TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS

In the current environment of constrained budgets, State, 

regional, and local transportation agencies are looking for 

more efficient ways to reach their transportation mobility and 

safety goals, objectives, and performance targets. Greater 

inclusion of TSMO strategies within the planning process 

results in a mix of improvements that facilitate progress toward 

targets while improving communities. Most transportation 

agencies realize they cannot build their way out of congestion, 

especially in densely populated urban areas. TSMO strategies 

help planners address reliability issues and improve upon 

reliability performance measures without increasing capacity. 

Construction and rehabilitation projects remain important for 

transportation planning, but planning for the effective operation 

of transportation facilities is critical to making good use of limited 

transportation resources.1 TSMO investments can complement 

capacity expansion or rehabilitation projects and, in some cases, 

provide more timely and less costly alternatives for achieving 

desired improvements in mobility and safety. 

Greater coordination and collaboration among planners and 

operators help span the differing planning horizons between 

them. Operators broaden their perspective to include a longerterm vision for system performance and planners have a greater 

understanding of the shorter-term planning needs for operations. 

This leads planners and operators to focus their attention on 

planning for TSMO investments that address both short-term and 

long-term needs more effectively. 

Integrating TSMO into the metropolitan and statewide 

transportation planning processes increases visibility of 

operational needs and TSMO strategies when investment decisions 

are made. 

PLANNING

WHAT IS TSMO?

Transportation systems management 

and operations (TSMO) is the 

use of strategies, technologies, 

mobility services, and programs to 

optimize the safety, mobility, and 

reliability of the existing and planned 

transportation system. A significant 

cause of congestion and unreliable 

travel is non-recurring events, such as 

crashes, and transportation network 

disruptions, such as bad weather, and 

special events. TSMO enables agencies 

to target the underlying operational 

causes of congestion and unreliable 

travel through innovative solutions 

that typically cost less and are quicker 

to implement than adding capacity. 

TSMO expands the range of mobility 

choices available to system users, 

including shared mobility and nonmotorized options. 

This Fact Sheet is part of a series that 

explains how TSMO relates to other 

State and local transportation agency 

functions and offices. Other Fact 

Sheets focus on how TSMO relates 

to: asset management, performance 

management, maintenance, design, 

environment, safety, human resources, 

and construction.

Enhancing Transportation:

connecting tsmo 

and planning

1 Federal Highway Administration, “Organizing and Planning for Operations” website. 

Available at: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/plan4ops/index.htm. 

Photo Source: Getty Images
ENHANCING TRANSPORTATION: CONNECTING TMSO AND PLANNING

The inter-jurisdictional and multimodal nature of 

TSMO requires collaboration and coordination 

among operating agencies across jurisdictions 

and between transportation and public safety 

agencies, private mobility service providers, and 

other entities in order to improve the security, 

safety, and reliability of the transportation system. 

Planners have often served as the conveners and 

facilitators for collaborative operations groups 

within a region and this can become an important 

avenue for integrating TSMO needs into the 

planning process.

A performance-based approach to 

transportation planning for operations 

requires focusing on mobility-oriented 

outcomes rather than on building and 

maintaining capacity—and this requires 

planners and operators to work together 

toward common objectives.

The connection between TSMO and planning is increasingly critical to prepare for connected and 

automated vehicles. Addressing these considerations as well as the advances in intelligent transportation 

systems (ITS) requires a holistic approach to mobility 

planning because this is anticipated to significantly 

change the transportation system. Additionally, 

travelers will have more mobility options, including 

shared mobility and non-motorized mobility. 

Transportation planners and operators are looking at 

transportation less in terms of lane miles of capacity 

and more in terms of services that enable mobility 

for people and goods. 

Figure 1 illustrates how planning 

for operations follows the same 

approach as the planning process 

and how TSMO can be integrated 

into the elements of planning. 

Functionally, this includes identifying reliability 

and operations issues along with other planningrelated concerns early on and developing 

operations objectives and related performance 

measures during objective setting. TSMO 

strategies can then be evaluated alongside other 

strategies and included in the transportation 

plan and program. This approach can also be 

performed for other planning and operations 

activities such as developing corridor plans 

Figure 1. An approach to planning for operations that and strategic TSMO plans. integrates operations in each major step of the planning 

process.

Source: Adapted from FHWA, Advancing Metropolitan Planning 

for Operations: The Building Blocks of a Model Transportation Plan 

Incorporating Operations – A Desk Reference, 2010. Available at: 

https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop10027/. 

Reliability and operations issue 

identification and prioritization 

Operations objectives and 

performance measures

Long-range transportation 

plans and other documents

Transportation improvement 

program and other funding 

programs

Implementation

Systematic process to identify, 

evaluate, and select TSMO 

strategies to meet objectives

Goals and motivation

Monitoring and Evaluation

TSMO=Transportation Systems Management and Operations

Identify TSMO strategies

Evaluate TSMO strategies

Select TSMO strategies 

 for the plan

TSMO strategies
ENHANCING TRANSPORTATION: CONNECTING TMSO AND PLANNING

Opportunities exist to 

leverage the strengths 

of both planning and 

TSMO:

 Operators routinely collect data that can 

help identify needs (e.g., bottlenecks) and 

also recommend TSMO strategies that can 

address those needs (e.g., managed lanes, 

service patrols, real-time traveler information, 

incident response teams, transportation 

management centers).

 Planners and operators can develop common 

goals and objectives and related performance 

measures for mobility within a region or State. 

For example, growing emphasis on system 

reliability suggests that planners consider 

including reliability-oriented objectives and 

performance measures for travelers and 

goods movement in their transportation 

plans. Operators typically have the data and 

technology infrastructure needed to support the 

development of these objectives and measures 

and to monitor system reliability performance. 

 States and MPOs can connect outcomerelated objectives to more specific 

objectives that drive State, metropolitan, 

corridor, and subarea planning and 

operations. With the greater emphasis on 

travel time reliability, States and MPOs can 

identify unreliable roadway segments and 

the TSMO strategies to be included in longrange plans, short-term corridor plans, and 

Transportation Improvement Programs/

State Transportation Improvement Programs 

that will address those segments. 

 Working together, planners and operators 

can create innovative institutional 

arrangements that share resources, 

provide mutual assistance, agree on 

interoperability standards, and share realtime and archived data. 

 The discussions and analysis required by 

the Congestion Management Process offer 

an opportunity to include a wider variety 

of operators and planners in discussions 

about non-recurring congestion and travel 

time reliability. 

Photo Source: Getty Images
ENHANCING TRANSPORTATION: CONNECTING TMSO AND PLANNING

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Joseph Gregory, Federal Highway Administration

(202) 366-0610 | Joseph.Gregory@dot.gov

How has this worked in practice?

 The Texas Department of Transportation (DOT) TSMO 

Statewide Strategic Plan includes a TSMO evaluation section 

that contains questions to be used during project planning and 

development at the Texas DOT. The evaluation covers areas such 

as coordination and collaboration with stakeholders, safety, 

operations, and technology.2

 The Pennsylvania DOT developed a guidebook on how to 

implement the State’s approach to integrating TSMO into 

planning and programming and how to connect operationsrelated planning efforts with other planning efforts in the State.3

 

 The Florida DOT developed a Guide for Planning for Travel Time 

Reliability. The guide identifies travel time reliability as crucial 

to understanding a traveler’s experience, therefore making it 

an important aspect of the transportation system to consider. It 

provides direction on how to integrate reliability into each aspect 

of planning and programming, including adapting the DOT’s 

traffic analysis tools for reliability.4

FHWA-HOP-18-096

December 2018

2 Texas Department of Transportation, Transportation Systems Management and Operations Statewide Strategic Plan, 2018. 

Available at: http://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot-info/trf/tsmo/tsmo-statewide-strategic%20plan.pdf.

3 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Guidebook Part I: Planning, 2018. 

Available at: http://www.dot.state.pa.us/public/PubsForms/Publications/PUB%20851.pdf. 

4 Florida Department of Transportation, Guide Planning for Travel Time Reliability, December 2018. 

Available at: http://www.fdot.gov/planning/FTO/mobility/TTRGuide2017.pdf.

Source: Getty Images