10+ years

Mid-term 

Management 

& Operations 

Strategies and 

Performance 

Targets

Long-term 

Management 

& Operations 

Strategies and 

Performance 

Targets

30+ Year 

Desired 

Scenario and 

Objectives
24

Table 3. Scenario Planning Focal Questions and Outcomes.

Scenario Planning Type Example Focal Questions Outcomes and Benefits

Predictive

• Look at scenarios in 

response to probable or 

likely trends. 

• The intent is to identify 

TSMO packages that 

are effective in light 

of probable trends of 

interest. 

What are the most costeffective TSMO strategies 

to support greenhouse gas 

emission targets given 

the potential impacts of 

a proposed new freight 

distribution center?

Aids in strengthening and sharpening 

the effectiveness of an existing 

plan or program by considering 

potential obstacles, opportunities, or 

changes in local conditions that could 

realistically emerge during the given 

time horizon. Typically used when 

wanting to test the effectiveness of a 

plan and/or to develop a “Plan B” to 

keep on hand in case the anticipated 

event or shift occurs.

Normative

• Examine scenarios 

depicting desirable 

future conditions.

• The purpose is to 

build consensus on 

a preferred future 

and identify what is 

necessary to achieve 

that future (e.g., policy 

changes, operations 

objectives, TSMO 

investments, etc.). 

How can TSMO policies 

and investments help the 

region to transform a 

congested, automobileoriented suburban arterial 

corridor into a vibrant 

“Main Street” that 

provides safe, convenient 

accessibility for pedestrians, 

bicyclists, bus riders, car 

drivers, and commercial 

truck drivers?

Helps to reach consensus on a 

clearly defined, shared vision, goals, 

and strategies. This is beneficial 

when there is no clear vision to 

guide decisions, when different 

stakeholders have competing visions, 

or when a shift in policy triggers the 

need to redefine the vision. Typically 

used when wanting to articulate, 

reconcile, or reconsider the definition 

of a “desirable” future.

Exploratory

• Investigate different 

scenarios in response 

to uncontrollable 

and unknown future 

conditions. 

• The goal is to identify 

plans, policies, 

strategies that work 

best in all conditions.

How can the region best 

prepare to maintain 

transportation system 

efficiency and reliability in 

light of the various potential 

environmental changes that 

may occur over time due 

to the impacts of climate 

change?

Facilitates planning for resiliency 

in response to uncertainty. Also 

within this category is the benefit of 

managing risks due to uncertainty 

(i.e., deciding how to invest in ITS/

TMCs based on uncertain technology 

trends.) Scenario planning can help 

communities arrive at decisions 

about operations made in the context 

of very different assumptions 

regarding future events, trends, 

policies, priorities, or other factors of 

uncertainty.

ITS = intelligent transportation systems 

TMC = traffic management center 

TSMO = transportation systems management and operations
25

In order to garner broad discussions, the leaders of a TSMO scenario planning activity, 

regardless of type, should engage a diverse stakeholder group in the process that reflects interests 

and expertise across disciplines. This group will help to confirm trends and factors that may 

influence those trends. This will in turn confirm the overall aspirations of the stakeholders and 

support the effort to develop strategies. 

This could include operators; transportation, land-use, and housing planners; emergency 

management professionals; traffic reporters; public information officers; local developers; 

demographers; communications and information technology experts; economic development 

officials; and representatives from State, city, and county departments of transportation (DOT); 

public works departments; transit agencies; port authorities; toll authorities or high-occupancy 

toll (HOT) lane operators; pedestrian and bicycle groups; disability advocacy organizations; 

universities; the trucking, rail, and port industry; and the private sector. The stakeholders that 

may be involved vary depending on the purpose of the TSMO planning activity. For TSMO 

planning activities focused on traffic incident management or emergency transportation 

operations, emergency management agencies and public safety organizations such as State and 

local police, fire/emergency medical services (EMS), towing, hazardous materials (HAZMAT) 

responders, and 911 operators should be considered. During Phase 1, additional stakeholders will 

likely be identified and invited to be part of the effort. 

Stakeholder identification can build upon the existing public outreach plans of the metropolitan 

planning organization (MPO), which often includes standing committees or stakeholder groups 

that are regularly engaged in long-range transportation planning or other cross-agency planning 

efforts within the region. For instance, many MPOs have a standing land-use committee to aid 

in the development of long-term socioeconomic forecasts; in addition, many communities also 

have identified cross-agency representatives for emergency operations planning that could also be 

easily identified. 

Phase 2. Where Are We Now?

At this stage it is important to gather the baseline information that will provide relevant 

context to help answer the target questions. This will likely include data for past trends, current 

conditions, and projected future trends that build off of the existing information in metropolitan 

or statewide transportation plans and records of travel conditions maintained by a transportation 

management center (TMC), DOT, or transit operating agency. If trying to conduct scenario 

planning to address extreme weather or climate change, it would be important to gather 

conditions and trends relative to transportation system performance under previous disruptions 

as well as information on future weather trends. Typically, TSMO-oriented scenario planning 

groups would gather transportation data needed to identify 10-year and 20-year trends and 
26

issues along with opportunities in growth and development. This may include travel demand, 

truck traffic, port use, transit ridership, and other information that may provide insights into 

travel demand, economic drivers, and other important factors that could influence system-wide 

transportation dynamics.

Figure 7. Diagram. Phase 2 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning 

Framework Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations.

The purpose of this initial data gathering effort is to understand the operations context in terms 

of future trends and how that relates to the questions of interest. For instance, questions that the 

stakeholders may want to answer through data gathering during this phase include:

• How much time do people spend traveling today and what is it projected to be in the future?

• How much additional time is required when operating conditions are affected by 

weather, incidents, or special events? Has advanced planning taken place to ensure a 

minimum of disruption during such events? 

• Is access to destinations by walking, biking or taking transit adequately incorporated 

into the transportation system? 

• What are the projected increases in travel-inducing development and how is travel 

adaptation to growth being addressed in the corridor or across the region? 

• What are the current levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per capita in the region? 

This baseline data can come from sources and analysis associated with regional travel demand 

models, geographic information system (GIS) analysis of accessibility, and archived operations 

data. In addition, trends in technology use by operators and travelers should be considered for 

building scenarios in the next phases. This baseline information should also include the current 

operating and institutional policies for the region, corridor, or area of focus.
27

It is also important to bring to any scenario planning effort the overall goals that are part of 

current, overarching documents such as the metropolitan transportation plan (MTP) or statewide 

long-range transportation plan. Long-range transportation plan goals would be a reasonable 

starting point for initiating discussions about operational goals and fostering more dialogue about 

how the transportation system ultimately can support a community’s desired future.

In addition, if the scenario process is exploratory, it may be helpful at this stage to discuss 

reasonable goals and expectations about how the transportation system ideally would function in 

response to specific events or weather occurrences. These goal-setting discussions set the context 

for the scenario planning effort. During this phase, it is important either to reaffirm existing 

goals or to identify new goals that can drive scenario development. 

Phase 3. Where Do We Want To Go?

Figure 8. Diagram. Phase 3 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning 

Framework Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations.

With a solid understanding of the existing operations context and likely future trends, the next phase 

involves discussing and identifying specific operations goals and objectives for the transportation 

system. These discussions should be geared towards developing goals that describe different quality 

of life or value-oriented outcomes such as “we want to spend less time driving alone in our cars 

to meet our daily travel needs,” or “we want to spend less time sitting in congestion,” or “we want 

travelers to have all necessary information on travel time, mode, and costs in real-time to make better 

travel decisions,” or “we want more reliable, comfortable, and healthy options for getting to and from 

work,” or “we want to create a transportation system that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” 

To foster the discussion, stakeholders might pose some of the following questions to help identify 

goals and desired outcomes: 
28

• What is working well today, and how might that work in the future given projected 

changes in demand, development, vehicle or infrastructure technology, policies, or 

funding levels? 

•Are there competing interests relative to mobility 

 and accessibility? 

•Are there regional or local transportation goals to 

 shift more people into non-motorized or shared-use 

 modes of transportation? 

•If so, what kind of transit reliability and service is 

 most desirable? 

•What level of additional cargo and associated 

 businesses is the community trying to 

 accommodate or attract? 

•Are there specific concerns about reducing overall 

 vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or reducing peak hour 

 levels of congestion on certain corridors? 

•What is a reasonable expectation of system 

 functioning under extreme weather events? 

At this phase, an important outcome is to start to 

identify some very concrete goals and objectives 

from which more specific operations objectives and 

performances measures can be developed and used 

to evaluate different scenarios and ultimately monitor 

system performance over time. This discussion 

should remain high-level in nature to ensure that the 

view points of the various stakeholders are reflected, 

but it should also be specific enough to generate ideas 

about operations objectives.

Translating these goals into operations objectives 

using scenario planning requires an iterative 

approach. After identifying goals and understanding 

current conditions and trends, stakeholders could 

begin to identify their desired outcome-based 

objectives for operations. At this stage, it is unlikely that the stakeholders would identify specific 

targets for those objectives. Instead, it is anticipated that stakeholders would identify the aspect 

of performance they would like to see changed, such as “improve bus on-time performance,” 

“increase travel time reliability on arterials or a specific corridor” or “less stressful trips for 

trucks carrying goods into the city center.” The identification of these initial objectives should 

also lead to the development of performance measures that will be used in the evaluation and 

comparison of scenarios. For example, performance measures corresponding to the objectives 

Scenario Planning Adds Value 

One of the valued-added elements of using 

scenario planning to establish operations 

goals and objectives is that it can foster 

the discussion of operations objectives that 

can be both supported by transportation 

systems management and operations (TSMO) 

strategies as well as prompt development of a 

more holistic set of strategies across different 

sectors or implementing agencies. 

For instance, if the objective is to increase 

efficiency in non-single-occupancy-vehicle 

(SOV) trips, there may be a bundle of 

strategies that can be used to effect that 

change, such as travel demand management, 

transit signal prioritization, local land-use 

policy changes, bus operational improvements 

or service expansions, improvements to 

bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, 

congestion pricing, and place-based employer 

recruitment. 

Engaging representatives from different 

agencies in these early goal- and objectivesetting conversations helps all parties better 

understand the relationships between different 

variables across community systems, 

revealing the interrelated nature of land use, 

transportation, economic development and 

resource protection.
29

could include “buffer time index,” “total average truck trip time into and out of the city center,” 

and “bus on-time performance.”

During the stakeholder conversations of this stage, the TSMO planning leaders can work to 

identify performance measures iteratively with the stakeholder group. Brainstorming the range 

of TSMO objectives and performance measures at this stage can help to better anticipate the 

full spectrum of objectives that can drive the creation of scenarios. Operations objectives and 

performance measures can be adapted from the FHWA Advancing Metropolitan Planning for 

Operations: The Building Blocks of a Model Transportation Plan Incorporating Operations - 

A Desk Reference.

22

Phase 4. What Could the Future Look Like?

In this phase, the scenario planning leaders work with the stakeholders to develop distinct 

scenarios that describe a potential future for how the transportation system may function 

(from Phase 1) and the TSMO strategies and other solutions to achieve the community’s goals 

and objectives (from Phase 3) given the scenario description. 

Figure 9. Diagram. Phase 4 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning 

Framework Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations. 

The development of the scenarios during this phase is the most critical piece of the scenario 

planning approach and will likely require the most effort of any phase. Before creating the 

scenarios, it is important to keep in mind that the resulting set of scenarios should:

• Help participants consider the most important “what-ifs” of the focal question.

• Represent a range of plausible alternative futures (not forecasts).

• Be at least three in number (some experts recommend three to five scenarios as the 

optimal number).

22 U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Advancing Metropolitan Planning for Operations: The Building Blocks 

 of a Model Transportation Plan Incorporating Operations - A Desk Reference, FHWA-HOP-10-027 (Washington, DC: FHWA, 2010). 

 Available at: http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop10027/.
30

• Not represent obviously good or bad scenarios that would limit exploration and 

discussion.

This section will take the reader step-by-step through the development of a set of scenarios. 

These steps developed by Peter Schwartz in The Art of the Long View complement the FHWA 

scenario-planning framework, and expand upon Phase 4’s scenario development task.23 

Step 1. Identify Focal Issue. This is the central question (identified in Phase 1) to be answered. 

For example, “How should this corridor function in the region?”, “How do we improve the 

reliability of the region’s arterial network?”, or “What TSMO strategies should we use to improve 

system performance under different extreme weather events?” During this phase, the scenario 

planning leaders should confirm the central question with the stakeholders and see if any 

revisions are needed based on the work in Phases 2 

and 3.

Step 2. Identify Key Local Factors. These are the 

factors that influence the success of addressing the 

focal issue. They can be considered key influencing 

factors and they typically relate to the stakeholders 

of the scenario planning effort. These should be 

considered when creating the details of the scenarios. 

For example, a key local factor could be that 

hurricane evacuations in the region have been under 

intense scrutiny ever since a difficult evacuation 

in the past year. Another key local factor could be 

the available funding for transportation operations 

or a push by a prominent organization for cleaner 

transportation alternatives. Key local factors should 

be identified from the discussions in Phases 2 and 

3, where relevant contextual information is gathered 

and stakeholder goals and objectives are voiced 

and debated. It will be helpful during this phase to 

confirm the local factors with stakeholders. 

Step 3. Identify Driving Forces. These are the 

major and typically high-level influences on the 

focal issue that are not controlled by those involved 

in the scenario planning. This includes uncertain trends or events such as climate change, gas 

prices, unemployment levels, or terrorist attacks. Uncertainty as a driving force is particularly 

true in the exploratory typology of scenario planning. In the normative or predictive typologies, 

driving forces are likely to include differing priorities or opposing visions for the operation of 

a transportation system or facility. The driving forces should surface in Phase 1 of the scenario 

planning process during the discussion of pressing issues and then be further specified in Phases 

2 and 3 during the discussion of contextual information, goals, and operations objectives.

23 Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (New York, NY: Currency Doubleday, 1991).

Sample Driving Forces for Exploratory 

TSMO Scenarios 

Rise in Oil Prices may lead to greater use 

of car sharing programs or reduced travel 

demand.

Climate Change may lead to an increase in 

evacuations and need for alternative routes in 

cases of flooding.

An Influx of Millennials who do not own 

vehicles into urban centers may lead to 

greater demand for transit, walking, and 

bicycling.

Move toward Connected Cities may lead 

to greater opportunities to support travel on 

demand regardless of mode.

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles

may have major impacts on all traffic 

management activities including traffic 

incident management, access management, 

and intersection control.
31

Step 4. Rank Driving Forces by Importance and Uncertainty. During this step, the scenario 

planning leaders and stakeholder prioritize the driving forces by importance and, in the case of 

exploratory scenario planning, uncertainty. This activity is critical to identifying those forces 

that will shape the scenarios. Those forces that are both highly important and uncertain should 

be considered as drivers for developing the scenarios. The driving forces may be identified 

from a range of factors that impact transportation outcomes: social, technological, economic, 

environmental, and political.24

Step 5. Select Scenario Logic. This is the step that specifies the rationale and structure for how 

the scenarios will be built. The “scenario logic” is the set of the most important driving forces 

and the different values those forces will take in the scenarios. For instance, Table 4 shows the 

simple scenario logic for a scenario planning effort that aims to prepare TSMO activities and 

programs for the impacts of climate change. In this example, there are two driving forces whose 

impacts vary by frequency.

Table 4. Example Driving Forces to Shape Scenario Logic.

Levels of Carless 

Households in Dense 

Urban Area

Hurricane Force Winds and Flooding

Frequent hurricane force winds 

and flooding (≥ four times/year)

Infrequent hurricane force winds/

flooding (≤ once every 3 years)

High levels of carless 

households (40% or 

more) due to aging 

population and 

preferences for carfree lifestyle among 

Millennials.

Scenario A: Frequent road 

flooding and hurricane force 

winds and high levels of carless 

households.

Scenario B: Infrequent hurricane 

force winds and flooding with 

high levels of carless households.

Low levels of carless 

households.

Scenario C: Frequent flooding 

and hurricane force winds with 

low levels of carless households.

Scenario D: Infrequent flooding 

and hurricane force winds with 

low levels of carless households.

Step 6. Flesh Out the Scenarios. In this last step of scenario creation, less critical factors and local 

influences are used to expand the scenario descriptions so that they are more realistic and contain 

crucial information on how other important factors or influences come to fruition or fade away in the 

future. The scenarios should be plausible and internally consistent once they are finished. 

Following the development of the scenarios, management and operations experts must identify 

the TSMO strategies that are necessary to optimize the goals for each potential future. Adequate 

detail is needed to analyze the potential costs and strategy impacts on the identified performance 

measures. Once a broad set of scenario stories are established and some specific goals and 

objectives are identified, different packages of TSMO strategies can be created. Depending on 

24 Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (New York, NY: Currency Doubleday, 1991).
32

the nature of the scenario approach or process, these could be system-wide strategies or corridorspecific strategies. In the case of longer term scenario planning for operations, the set of TSMO 

strategies should reflect some notion of a tiered timeline as noted in Figure 6.

Phase 5. What Impacts Will Scenarios Have? 

Once strategies are identified for each scenario, analysis and modeling should be conducted 

to the extent possible to quantify the relative benefits or impacts of those different strategies 

on achieving near-term and long-term objectives. The analysis can be conducted using a 

combination of scenario planning tools combined with either data inputs and outputs or 

assumptions garnered from sketch planning tools focused on TSMO, such as the Tool for 

Operations Benefit Cost Analysis (TOPS-BC) developed by FHWA.25 

Figure 10. Diagram. Phase 5 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning 

Framework Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations.

The scenarios are also assessed against the other, broader goals of the region or area of focus: 

travel options, air quality, economy, commerce, and safety. During this step, the stakeholders are 

engaged to provide qualitative assessment information with regard to the goals to supplement 

and consider the quantitative outputs that are available, which will also include discussions of the 

relative costs and benefits of the sets of strategies considered. It is during this evaluation phase 

that the tradeoff discussions concerning different strategies and objectives will occur. 

Based on the evaluation of the scenarios’ estimated effects on the performance metrics of interest 

and in reaching the operations objectives, the TSMO planners and stakeholders can go back and 

refine the operations objectives to more realistically match potential outcomes. Following this 

work, the participants in the process should collaboratively decide on a preferred scenario or set 

of strategies from multiple scenarios that can be used for guiding operations-related planning 

and, ultimately, project selection and investment decisions. 

25 U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “Tool for Operations Benefit Cost Analysis” (TOPS-BC), Web site. 

Available at: http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/plan4ops/topsbctool/index.htm.
33

Phase 6. How Will We Reach Our Desired Future?

Once there is consensus on a preferred scenario or set of strategies, the TSMO planners should 

develop the more detailed plans and packages of strategies that will serve as the basis for a 

corridor or network operations plan. This should include work to create an action plan for 

actualizing the scenario in terms of new projects and investments, policy changes, institutional 

arrangements, and a plan for measuring progress. The scenario planning process will help 

planners and operators hone in on the key performance measures and objectives that will drive 

the final planning and implementation process. It is those same measures and objectives that will 

also inform regular monitoring of advances toward meeting short-term and long-term objectives. 

Figure 11. Diagram. Phase 6 of the Federal Highway Administration Scenario Planning 

Framework Adapted to Transportation Systems Management and Operations.

Analysis Tools and Data to Support Scenario Planning for 

Transportation Systems Management and Operations

Analytical tools, models, and archived data provide an important foundation to support scenario 

planning. Analytics, visualizations, and the underlying data are critical in presenting the 

stories in scenarios and highlighting the key variables or differences between different futures. 

Baseline data is needed to answer the “where are we now” question in Phase 2 of the scenario 

planning process. The purpose of analytics in scenario testing is to support the development of 

plausible future conditions and illustrate the key features and performance of each scenario so 

that stakeholders can clearly understand the differences and impacts between them. Analysis 

and visualization tools to support scenario planning for TSMO are really no different than the 

array of tools used to conduct traditional travel analysis. The data development and analysis steps 

should be calibrated to help inform the decisionmaking process as opposed to predictive models 

of the future. 
34

Tools relevant for scenario planning in the context of TSMO can be obtained from the suite of 

tools used for transportation system planning, policy, implementation, and operations analyses. 

In general, all transportation analysis tools follow a general flow of information and analysis 

explaining how: 

• Land-use and network characteristics affect travel behavior. 

• Travel behavior affects travel demand.

• Travel demand affects multimodal management and operations. 

The analytical framework for transportation varies most often to reflect different geographic 

scales and time horizons (e.g., from regional econometrics explained on an annual or quarterly 

scale through block-level travel behavior for typical lane-specific data assessed on a minute-byminute basis). The relationships between travel behavior, travel demand, and system operations 

can be examined and explored through scenario planning processes. For example, when and how 

to implement value pricing by time of day or level of demand, by geographic location (e.g., a 

cordon pricing tool), and by travel market (e.g., comparing HOT lanes to Express Toll Lanes or 

influencing freight flows by axle or weigh-in-motion pricing) will have a significant impact on 

travel behavior and vice versa. 

The selection of an analytical framework and tools to support scenario planning for TSMO 

should be derived from the key questions and driving forces identified in the early scoping 

efforts. Developing the analytical framework requires the selection of tools most appropriate for 

the scale at which measures of effectiveness are desired and the appropriate feedback loop can 

be assessed. The choice of tools and level of analysis should also reflect consideration of the time 

and effort required to develop baseline information and create plausible future conditions. TSMO 

planners may find it helpful to access empirical research and other information to develop some 

key assumptions about hypothetical future conditions as it relates to traveler behavior, climate 

change, autonomous vehicles, or other factors. Being transparent and documenting those key 

assumptions and sharing them with stakeholders is an important step in building confidence in 

the validity of scenario comparisons and tradeoff discussions. 

There may also be some limitations with the current palette of tools available to support scenario 

planning and analysis within a TSMO context. In particular, there are few standard methodologies 

for developing future forecasts for performance metrics related to TSMO, such as reliability. Also, 

the current set of tools supporting travel demand analysis does not yet adequately reflect sensitivity 

to the influences of development patterns and infrastructure design on multimodal traveler behavior. 

Therefore, for any given TSMO scenario planning effort, there may be a need for new and creative 

approaches to utilizing existing data and tools to serve the scenario planning process. 

Given the history of scenario planning in transportation, many of the common transportation 

scenario planning tools focus on estimating and comparing the effects that different land-use 

scenarios have on transportation (and vice versa), as well as on performance metrics related to the 

economy, environment, and other outcomes. Over the last decade several stand-alone software 

packages have emerged and are available to practitioners to simplify the process of developing 
35

and comparing land-use scenarios across a broad range of performance metrics. Some of the 

more commonly used land-use planning tools include software packages such as CommunityViz, 

Envision, and the Land Use and Transportation Scenario Analysis and Microsimulation 

(LUTSAM) Tool. While these tools can be helpful to TSMO-based planning efforts that seek 

to examine different travel demand dynamics influenced by the built environment, this suite 

of tools will likely need to be supplemented to incorporate more common TSMO measures of 

effectiveness. 

The primary goal of the analytical framework for scenario testing is to demonstrate how various 

factors affect overall outcomes—whether or not desirable outcomes can be attained. This testing 

can illuminate the effects different variables have on travel outcomes within and between 

scenarios. A multi-scenario method may be developed and applied on top of any of the traditional 

analysis tools so as to evaluate TSMO strategies in several different conditions. Weather 

conditions, incidents, work zones, and other system variations may be represented by altering 

baseline conditions.26 Multiscenario methods have been incorporated into advanced analysis, 

modeling, and simulation systems to evaluate integrated corridor management (ICM) approaches 

on reliability metrics. 

Travel demand models may be most applicable to TSMO scenario planning efforts at the regional 

level where analysis results are focused on evaluating how different economic, land-use, and 

demographic variables may influence travel demand and thereby influence system-level TSMO 

strategies. For instance, if one of the key questions driving the scenario development is the 

potential impact of long-term changes in travel behavior of aging populations and millennials, 

then the use of a travel demand model complemented by additional GIS-based multimodal 

accessibility analysis may be helpful. Archived operations data can be used to support other 

analysis methods with input data, calibration, and validation. This information plays an important 

role in understanding current performance of the transportation system. Simulation models or 

traffic signal optimization tools may be helpful when looking at a smaller area of influence where 

scenario testing is being performed at a fine-grained level of detail concerning system operations. 

For example, a scenario planning process may be desirable to better understand the impacts on 

vehicular mobility if traffic signals are prioritized to give “green time” to pedestrian and bicycle 

movements rather than motorized vehicles. 

The following provides a summary of the different types of tools that may be used to support 

scenario planning for TSMO. These can vary in purpose, complexity, input and output data, 

strategies analyzed, expertise required, and cost. The current methods and tools can generally be 

grouped into the following categories:

• Archived operations data.

• Travel demand models.

• Sketch planning tools.

26 A. Vandervalk, H. Louch, J. Guerre, and R. Margiotta, Incorporating Reliability Performance Measures into the Transportation Planning and 

Programming Processes: Technical Reference, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Project S2-L05-RR-3 (Washington, 

DC: TRB: 2014). Available at: http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/168856.aspx.
36

• Visualization tools.

• Analytical/deterministic tools (based on the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM)).

• Simulation models.

• Traffic signal optimization tools.

• Many hybrid approaches of all the above. 

Archived Operations Data

Archived operations data is data that is collected and stored to support the monitoring and 

management of the transportation system. This includes traffic, transit, bike, pedestrian, 

construction, and weather information that are usually collected in real time by ITS and 

other technologies. 

The following are some examples:

• Traffic volume, speed, class, or occupancy from point and probe data sources 

(e.g., National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS)).

• Origin-destination (OD) data.

• Public safety computer-aided dispatch (CAD) information.

• Surveillance video, automatic vehicle location (AVL), signal status, event and weather 

information.

As mentioned above, archived operations data is plentiful in many regions and can be used in 

Phase 2: Where Are We Now? to document baseline operational conditions and to identify and 

report performance issues or needs. This data allows planners to investigate causes of congestion 

by correlating multiple data sets over time and analyzing event-related traffic flows and weather 

impacts. In addition, knowing the current level of performance for the transportation area of 

interest is necessary for setting realistic performance objectives (or targets) in Phase 3 Where Do 

We Want to Go? This information will also be helpful in identifying the key variables necessary 

to consider for TSMO when developing future scenarios. 

Travel Demand Models

Travel demand models are widely used for estimating changes in mode choice and traffic 

patterns and volumes due to changes in development levels, demographics, and the transportation 

system (road and transit). These tools are important in scenario planning for TSMO in screening 

strategies applied on a regional or corridor scale. They can also supply data to sketch-planning 

tools and simulation models that can further analyze TSMO strategies. The three- and four-step 

travel demand models are fairly limited in their ability to analyze TSMO strategies or reflect 

mode choice sensitivity at the urban scale, but activity-based travel demand models can evaluate 

a wider range of operations-related strategies that may be part of a scenario, including pricing 

strategies, travel demand management programs, and other TSMO strategies with a detailed 

network model. Activity-based models require a greater investment of time and resources than 

traditional travel demand models. Travel demand models can support scenario analysis in 
37

Phase 5. What Impacts Will Scenarios Have? as well as help planners and other stakeholders 

understand future trends identified in Phase 2. Where Are We Now?

Sketch Planning Tools

Sketch planning tools are often the easiest to use for obtaining a quick, rough estimate of how the 

TSMO strategies that support a scenario compare in terms of benefits against those strategies of 

other scenarios. These are low-cost tools that help “sketch” a big picture, but they can be limited 

when seeking a fine-grained level of analysis. Sketch planning tools provide order of magnitude 

estimates with minimal input data in support of preliminary screening assessments. The tools 

are often spreadsheets or simple databases with built-in assumptions derived from empirical 

research as to the impacts or benefits of applying various strategies. Examples include TOPS-BC, 

California Life-Cycle Benefit/Cost Analysis Model (Cal B/C), Screening Tool for ITS (SCRITS), 

and QuickZone. Some sketch planning tools integrate with a travel demand model and provide 

data post-processing to facilitate the review of TSMO strategies and can also be linked up with 

visualization modules. 

Visualization Tools 

Visualization tools reflect the broad category of methods that support the creation of maps, 

three-dimensional (3-D) illustrations, and graphic imagery based products aimed at visually 

highlighting the differences assumed in each scenario. Depending on the key driving issues, the 

visualizations may be focused on preparing 3-D graphics to demonstrate imagery of the built 

form. GIS-based mapping may also be helpful in highlighting different place-based variables of 

relevance in terms of the location of different transportation solutions, impacts of sea-level rise, 

variances in travel demand, etc. Visualization methods are most often linked with the outputs of 

other analytic tools and can be extremely valuable in helping to communicate the key issues to a 

wide range of stakeholders. 

Analytical/Deterministic Tools (Highway Capacity Model-based)

This category of tools implements the procedures outlined in the HCM. The tools are static in 

that they predict average operating conditions over a fixed time period (e.g., a 15-minute or 1-hour 

period) and do not deal with transitions in operations from one system state to another. They are 

currently used most often to predict capacity, density, speed, delay, and queuing on a variety of 

transportation facilities. Examples include Highway Capacity Software (HCS) and Traffix. These 

tools may provide some value to TSMO scenario planning when the geographic scale is small and 

the desired granularity of operational conditions warrants evaluation at the individual intersection 

or facility scale to assess the impacts of different traffic control strategies (e.g. uncontrolled, stopcontrolled, or signalized intersections). Outputs associated with different scenarios could be fed 

into the HCM model to evaluate relative impacts and sensitivity to different conditions.

Simulation Models

This category of tools represents transportation system operations by using a variety of formulas 

and algorithms to simulate travel behavior. They can be applied to isolated locations, corridors, 
38

and area-wide conditions. Many include environmental outputs (e.g., emissions) and some models 

now also include multimodal considerations. Simulation models generally fall within three 

different categories:

• Macroscopic: Simulates average flow, speed, and density on a segment-by-segment basis.

• Mesoscopic: Simulates individual vehicles based on average segment speed and density.

• Microscopic: Simulates detailed movement of individual vehicles throughout the 

network.

These models are typically used to evaluate a range of improvements and strategies at local or 

corridor levels. They can be used to test variability in traffic demand or incident severity and also 

include visualization. These tools may be helpful in scenario testing; however, they do require 

specialized expertise and software, which can increase the level of effort and cost associated with 

the testing.

Traffic Signal Optimization Tools

Similar to analytical/deterministic tools, traffic optimization tool methodologies are mostly based 

on the HCM procedures and are used to analyze delay and identify optimum signal phasing and 

timing plans for isolated intersections, arterial streets, or signal networks. They may include 

capacity calculations; cycle length; splits optimization, including left turns; and coordination/

offset plans. The type of signal optimization tool used is best determined based on the goal of the 

traffic signal timing study, network conditions, and data availability. Similarly, these tools may 

prove valuable during the scenario testing phase if the focus of the problem warrants this level 

of detail.

Any of the tools described above may be utilized to respond to the questions unique to the TSMO 

environment, with a more micro-scale approach appropriate for TSMO project applications and a 

macro-scale approach applied for TSMO policy and planning considerations. For example: 

• A microscopic simulation model might be appropriate to consider a policy of adapting 

signal timing plans in an urban central business district to accommodate pedestrian 

crossings with fully exclusive pedestrian phases at 2.5 feet per second as opposed to a 

mix of exclusive and permitted phases at 3.5 feet per second. A feedback loop might be 

applied in a regional travel demand model by assigning an implicit capacity penalty to 

urban streets if the same scenario were to be examined regionally.

• A travel demand model might be appropriate to consider the effects of alternative 

congestion or parking pricing schemes in a multimodal corridor. A feedback loop might 

be tested in a sketch planning tool to examine similar pricing schemes from a regional or 

statewide perspective.

As with any analytical framework to support transportation decisionmaking, the key is to 

select the right tool for the problem at hand and give thought to the level of effort, resources, and 

time available.
39

Section 4: Opportunities for Scenario Planning to 

Advance Transportation Systems Management and 

Operations

Planning for transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) occurs both formally and 

informally at the statewide, regional, subarea, local, corridor, project, and multi-state level. Scenario 

planning is a tool that planners and operators can apply in all of those contexts to prepare for 

uncertainty, resolve competing visions, create more robust stakeholder engagement opportunities, 

and better align an area’s transportation goals with TSMO strategies. As previously noted, the 

type of scenario planning to be applied depends on the focal questions and desired outcomes of 

the stakeholders. The purpose of this section is to explore the many opportunities available to use 

each type of scenario planning to advance TSMO. This section describes how scenario planning 

for TSMO can be applied at the metropolitan, statewide, and corridor levels as well as how it can be 

applied to TSMO planning motivated by possible future events or emerging trends.

Integrating Transportation Systems Management and Operations into the 

Metropolitan Transportation Plan

Many metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) already include transportation systems 

management and operations (TSMO) strategies in their long-range transportation plans (LRTP). 

This can include identifying corridors of regional significance where new intelligent transportation 

system (ITS) infrastructure is being targeted or developing broader policies aimed at creating 

a more robust transportation demand management (TDM) program for a given region. TSMO 

strategies have also been included as components of scenario planning efforts to develop LRTPs. 

In some regions the performance metrics are changing—no longer is auto mobility the primary 

goal; instead, many communities are looking at new measures such as multimodal accessibility 

or person throughput across the network. As such, the transportation planning challenges are 

shifting in response to efforts to accommodate more modes (walking, biking, transit, highoccupancy vehicle (HOV)) within existing rights of way. In effect, shifting an auto-oriented 

corridor to a more multimodal corridor is at its essence a system preservation strategy. 

When regions are planning for the long term, there is a huge opportunity to bring TSMO 

considerations into the conversation in an effort to look at the full range of both design as well 

as management and operations (M&O) strategies to help support the community’s objectives. 

Simply having the TSMO planners as part of the conversation early on can help in the design of 

scenarios and can also help with the longer term TSMO planning.
40

The following sections highlight some of the opportunities to improve TSMO through the use of 

scenario planning. 

Regional Opportunities 

At the regional level, planning for TSMO is often led by the metropolitan planning organization 

(MPO), which convenes a group of TSMO stakeholders to advance TSMO in the region. Typically, 

planning occurs in coordination with the development of the metropolitan transportation plan as a 

means of including TSMO priorities and strategies into the overall metropolitan transportation plan 

(MTP) and including TSMO programs and projects in the transportation improvement program 

(TIP). Planning for TSMO at the regional level may also be led by a coalition of operating agencies 

or a State department of transportation (DOT) district. For the purposes of this primer, a region 

does not need to coincide with an MPO boundary, but instead can be any multi-jurisdictional area 

as defined by the TSMO partners. A regional operations plan, intelligent transportation systems 

(ITS) strategic plan, or regional concept for transportation operations (RCTO)27 are all products 

that may be developed as a result of planning for TSMO at the regional level. The opportunity 

to use scenario planning to advance TSMO at the regional level exists in the development of 

these products as well as in the process of planning for TSMO as an integrated component of the 

overarching metropolitan transportation planning process. 

Developing Operations Objectives for a Regional Operations Plan

A regional operations plan is a generic term for a multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency plan that 

describes what the region’s stakeholders have agreed to achieve in terms of operational performance 

of the transportation system (or element) and how they will reach those goals and objectives. This 

includes regional concepts for transportation operations and many ITS strategic plans. Scenario 

planning can be used to identify and reach consensus on many of the elements of a regional 

operations plan. For example, by applying a normative type of scenario planning, the stakeholders 

explore and decide on a preferred set of operations objectives. If there were differing ideas of which 

operations objectives should be selected to guide their work toward advancing TSMO in their 

region, the stakeholders could build scenarios that portray how the future transportation system 

would function if each set of operations objectives was reached. They would then look at what 

kinds of TSMO strategies would be necessary for those scenarios to be realized and analyze and 

compare the implications of those scenarios. Using scenarios will lead the stakeholders through a 

discussion of their priorities and whether reaching a given set of operations objectives is feasible. 

The operations objectives developed for the regional operations plan can be used as input to the 

MTP’s goals and objectives. 

Table 5 provides sample operations objectives that can be tailored for use in a scenario planning 

exercise for a regional operations plan or many other TSMO planning activities. 

27 Learn more about a regional concept of transportation operations at the FHWA Regional Concept for Transportation Operations (RCTO) web 

page. Available at: http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/plan4ops/focus_areas/trans_ops.htm.
41

Table 5. Sample Operations Objectives for Use in Scenario Planning.

System Efficiency

Vehicle Miles 

Traveled

• Reduce vehicle miles traveled per capita by X percent by year Y.

Trip Connectivity • Reduce door-to-door trip time by X percent by year Y.

Duration of 

Congestion

• Reduce the daily hours of recurring congestion on major highways 

from X to Y by year Z.

Energy 

Consumption

• Reduce total energy consumption per capita for transportation by X 

percent by year Y.

• Reduce total fuel consumption per capita for transportation by X 

percent by year Y.

• Reduce excess fuel consumed due to congestion by X percent by 2020.

System Reliability

Non-Recurring 

Delay

• Reduce total person hours of delay (or travel time delay per capita) by 

time period (peak, off-peak) caused by:

• (Option 1) scheduled events, work zones, or system maintenance 

by X hours in Y years.

• (Option 2) unscheduled disruptions to travel.

• (Option 3) all transient events such as traffic incidents, special 

events, and work zones.

Travel Time Buffer 

Index

• Decrease the buffer index for (specific travel routes) by X percent over 

the next Y years.

• Decrease the average buffer index for (multiple routes or trips) by X 

percent over Y years.

• Reduce the average buffer time needed to arrive on-time for 95 percent 

of trips on (specified routes) by X minutes over Y years.

Planning Time 

Index

• Reduce the average planning time index for (specific routes in region) 

by X (no units) over the next Y years. 

• Reduce the average planning time for (specific routes in region) by X 

minutes over the next Y years.

Travel Time 

95th/90th Percentile

• Reduce the average of the 90th (or 95th) percentile travel times for (a 

group of specific travel routes or trips in the region) by X minutes in Y 

years. 

• Reduce the 90th (or 95th) percentile travel times for each route 

selected by X percent over Y years.

Variability • Reduce the variability of travel time on specified routes by X percent 

during peak and off-peak periods by year Y.

Transit On-time 

Performance

• Improve average on-time performance for specified transit routes/

facilities by X percent within Y years.
42

System Options

Mode Share • Reduce per capita single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) commute trip rate 

by X percent in Y years.

• Increase alternative (non-SOV) mode share for all trips by X percent 

within the next Y years.

• Increase active (bicycle/pedestrian) mode share by X percent by 

year Y.

• Reduce SOV vehicle trips by X percent through travel demand 

management strategies (e.g., employer or residential rideshare) 

by year Y.

• Achieve X percent alternative (non-SOV) mode share in transit station 

communities (or other destinations) by year Y.

Developing the Approach for a Regional Concept for Transportation Operations 

Alternatively, scenario planning can be applied to help identify the “how” of an operations plan 

or RCTO including the TSMO strategies. For example, the RCTO developers could use scenario 

planning to identify a set of TSMO strategies that would be most effective given uncertainty 

about whether and exactly where a light rail system will be built in the next 10 years in the region. 

An exploratory type of scenario planning would facilitate a discussion about how the region’s 

transportation system could function depending on the presence or absence of a new light rail 

system and which TSMO strategies would be most effective in all possible scenarios. 

A predictive approach to scenario planning could also be used during the development of an 

RCTO approach. Stakeholders could use scenario planning to help examine how effective 

different TSMO strategies might be relative to assumptions concerning available funding or 

availability of new forms of data and real-time monitoring. This predictive approach to scenario 

planning assumes the major variables such as travel demand and travel behavior follow a 

predictable pattern or forecast, but there may be variability in funding or data availability. The 

purpose of this scenario planning exercise would be to identify which TSMO strategies will work 

best in managing system performance to achieve desirable goals over the RCTO’s time horizon. 

Identifying Packages of Transportation Investments Including Operations for a 

Metropolitan Transportation Plan

Scenario planning could be used during the development of the MTP in response to a region’s 

desire to look at different alternatives for growth and development relative to achieving a distinct 

vision or specific goals, like reducing emissions or increasing transportation choices. Through 

a normative typology for scenario planning, the region’s stakeholders would develop multiple 

scenarios, including TSMO strategies at the system-level, based on different assumptions 

concerning future development patterns (land use) and packages of transportation capital 

Table 5. Sample Operations Objectives for Use in Scenario Planning. (Continued)
43

investments. TSMO stakeholders would be brought in to identify specific TSMO strategies 

that could support each scenario. The scenarios would be evaluated and considered by a broad 

stakeholder group for the purpose of achieving specific goals illustrated by specific performance 

measures, like reducing travel time for autos and transit or incorporating TDM strategies to 

reduce overall travel demand. 

The participation of TSMO stakeholders and consideration of TSMO strategies at the longterm planning stage can lead to early identification of new data gathering and real-time 

system performance monitoring needs. These early conversations about scenarios also lay the 

groundwork for the more detailed planning required for a specific regional operations plan that 

will likely focus on shorter time horizons, like 3 to 10 years. The link between the long-range 

and more intermediate-range regional operations plan development could involve incorporating 

new performance measures. 

During both the long-range and shorter term planning processes, TSMO scenario planning 

benefits from the inclusion of a wide range of public and stakeholder representatives. This 

could include land-use planners, transit agency representatives, bicycle and pedestrian interests, 

councils on aging, private technology developers and providers, system operators, freight and 

goods movement professionals, and other parties with a role or interest in transportation system 

design and performance. The purpose of including this broad constituency group is to ensure the 

cross pollination of ideas in identifying goals, developing scenarios, and discussing the tradeoffs 

of different paths for the future. It also benefits all parties to better understand the role TSMO 

strategies play in overall system performance and how they can continue to evolve in response to 

changing user preferences and data availability. Incorporating TSMO strategy considerations as 

part of larger transportation planning efforts also helps to build broad stakeholder awareness and 

understanding of TSMO needs and priorities, which in turn can help with early identification and 

support for TSMO funding. 

Statewide Opportunities

At the statewide level, operations stakeholders typically led by the State DOT conduct planning 

activities and make multiple planning and investment decisions related to TSMO that can benefit 

from scenario planning. Just as regions develop plans for managing and operating the transportation 

system at a regional scale, States develop operations plans to address operations across the State. 

The statewide operations plans may be higher level documents that establish policies, goals, 

and operations objectives that provide guidance to their districts or metropolitan regions as they 

develop more detailed plans for operations. The statewide operations plans may also include plans 

for investments in TSMO projects that have statewide significance. State DOTs also incorporate 

planning for investments in TSMO in their overall transportation system investment planning 

process. This is illustrated in the text box below, which describes Minnesota DOT’s scenario-based 

development of its 20-year State Highway Investment Plan.
44

Investing in Minnesota’s Highways

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) conducted scenario planning during 

the process developing the 20-year State Highway Investment Plan (MnSHIP), which provides 

“a fiscally constrained investment direction” for the State.28 The scenario planning process was 

based on ten investment categories:

1. Existing Roads.

2. Existing Bridges.

3. Roadside Infrastructure.

4. Safety.

5. Interregional Corridor Mobility.

6. Twin Cities Mobility.

7. Bicycle Infrastructure.

8. Accessible Pedestrian Infrastructure.

9. Regional + Community Improvement Priorities.

10. Project Support.

For the first nine investment categories, MnDOT defined four to five levels of funding, called 

performance levels, with the lowest level representing the lowest cost, greatest risk, and the highest 

level representing the greatest cost, lowest risk. Project Support is a fixed percentage allocated 

to delivering projects. It then developed three investment approaches representing different 

performance levels assigned across the investment categories:29

Approach A – Focus on maintaining existing infrastructure (roads, bridges, roadside 

infrastructure). 

Approach B – Maintain the current investment direction.

Approach C – Focus on meeting infrastructure needs on interstates and increasing investment in 

mobility, local priorities, and non-motorized transportation options.

MnDOT did not intend to adopt one investment approach “as is,” but rather to combine pieces 

of all three approaches. To present the approaches to the public through workshops and other 

outreach activities, MnDOT developed a web-based scenario exercise using the Citizing online 

tool.30 The agency also developed “folios” that included: highlights of each approach; biggest 

strengths and drawbacks of each approach; and impacts of each approach (i.e., what could be 

accomplished with the money allocated to each investment category). In addition, the folios 

included a description of what each approach would look like 20 years in the future from the 

traveler’s perspective when making the “seven-hour drive from Winona to Bemidji...through

28 Minnesota Department of Transportation, “MnSHIP Investment Approaches” (n.d.). Available at: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/planning/mnship/

pdf/approaches.pdf.

29 Ibid.

30 J. Smith, “Participation by Design: Participatory Scenario Planning to Develop a 50-Year Transportation Vision,” PlaceMatters Blog. March 

2012. 
45

Investing in Minnesota’s Highways (Continued)

Rochester, the Twin Cities and Saint Cloud before heading north.” For example, for Approach C, 

the description notes “You immediately notice that, while the interstates are in good condition, 

other roads are not,” and “Although traffic is slow through the heart of the metro, new lanes and 

some additional interchanges on I-94 and TH 10 allow for smooth traffic flow heading into and 

leaving St. Cloud.”31

As a result of the scenario planning process, MnDOT developed a 20-year investment plan 

included in MnSHIP.

Each of these statewide operations planning efforts seeks to answer questions that may be most 

effectively answered through a scenario planning approach. The following are types of questions 

that scenario planning can address in these TSMO planning efforts:

• What is the desired vision for statewide highway operations given several opposing 

priorities?

• What statewide investments for operations are needed to sustain a safe, efficient highway 

system with a significant increase projected for truck traffic (or other known trend that 

may impact the transportation systems operational performance)?

• What policies and TSMO investment areas should be targeted given uncertainty in 

climate change impacts (or future transportation technologies, budgets, etc.)?

There are several other TSMO-focused planning activities that occur at the State level. A few 

examples that could benefit from scenario planning are given below.

Transportation Management Center (TMC) Planning 

Plans for the short-, mid-, and long-term management and operation of a TMC require planners to 

assess future staffing needs and make decisions about technology use and deployment as well as 

the level of service that can be provided to the public given funding constraints. Scenario planning 

can be particularly effective in addressing technology investment decisions given the uncertainty in 

new technology developments, costs, impacts on staffing needs, and whether the new technology 

will work with current technology. There is also uncertainty in projecting the demand for TMC 

services given the potential strains on the system by an increase in extreme weather events and the 

role of the TMC as vehicle automation becomes prevalent. By using exploratory scenario planning, 

TMC managers and stakeholders can examine alternative futures and determine how best to prepare 

the TMC for those potential realities. In addition, managers and stakeholders can look at different 

portfolios of TSMO strategies, staffing levels, and technology and examine the impacts of each 

portfolio against the desired performance expectations for the TMC and the transportation system.

31 Minnesota Department of Transportation, “MnSHIP Investment Approaches” (n.d.). Available at: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/planning/mnship/

pdf/approaches.pdf. 
46

Developing Work Zone Management Plans

A transportation management plan (TMP) for a work zone contains the work zone management 

strategies—such as travel demand management, signal retiming, and traffic incident management—

that will be used for the project. For significant projects, the strategies must include both public 

information and transportation operations components to address the impacts around the work zone. 

TMP developers can use the trend-based type of scenario planning to discuss with stakeholders 

the impacts of a few different approaches to managing a major upcoming work zone and develop a 

preferred scenario based on thorough stakeholder input and analysis of impacts. 

Developing a Statewide Freight Mobility Plan

Many States now have freight mobility plans to sustain and improve connections among markets 

within the State and connections from the State to national and international markets. These 

plans typically define policies and investments to improve intermodal freight mobility to increase 

the trade-related jobs and income for the State’s workers and businesses.32,33 Freight planning 

is a significant opportunity for the use of scenario planning because of the large number of 

uncontrollable and often uncertain driving factors that influence the success or failure of decisions 

regarding freight investment. In addition, freight involves a large number of stakeholders that need 

to be engaged in the planning effort and support the outcome. Through scenario planning, multiple 

perspectives can be brought to the forefront for analysis and discussion. 

Corridor Opportunities

A corridor is a linear system of multimodal facilities and adjacent development. Corridors range 

in length from a few miles in an urban location to hundreds of miles for state or multi-state 

corridors. Given the diversity of corridors, scenario planning at that level can take many forms. 

Similar to the regional approach, it will likely be driven by either a normative or predictive 

approach and may go through multiple iterations. In the normative approach, corridor scenario 

planning is best applied as a method for creating consensus on the overall vision or function of a 

corridor. This type of exercise typically emerges from tensions between transportation mobility 

and accessibility objectives in response to changing development patterns. In many urbanized 

areas, arterial corridors are increasingly being looked at for redevelopment and infill opportunities 

to support local economic development or growth management goals. With intensifying patterns 

of mixed use development comes a new emphasis on or a desire to increase transportation choices 

(mode split to transit, biking and walking). 

Scenario planning in this context may involve the development of two or three big picture 

alternative visions for the corridor driven by differing redevelopment assumptions and includes 

a range of transportation targets for mode split, travel time by mode, pedestrian access to 

32 Freight Advisory Committee, “Texas Freight Mobility Plan” Web page. Available at: http://www.dot.state.tx.us/move-texas-freight/freight_plan.

htm.

33 Oregon Department of Transportation, “Transportation Development Planning – Oregon Freight Plan” Web page. http://www.oregon.gov/

ODOT/TD/TP/pages/ofp.aspx.
47

destinations, person throughput in corridor, auto travel time to the central business district, etc. For 

each scenario, TSMO professionals will be critical to identifying appropriate corridor-based TSMO 

strategies to achieve the desired targets. This process could also reveal new data collection and data 

collection technology needs that can be incorporated into subsequent TSMO planning efforts. 

Opportunities to Consider Implications of Emerging Trends

Scenario planning is an excellent tool for considering TSMO issues and opportunities associated 

with “game-changing” demographic, economic, environmental, and technological trends. The 

section below highlights TSMO-related issues associated with emerging vehicle technologies 

and with generational demographic shifts which could be incorporated into scenario planning 

initiatives. 

Connected/Autonomous Vehicle Technologies 

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Connected 

Vehicle Field Infrastructure Footprint Analysis asserts most motorists on American roadways by 

2040 will be traveling in connected or automated vehicles (C/AV).34 The preponderance of these 

technologies have a variety of potential outcomes that could be considered in long-range scenario 

planning exercises. Highway crashes will be dramatically reduced when vehicles can sense and 

adjust to surrounding events and hazards. In addition to the social and economic benefits of 

improved safety, reduced crash rates will also help to lessen incident-related congestion and thus 

improve travel-time reliability. Environmental impacts of vehicles and travel can be reduced 

when travelers can make informed decisions about modes and routes and when vehicles can 

communicate with the infrastructure to enhance fuel efficiency by avoiding unnecessary stops. 

Drivers can be provided with information about the proper speed to optimize their green light 

times on arterial corridors, and vehicles can be diverted to alternative routes in response to realtime congestion. C/AV vehicles can also be lighter than standard vehicles without compromising 

safety; the correspondingly improved fuel efficiency would have implications for both energy and 

environmental analyses. 

Planning-related C/AV scenarios could also address land use, development strategies, and economic 

activity. With increased automation, car sharing may evolve into a service-on-demand industry that 

would shift car ownership from individuals to fleets. This would allow greater urban densities since 

parking requirements could be relaxed. Automated vehicles could replace existing inefficient transit 

feeder services and some line-haul services as well. On the other hand, these developments may 

result in reduced land-use density, since commuting time can be used more productively. 

In addition to planning for the long-term benefits of fully deployed C/AV technologies, TSMO 

planners can incorporate shorter term impacts of gradual system deployment. Initially there 

may be C/AV-only highways or lanes, with some level of automation or platooning provided. 

34 American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials with the FHWA and Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program 

Office, National Connected Vehicle Field Infrastructure Footprint Analysis Final Report, FHWA-JPO-14-125 (Washington, DC: 2014). 

Available at: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/52000/52600/52602/FHWA-JPO-14-125_v2.pdf.
48

In the medium term C/AV could support integrated corridor management (ICM) strategies by 

automatically balancing traffic between freeways and arterials. Small groups of drivers could 

be diverted with targeted messages, for example, which would be more effective than general 

dynamic message signs. It is important to note that the C/AV market may evolve gradually 

over decades, resulting in a mix of traditional and C/AV vehicles on roadways for years to 

come. Many other roadway users will not be in motor vehicles at all, such as pedestrians and 

bicyclists. Scenario planning processes provide opportunities to construct an understanding of 

these issues and implications and to develop new performance measures to track the emerging 

implications of new technologies. 

Demographic Trends 

Shifting cultural norms and generational needs and preferences have the potential to significantly 

affect travel demand in decades to come. America’s up-and-coming workforce, dubbed the 

“Millennial” generation, is demonstrating significantly less interest in car ownership and a 

stronger preference for housing and employment in walkable, mixed-use towns and cities than 

their generational predecessors. It is not yet clear whether these preferences will “stick” as this 

generation moves into its child-raising years, but market studies indicate there is reason to believe 

that this generation will play an important part in generating demand for urban development and 

increased transportation choices that include more transit, walking, and biking options to meet 

their daily transportation needs. 

Similarly, the aging “Baby Boomer” generation whose “nests” are emptying of young adult 

children is also demonstrating an increasing interest in walkable communities and urban 

lifestyles as they downsize their homes and anticipate the possibility of eventually choosing (or 

being forced) to give up driving. Scenario planning forecasts for medium- and long-term TSMO 

planning initiatives for corridors, regions, and States can be adjusted to consider related potential 

increases in urban density, mixed-use activity centers, and multimodal travel markets. 

Environmental Trends – Weather Patterns 

Scenario planning can also be an effective tool to help set specific performance targets for the 

transportation system under extreme weather conditions, which have been occurring with more 

severity and frequency over the past several years. After a significant event, like a major snow 

or ice storm in a southern city that shuts down the major highway system, policy makers and the 

public often express frustration over extreme commute times, stranded vehicles, and associated 

economic losses. Yet quite often the community or the region may have never asked themselves 

the question, “What is reasonable given certain extreme conditions?” While it may be difficult 

to anticipate or plan for a wide range of extreme events, a scenario planning process might be 

effective in helping to set expectations (as defined by performance measures) and reprioritize 

capital investments and management and operations plans. 

To do this, a State or a region could develop a set of scenarios differentiated by different 

performance objectives in response to a major weather event. This would involve engaging a 

wide stakeholder group including first responders, major employers, schools, emergency workers, 
49

elected officials, and others to first begin a dialogue to establish priorities relative to making 

the transportation system operational after a major event. This group can then help to drive the 

scenario development. In the case of an extreme snow event, for example, performance targets 

could include making all roads accessible within 4 hours of the incident, making primary roads 

accessible to emergency crews only within 4 hours, or ensuring that all roads are cleared within 

12 hours of the event. The scenarios could also look at economic impacts and focus in more 

strategic locations where interstate commerce or access to and from the regional central business 

district (CBD) may be a priority. Each scenario would be developed to include the full range of 

investments, new communication protocols, and other strategies needed to achieve the desired 

performance targets.

These scenarios could then be evaluated with the stakeholder group to discuss the tradeoffs—

and most likely the benefit-cost analysis associated with the different levels of performance. 

This dialogue would likely result in a consensus on a set of performance objectives that can 

be achieved in response to an extreme event given specific funding levels or investments. This 

process could also likely lead to enhanced coordination and communication with the general 

public about how to better prepare and what to expect should a future event of extreme nature 

happen in their community.

51

Section 5: Illustrations of Scenario Planning 

for Transportation Systems Management and 

Operations

This section provides three hypothetical examples that illustrate how scenario planning 

approaches can be used to advance transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) 

concepts in the context of various planning efforts. For each phase, the questions driving the 

phase’s planning activity and example outputs are provided. The three fictional examples are: 

• Southcom Coalition: Planning for Operational Resilience During Tropical Storms – A 

regional transportation operators coalition uses scenario planning to identify strategies 

for improving system resiliency in the face of increasingly intense and frequent storms. 

• Corridor Q: Development of a Multimodal Corridor Operations Plan – A State 

department of transportation (DOT) and a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) 

partner with TSMO agencies to conduct a scenario planning process aimed at building 

consensus on strategies to balance local accessibility and regional throughput on a busy 

suburban arterial.

• Fairview Metro Plan: Development of Regional TSMO Strategies – Facing challenges of 

declining funds and rising congestion, a metropolitan region uses scenario planning to 

identify strategic TSMO investments that optimize roadway capacity at the least possible 

cost. 

Each hypothetical project description includes a brief summary of the context, a set of questions 

considered during each of the six scenario planning stages, and the outcome of the process.

Southcom Coalition: Planning for Operational Resilience during Tropical Storms

Southcom is a regional transportation operations coalition of traffic, transit, and public safety 

agencies in 16 jurisdictions across three States. It operates on a 24/7 basis to tie together the 

agencies for regional traffic incident management (TIM), implementing intelligent transportation 

systems (ITS), and emergency management. In the past 2 years, the Southcom area has had 

more frequent and stronger tropical storms that have flooded primary roads and subway systems, 

caused widespread power outages, and damaged bridges and other infrastructure. Southcom 

leaders have decided to use scenario planning to improve transportation system resiliency during 

major storms over the next 10–15 years. Their goal is to identify the investments and actions 

needed to prepare for future storms.
52

Phase 1: Getting Started

Questions to address: What do we want to accomplish? What are the important issues or 

uncertainties to consider? Who should be involved? What type of scenario planning do we 

need?

• Southcom leaders and staff from member agencies determined that they wanted to identify 

the operational strategies— including new ITS and communications infrastructure —that 

would be needed to prepare for future storms.

• Southcom member agencies identified the primary area of uncertainty as being the timing, 

number, strength, and duration of storms. They anticipated that Southcom systems would 

continue to be stressed, and so climatological data and forecasts for the region would need 

to be considered.

• This scenario planning effort was led by the Southcom leadership committee along with 

the operations, planning, and emergency management staff from coalition’s agencies, 

including the cities, counties, port authorities, transit operators, State DOTs, Federal 

Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and others. Southcom decided to involve a 

variety of additional stakeholders, including local businesses, commuters, and other 

members of the public.

• Southcom scenario planning participants used the exploratory type of scenario planning 

because they were looking to examine the potential impacts of several storm scenarios and 

identify the best response based on this uncertainty.

Phase 2. Where Are We Now?

Questions to address: What does the recent climatological data for this region say about 

size, frequency, and timing of past tropical storms? What are the climatological forecasts 

for this region over the next 10–15 years and how certain are the forecasts? What has been 

the impact on transportation system operational performance during recent major storms? 

What are the strengths and weaknesses of our coordination of emergency transportation 

operations during these storms?

• Climatological data show that annual precipitation has varied over time, showing a clear 

shift towards greater variability and higher totals since 1970. There are recent elevated 

levels in extreme precipitation and shorter rainfall recurrence intervals. The amount of 

rain that constituted a 50-year event during 1950-1979 is expected to occur on average 

once every 30 years based on the more recent data.

• The region has experienced 18 tropical storms, including two hurricanes in the last 5 

years with significant impacts on travel and goods movement.

• The strengths of Southcom’s emergency operations during storms included participation 

by all necessary agencies on hourly calls and consistent messages provided to the public. 

Weaknesses included a traveler information website outage during most recent storm 

and difficulty publicizing travel conditions information (with the exception of freeways 

in the metro areas) in a timely manner.
53

Phase 3. Where Do We Want to Go?

Questions to address: What are the values and priorities that are relevant in selecting 

TSMO strategies? What are the goals and operations objectives for transportation system 

operations during tropical and other major summer storms? How will we measure 

progress?

• Southcom’s goal: Provide a resilient transportation system that enables the safe and 

reliable movement of people and goods and supports the region’s economic well-being.

• Southcom’s operations objectives (performance measures underlined):

- Within 10 years, 50 percent reduction in loss of life, property, and injury on roadways 

or rails during tropical storms.

- Average travel times on the freeways, primary arterials, and rail without structural 

damage is back to normal within 24 hours of a level one storm and within 48 hours of 

a level two storm

Phase 4. What Could the Future Look Like?

Questions to address: Given the current trends and operations objectives, what are the 

scenarios we should consider in exploring the preferred approach to system resiliency? 

What are the TSMO strategies needed to realize these scenarios?

• Triple Hit Scenario: The Southcom area is hit by three hurricanes (Category 2 or less) 

during one tropical storm season, each within just a couple weeks of another. The largest 

metropolitan area in the Southcom region is directly under the eye of one of the storms 

with road flooding and signs and traffic signals damaged. 

• Business as Usual Scenario: The Southcom area receives roughly the same number, 

intensity, and frequency of hurricanes and other tropical storms as it has over the past 

5 years.

• The Big One Scenario: A Category 5 hurricane hits the Southcom area and major roads 

are cut off. Rail systems are unable to function and many buildings are destroyed.

Southcom determined that the most effective TSMO strategies across the scenarios would be 

highly redundant data and voice communications systems, several backup servers and databases 

located over 750 miles away, backup power for all variable message signs and traffic signals, 

inclusion of additional stakeholder groups into coalition, additional closed-circuit televisions 

(CCTV) on roads and rails, and road weather information systems (RWIS) in rural areas.

Phase 5. What Impacts Will the Scenarios Have?

Questions to Address: What are the impacts of these scenarios on the region’s 

transportation system? What are the benefits and costs of the TSMO strategies selected 

to handle each scenario? How well do the strategies help achieve Southcom’s objectives in 

each scenario? What level of system resilience is desired or obtainable within the current 

resource constraints?
54

Using a combination of analysis tools, models, and expert opinion, the group assessed the 

expected impacts of the three scenarios and selected TSMO strategies on loss of life, property, 

and injury on roadways or rails and the recovery time of the system. 

Phase 6. How Will We Achieve Our Desired Future?

Questions to address: Based on the three scenarios, how do we best create resiliency in our 

transportation system operations? What have we learned about the effectiveness of TSMO 

strategies? What projects or programs should be developed to support the preferred way 

forward?

The stakeholders found benefits in the TSMO strategies used to respond to each of the scenarios 

and merged together the elements of each scenario to develop a preferred set of solutions that 

incorporated communications system redundancy, increased monitoring, and extended the 

hardening of traffic control devices.

Outcome: Plan for Operational Resiliency during Tropical Storms

The direct result of this scenario planning activity was the development of a strategic plan for 

creating greater operational resiliency, including operations objectives, performance measures, 

and a list of operational investments and actions to improve Southcom’s coordination during 

emergencies. 

Corridor Q: Development of a Multimodal Corridor Operations Plan

Corridor Q is a six-lane arterial that parallels a major highway (just two miles away) and is 

dominated by older shopping centers, fast food restaurants, and some older two-story office 

buildings. It serves as one of the main corridors connecting several residential neighborhoods 

to shopping destinations, and also provides a link into the traditional downtown commercial 

business district and the region’s major job center about 10 miles away. The regional economy 

is strong, and there are mounting pressures to redevelop and infill along this corridor at higher 

densities. Local businesses and residents may welcome this new development, but have concerns 

about how best to address the additional travel caused by the development. There is also a strong 

sentiment among local residents that it would be counterproductive to take land to accommodate 

additional lanes of roadway, and there is interest in both increasing transit service along the 

corridor and making the areas on each side of the arterial more walkable. The State DOT, in 

coordination with the MPO, has decided to lead a scenario planning effort to look at different 

visions for how the corridor might evolve over time and identify the TSMO goals, objectives, and 

strategies that can best support that vision.
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Phase 1: Getting Started

Questions to address: What do we want to accomplish? What are the important issues or 

uncertainties to consider? Who should be involved? What type of scenario planning do we 

need?

• The desired outcome was to help participants reach consensus on a preferred vision for 

travel conditions in the corridor and develop the framework for the creation of a corridor 

operations plan.

• Additional outcomes may involve the identification of potential land-use and 

transportation policy changes in addition to specific transportation design and 

operational improvement projects.

• To develop the scenarios, particpants needed to include land-use planners, economic 

development practitioners, transit agency partners, traffic operations staff, transportation 

planners, housing agency representatives, and other interested stakeholders in the 

process.

• Participants agreed to apply a normative type of scenario planning to examine different 

desirable future scenarios for the corridor and reach consensus on a vision.

Phase 2. Where Are We Now?

Questions to address: What are the existing conditions and the trend forecast? What are 

the forecasted operational conditions?

• Existing conditions were defined by current development patterns (density and mix of 

use) within a half mile, socio-demographics, tax revenues, auto and transit travel time, 

corridor travel time reliability, current non-auto mode splits, vehicle miles traveled 

(VMT) per capita, percent truck traffic, signal timing data, crash rates, air quality 

indicators, etc.

• The trend forecast included projecting out future travel demand (using the regional travel 

demand model) based on regional growth trends and existing policies over a 20-year 

horizon.

• Participants noted that while specific operational conditions might be difficult to 

forecast, a sketch-planning method to correlate reliability with levels of congestion might 

be beneficial as part of the trend analysis.

• Sample data provided the following overview of the corridor:

- Daily traffic volume was 55,000, with peak hour volume of 4,950 and peak direction of 

2,970.

- Volumes were projected to increase to 60,000 vehicles per day; this increase is 

predominantly from regional through traffic. 

- There were eight intersections and one major cross street with similar volumes.

- Bus stops were about 0.8 miles apart – there are no bus bays.
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- The signal system was interconnected.

- The signal timing plans had not been updated in more than 5 years.

- Stretches along the corridor experienced access management challenges.

Phase 3. Where Do We Want to Go?

Questions to address: What are the community values and priorities that are relevant for 

this corridor’s future? What are the TSMO goals and objectives for the corridor? How will 

we measure progress?

• Some community constituents wanted to see the corridor maintained as a high-mobility 

corridor, providing high-speed access between the suburbs and downtown.

• Others saw the corridor evolving into more of a destination corridor driven by market 

demand for infill and redevelopment with significantly more jobs and housing.

• All constituents wanted to encourage redevelopment to improve the aesthetics, bring in 

new amenities, and contribute to the tax base—but they do not want that new growth to 

diminish accessibility for those living adjacent to the corridor.

Given these goals, the stakeholders identified some operations objectives and performance 

measures to gauge progress and evaluate scenarios. These included travel time for auto and 

transit, number of destinations within walking distance, levels of congestion, economic 

development, and cost. 

Phase 4. What Could the Future Look Like?

Questions to address: In light of the current system data, trends, and community goals, 

what are the scenarios we should consider? What are the TSMO strategies needed to realize 

these scenarios

• New Destination Scenario would target a single, large redevelopment project at a major 

arterial intersection with a large new office and mixed use complex. Mobility through the 

corridor would still be a major goal, but the primary intersection along the corridor would 

now be a key job destination. TSMO strategies include: signal priority, grade-separated 

intersections, express buses to a new job center, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV)/carpool 

lanes, transportation demand management (TDM) strategies, system timing, and access 

management.

• Livable Corridor Scenario would focus on infill and redevelopment by adding new, higher 

density residential space and smaller scale neighborhood retail along the corridor. This new 

housing would be aimed at a younger, professional generation with a preference for more 

“car-lite” lifestyle. This new residential space would be dispersed along the corridor, and 

these new residents would still need to get to jobs in the downtown, but they will do so by 

using transit and accessing non-work destinations through more walking and biking options. 

TSMO strategies included signal priority for buses, dedicated bus lane and express buses, 

TDM for the central business district (CBD), limited parking at the CBD to reduce the 

amount of automobile traffic to the CBD, bike sharing in the CBD to facilitate pedestrian 
57

movement at the CBD, and improved pedestrian signalization and crossings between 

adjacent parcels along the corridor.

• Get-Me-to-Town Scenario would assume that development patterns would not change all 

that much and the corridor would remain a through corridor for transit and autos. The goal 

of the third scenario was to improve auto and transit mobility to and from the central 

business district. TSMO strategies included: signal priority, grade separated intersections, 

dedicated busways, HOV/carpool lanes, TDM strategies, signal timing, and access 

management.

Phase 5. What Impacts Will the Scenarios Have?

Questions to address: Which set of development and transportation concepts perform best 

against community goals? How does each scenario perform against our measures? How 

does each scenario contribute to reaching our objectives?

• While the Get-Me-to-Town Scenario performed well with improved auto and transit 

travel times to the CBD, that scenario did not support the economic development 

objectives of the community and it reduced the viability of significant new development 

within the corridor.

• The Livable Corridor performed well in supporting economic development, but added 

additional congestion to the corridor, which in turn could negatively impact the 

economic viability of the CBD.

• The New Destination Scenario supported economic development, the investment and 

time required were a deterrent for many stakeholders.

Phase 6. How Will We Achieve Our Desired

Questions to address: What is our preferred scenario, or, is there a combination of scenarios 

that we would like to adopt? What projects or programs should be developed to support the 

preferred way forward?

• The group determined that none of the three scenarios seemed vastly superior and 

determined that the best course of action would be to combine concepts from all three 

into a hybrid approach.

• The hybrid approach included creating limited nodes of compact, mixed-use 

development distributed along the corridor. This would entail the following:

- Walkable street grids and frontage streets that would be developed at each node and 

connected with the arterials at major intersections.

- Improved signal timing along the arterial to ensure auto and transit speed 

improvements.

- Limited transit stop locations to locations at key development nodes.

• The goals of this approach were to have comparable transit and automobile travel times 

and travel time reliability to the CBD and to increase transit mode share. 
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Outcome: Clear Vision for the Corridor and TSMO Strategies to Achieve that Vision

The scenario process allowed for a more robust discussion of the range of TSMO strategies 

that could be applied within the corridor. At the end, there was clarity in the need to align data 

gathering, monitoring, and signal timing to optimize both auto and transit travel to and from the 

CBD. There was also a need to improve pedestrian safety and signal timing at major intersections 

and transit stops.

Fairview Metro Plan: Development of Regional TSMO Strategies

The Fairview Regional TSMO Committee, hosted by the Fairview MPO, sought to exert a stronger 

operations influence on the next update of the metropolitan transportation plan (MTP). Over the 

coming 20 years, the region expects to experience major cuts in transportation funding and a 

projected tripling of peak period congestion on area freeways and primary arterials. Local leaders 

are increasingly looking at the potential for low-cost operational improvements as an alternative 

to high-cost capacity expansion projects to reduce congestion and improve accessibility. The 

committee worked to develop a Fairview Regional TSMO Plan to identify TSMO investments 

for consideration in the pending update of the MTP, and in programming decisions by individual 

member agencies. They had already developed the TSMO plan goals, operations objectives, and 

related performance measures. The committee then decided to use scenario planning to select the 

most cost-effective TSMO strategies to recommend for the MTP.

Phase 1: Getting Started

Questions to address: What do we want to accomplish? What are the important issues or 

uncertainties to consider? Who should be involved? What type of scenario planning do we 

need?

• The Fairview Regional TSMO Committee wanted to identify the most cost-effective set 

of TSMO strategies to reach its objectives.

• The committee decided that it needed to consider the trend of significantly increasing 

delay with almost no system expansion possible.

• The effort was led by the TSMO Plan Steering Committee of the MPO with support 

from operations and planning staff from agencies in the region including the city, 

county, port, transit, State DOT, and others. The committee involved a variety of 

stakeholders, including public safety, towing, local businesses, commuters, and other 

members of the public.

• The scenario planning participants used the predictive type of scenario planning because 

they were looking for transportation packages that would be most effective in light of the 

likely trends.
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Phase 2. Where Are We Now?

Questions to address: What are the current travel and goods movement measures that will 

help us identify the largest sources of delay and unreliability? Where, when, and why is our 

greatest congestion occurring? What are the growth, travel demand, and mode share trends 

that will help us identify effective strategies? What are the most significant challenges for 

our system managers and operators? 

• The MPO’s most recent travel demand forecasting model outputs identifed the greatest 

growth in demand coming from the northwest quadrant of the region toward the center 

in the morning and back out in the evening. Freight truck travel will increase by 20 

percent over next 10 years, and the region will experience an increase in walking and 

biking by 25 percent in 10 years. Transit and car-sharing will increase by 10 percent in 

10 years.

• Areas of freeways and primary arterials with greatest delay during peak periods were 

confirmed with archived speed data, and when matched with incident and work zone 

area data, these two types of events were found to be the primary contributors to 

unreliable travel.

• Traffic management center operators, local traffic engineers, and bus operators 

providedqualitative information that helped identify several other key factors.

Phase 3. Where Do We Want to Go?

Questions to address: What are the community values and priorities that are relevant in 

selecting TSMO strategies? What are the goals and objectives for the TSMO Plan? How 

will we measure progress?

• The TSMO plan goal was to provide a safe, efficient, and reliable multimodal 

transportation system.

• The following were the TSMO plan operations objectives (performance measures 

underlined): 

- Hold average travel time during peak periods at 2015 levels during the next 10 years 

across all modes.

- Improve the planning time index, a measure of travel time reliability, by 20 percent by 

2020 on freeways and primary arterials.

• Top community values include economic growth, jobs, and clean air. 
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Phase 4. What Could the Future Look Like? 

Questions to address: In light of the current system data, trends, and top community 

values, what are the scenarios we should consider in identifying the preferred approach to 

meeting our operations objectives? What are the M&O strategies needed to realize these 

scenarios?

• All-Knowing Traveler Scenario: Investments would focus on regional traveler 

information including transit, parking, and commercial vehicle operators. Real-time and 

predictive information would be ubiquitous and travelers would adjust their own route, 

mode, and time of travel based on this information.

• Do-Not-Disturb Scenario: Investments would focus on reducing disruptions to travel 

quickly and safely. This would include improved transportation management center 

(TMC) capabilities, TIM, work zone management, special event management, and road 

weather management.

• Manage-Me Scenario: The focus here would be on managing traffic flow and travelers to 

maximize the effective capacity of the system. This would include variable speed limits, 

flexible lane use, ramp metering, enhanced traffic signal operations, geometric 

improvements at intersections, transit signal priority, truck electronic screening or 

clearance programs, and access management. 

Phase 5. What Impacts Will the Scenarios Have?

Questions to address: What are the benefits and costs of each scenario? How does each 

scenario contribute to reaching our objectives?

Using a combination of analysis tools, models, and expert opinion, the group assessed the 

expected impacts of the three scenarios on hours of delay, planning time index, and air quality. 

They also discussed how each scenario would contribute to the regional economy and job 

growth. 

Phase 6. How Will We Achieve Our Desired Future?

Questions to address: What is our preferred scenario, or, is there a combination of scenarios 

that we would like to adopt? What projects or programs should be developed to support the 

preferred way forward?

The stakeholders found benefits in each of the scenarios and merged together the lower cost 

elements of each scenario to develop a preferred set of solutions that incorporated traveler 

information and choice, minimizing disruptions, and managing traffic flow.

Outcome: Package of TSMO Strategies for the Regional TSMO Plan

The direct result of this scenario planning activity was the identification of a package of TSMO 

strategies that were cost-effective, helped to bring the region closer to its operations objectives, 

and took into consideration the top values of the community.
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Section 6: Getting Started 

Through the six-step approach described in Section 3, transportation systems management 

and operations (TSMO) staff at metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) and departments 

of transportation (DOT) can organize a thoughtful, collaborative process for engaging partner 

agencies, organizations, private sector interests, stakeholders, and the general public in 

considering TSMO-related issues and opportunities. Below are a few key questions to consider 

when “mapping out” a scenario planning effort for TSMO. 

1. How should we get started? 

 What do we want to accomplish/address? 

 What is the geographic area and timeframe?

 What are the pressing issues or desired areas of change?

 Who should be involved in the process? Why? How will their involvement influence 

the planning process and implementation? 

 Consider convening a series of scenario planning workshops for TSMO to gather 

stakeholder input during the subsequent phases.

2. Where are we now? 

 What data will be needed to address our questions? Data could include, for example, 

travel time reliability; delay, congestion, safety-related, or incident management 

statistics; transit ridership trends; etc. 

 What information is needed to provide context for the planning process? What are the 

policies or conditions that could influence, or be influenced by, the outcomes of the 

process? Contextual information could include factors that affect travel demand (such 

as current and planned land uses), and environmental conditions such as historic 

weather patterns. 

3. Where do we want to go?

 What are the goals, objectives, targets, and/or desired future conditions to be 

addressed? Will these be established or updated as a result of the process? 

 For context, consider current community-based goals, policies, and statements of 

desired conditions, such as goals from local, MPO, and State DOT plans, local 

land-use plans, complete street policies, sustainability initiatives, etc. 

 Consider contingent or conditional factors that could negatively impact the ability to 

achieve the goals or desired conditions. 
62

4. What could the future look like?

 What types of scenarios will be developed? Which variables will remain constant, and 

which will change? Below are some examples: 

• Predictive: Different packages of transportation strategies for the study area, each of 

which is designed to achieve the same desired end state. 

• Normative: Different end states for the study area, influenced by packages of 

transportation investments and land-use policies organized around policy-driven 

themes. 

• Exploratory: Different end states for the study area, influenced by major changes in 

outside forces such as global economic shifts, weather events, or environmental 

conditions. 

5. What impacts will scenarios have?

 What are the key factors that will be tested during the process? For example – 

• Predictive: Impacts of different transportation investment packages on budgets and/

or system performance goals.

• Normative: Effects of different combinations of transportation investments and 

land-use, economic, and environmental management policies on desired future 

conditions as defined by community values.

• Exploratory: Influence of different outside forces on system performance and 

related outcomes or conditions. 

 What analysis tools will be used to test these impacts and evaluate the results with 

stakeholders? 

6. How will we reach our desired future?

 What will the end product of the process be? How will the scenario planning process 

inform that end product? 

 How will stakeholders engage in the process of defining goals, crafting scenarios, and 

evaluating results? 

 Who will be involved in implementing the end product of the scenario planning 

process? How might their everyday business plans be affected by the results? 

Scenario analysis methods are useful tools for examining the increasingly complex interplay 

of issues, technologies, and stakeholders involved in developing plans and making decisions 

regarding TSMO. This also holds when TMSO strategies are considered within the context 

of a broader planning initiative. Over the past decade, the level of interest in TSMO among 

transportation officials and public decisionmakers has risen due to an increased emphasis on 

developing cost-effective, performance-driven transportation solutions that optimize increasingly 

sophisticated technologies. State DOTs and MPOs that traditionally focused planning efforts 

on long-range capital investments are now elevating TSMO to a top priority in order to increase 
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operational capabilities of existing systems. MPOs are spearheading regional collaboration 

for TSMO by bringing together stakeholders from State, regional, and local public and private 

transportation agencies and interests. Local governments, which are typically responsible for 

operating traffic signals, transit services, road maintenance, snow removal, local policing, and 

other services, are increasingly involved in regional efforts as TSMO strategies become part of 

corridor, local, and subarea plans. The private sector is also playing a major role in influencing 

traveler behavior and system operations by providing real-time traveler data to handheld devices. 

By engaging multiple agencies, jurisdictions, stakeholders, and the private sector, scenario 

planning can function as a useful framework for bringing together a wide variety of stakeholders 

to consider a complex array of inter-related issues and concerns, and to identify ways in which 

they might work together to leverage resources toward mutually beneficial solutions. 

The results of planning for TSMO influence activities such as signal coordination, incident 

management, congestion pricing, and ridesharing programs; technology infrastructure; data 

gathering needs; and others. Advances in vehicle and infrastructure technology and communication 

systems are introducing new paradigms for improving travel safety and efficiency by coordinating 

interactions among infrastructure, vehicles, operators, and human behaviors. The continuing 

evolution of public policies in response to changing community goals and traveler behavior is 

creating the need to identify new measures of effectiveness for TSMO. Scenario planning methods 

can help agencies responsible for TSMO to explore the potential opportunities and impacts 

associated with new and emerging technologies before they are deployed. Scenario planning can 

also help an operating agency and its partners to optimize their strategy for maintaining safe, 

efficient travel in an area where some changes are likely but not yet fully defined. In addition, 

scenarios can help demonstrate the specific TSMO strategies necessary to support community goals 

relative to creating more effective multimodal transportation systems. 


U.S. Department of Transportation 

Federal Highway Administration 

Office of Operations 

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE 

Washington, DC 20590 

www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov

Toll-Free “Help Line” 866-367-7487

October 2015

FHWA–HOP-16-016