U.S. Department of Transportation

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Federal Transit Administration

1

April 2009

Background

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission 

(DVRPC) is the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) 

and regional planning commission for the nine counties 

in the Philadelphia metropolitan region of southeastern 

Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. The region has a 

population of approximately 5.5 million people and an area 

of over 3,800 square miles. Traffic congestion is a major 

problem in parts of the metropolitan region and factors 

such as land use patterns indicate congestion may worsen 

in the future.

Integrating the CMP in the

Metropolitan Transportation

Planning Process

At DVRPC, the Congestion Management Process (CMP) 

helps guide the discussion of where best to invest in the 

transportation system to reduce congestion and achieve 

regional goals, especially in light of fiscal constraints. The 

CMP strengthens the connection among the long-range 

plan (LRP), transportation improvement program (TIP), 

corridor studies and other projects and enhances sharing 

of data, analysis, and completed studies. The CMP helps 

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission uses a systematic process for managing traffic congestion and monitoring 

transportation system performance in the Philadelphia metropolitan region. Guided by an advisory team of stakeholders, the agency 

identifies congested corridors and sub-corridors in the region. It then determines the most appropriate multimodal strategies available 

to mitigate congestion and enhance mobility of people and goods. The agency tracks its progress in meeting its long-range goals 

through performance indicators, which it uses to evaluate what is working well in terms of minimizing congestion as well as to identify 

improvements the agency can make. Planned future enhancements to its process include increased focus on systems management and 

operations to better measure reliability, and strengthening its use of performance measures.

Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission 

Philadelphia Metropolitan Region 

Planning for Congestion Management and Tracking Progress

with Federal requirements for supplemental projects when 

road capacity is needed and tracks completion of these 

commitments. The 2006 CMP is currently being updated 

by DVRPC.

As part of the CMP update, DVRPC began by revisiting the 

basics. It confirmed that policy directions set for the 2006 

CMP remained valid. The DVRPC Board determined that 

in order to reach its regional goals for moving people and 

goods, protecting the environment, enhancing quality of life, 

and supporting economic development, the CMP should 

use the following priorities for transportation projects and 

programs:

1. Maintain, optimize, and modernize the existing 

transportation system and rights-of-way. This includes 

optimizing the services delivered by the system, such as 

options for and convenience of transfers among modes;

2. Manage demand for transportation by fostering land use 

patterns and other strategies that reduce the need for and 

length of trips;

3. Increase capacity of the existing multimodal 

transportation system, limiting the addition of throughtravel lanes; and

4. Add new capacity where necessary, limiting the addition 

of new roads.
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strategies are identified for the sub-corridors. A shorter 

set of priority congestion sub-corridors is developed 

and used for additional studies. Those efforts result in 

proposals for TIP projects. The CMP document outlines 

the implementation of congestion mitigation approaches 

and projects, which helps link the goals from the LRP to 

the TIP. 

DVRPC works with the CMP advisory committee for 

guidance on all elements of the CMP program. One 

element of the update was reviewing whether all appropriate 

stakeholders were included in the process. The advisory 

committee includes representatives from the following 

organizations:

•	 Each of nine DVRPC counties;

•	 Pennsylvania and New Jersey State Departments of

Transportation (DOT) and transit authorities;

•	 FHWA and FTA;

•	 DVRPC Regional Citizens Committee and Goods

Movement Task Force; and

•	 Transportation management associations.

These stakeholders are motivated to participate because the 

benefits for participating have been made clear by DVRPC. 

These benefits include shaping an effort that will end up 

affecting many other projects and investments, getting 

useful analysis and help with projects, increased visibility 

for adopted corridor studies to help recommendations get 

done, and improving mobility and quality of life. The CMP 

includes broader outreach efforts that help stakeholders 

by fostering knowledge of how individuals within 

municipalities and organizations can address congestion 

and advance toward shared goals.

The CMP process (see Figure 1) begins with establishing 

guiding principles and agreeing on methodology. After 

discussion of available data sources and agreement on 

appropriate criteria, DVRPC conducts a region-wide 

analysis that helps identify congested corridors and subcorridors. A variety of sections within DVRPC participate 

in this step, including operations management and travel 

modeling units. The selection of corridors and sub-corridors 

is refined with the input of the CMP advisory committee 

and additional reviews such as environmental, economic 

development, and quality of life. Congestion mitigation 

Figure 1. The CMP in DVRPC’s planning process.

Source: Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

Corridor 

Studies

Specific

Projects

Safety, Maintenance, and 

Other Projects that do not 

Add Capacity; Programs

CMP in the Broad Picture

Long-Range Plan

•	Policies

•	RegionallySignificant

Projects

•	ProgramAreas

TIP– Transportation 

Improvement Program

CMP (Projects)

•	Isa Project Proposed byan AgencyConsistent?

•	How can the Project’s Benefits be Maximized?

•	ProblemsStatements/Project Proposals fromCMP

Other Management Systems

CMP (Planning)

•	Corridors

•	AppropriateStrategies
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Tracking Progress

Tracking Progress toward 2030: Regional Indicators for the 

DVPRC Long Range Plan is an effort to develop regional 

indicators to measure the region’s progress toward the goals 

in its metropolitan transportation plan. Tracking Progress 

is designed to compile meaningful time series data that 

can help the agency and its partners make decisions that 

are more effective. Tracking Progress will provide feedback 

for updates of the LRP with the indicators being revised in 

turn. Besides developing systematic measures to evaluate 

progress toward the goals of the LRP, Destination 2030, this 

effort will accomplish several objectives, including:

•	 Providing an inventory of major performance measure

systems and available databases in the region to 

promote their integration and to share resources;

•	 Considering ways to optimize regional investment

policies that are consistent with the long-range plan 

policies and coordinating this approach with other 

agencies and organizations;

•	 Coordinating with DVRPC efforts in long-range

plan development, the transportation improvement 

program, the Congestion Management Process, and 

other tasks; and

•	 Benefiting all residents in the region by ensuring

ongoing improvements and integration among longrange plan functional areas.

Tracking Progress builds upon previous DVRPC efforts and 

is the product of technical work by the agency and guidance 

from the Tracking Progress Advisory Committee. To ensure 

the group had a strong foundation from which to begin 

Tracking Progress, DVRPC conducted a literature review of 

similar projects and studies. This included national studies 

and work by other metropolitan planning organizations, 

web-based materials and interactive sites such as the FHWA

The CMP also includes a program for regular monitoring 

and evaluation of system performance. DVRPC believes 

that for the CMP to be effective, it needs to determine 

what is working effectively to minimize congestion and 

how the CMP has worked to improve planning for the next 

cycle. A challenge has been figuring out how to evaluate 

the effectiveness of completed projects. The performance 

and evaluation data from the CMP feeds into the planning 

process through the agency’s broader effort at performance 

measurement: Tracking Progress toward 2030: Regional 

Indicators for the DVPRC Long Range Plan. 

Figure 2. DVRPC’s Congestion Management Process is an ongoing process that 

involves regional collaboration, analysis, action, and evaluation.

Source: Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
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Performance Measurement Exchange, and other related

efforts in the region. Based upon this research, DVRPC 

developed a draft set of indicators, which it vetted through 

the advisory committee.

The Tracking Progress advisory committee was formed 

through an outreach effort to over 250 regional participants 

in DVRPC’s transportation, environment, land use and 

development, and economic development committees, 

supplemented with stakeholders regionally known for their 

work in this field. Approximately 55 stakeholders accepted 

the invitation to be involved. The advisory committee 

focuses on how best to track progress toward long-range 

plans goals and strategies to help the region in reaching 

its goals. The group also facilitates coordination and 

cooperation among various related efforts in the region.

Within Tracking Progress, DVRPC established a specific

vision relating to transportation. The vision seeks: 

•	 A safe, convenient and seamless multi-modal passenger

and freight system that is sufficient in its capacity, 

attractive and affordable to its users, accessible and 

equitable for all citizens and visitors to locations 

throughout the region, and incorporates sound growth 

management, urban revitalization, environmental, and 

economic development planning principles.

The specific goals from the long-range plan related to 

congestion and mobility are: 

•	 Reduce Congestion - Reduce congestion by making the

transportation infrastructure more efficient, instituting 

transportation demand management strategies and 

providing alternatives to the single-occupant vehicle

•	 Improve Mobility - Increase mobility by providing

additional choices for travel and guaranteeing the 

transportation system accommodates everyone

Challenges and Lessons 

Learned

A broad challenge has been communicating why the CMP 

is important to the hundreds of individuals who need to 

buy into it for the process to work. Specific challenges have

come from using many large databases of varying quality 

with differing data definitions. An outstanding challenge is 

using the power of computing to better select strategies and 

develop complimentary packages of solutions for congested 

corridors. DVRPC has not found a robust sketch-level 

program available to complete this required step in the 

CMP process.

One lesson learned at DVRPC is that geographic 

information systems (GIS) help in the CMP. GIS improves

understanding of available data, allows data to be analyzed 

in new ways, eases the process of updating information in 

the future, and helps create understandable and interesting 

graphics. The most important lesson DVRPC would share 

with others regarding the CMP or Tracking Progress is 

to start with a relatively simple approach so the task can 

be completed and have an impact. The next iteration can 

always be more sophisticated.

Moving Forward

As DVRPC moves through a second CMP cycle, it has 

found that the structure of the process has stood up well, 

although elements continue to be refined. DVRPC is 

especially interested in work with systems management 

and operations to better measure transportation 

system reliability. DVRPC continues to work on using 

performance measurements in Tracking Progress. The 

use of performance measures continues to strengthen at 

DVRPC, as does coordination among various projects.
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References

Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Tracking 

Progress toward 2030: Regional Indicators for the DVRPC 

Long Range Plan, June 2006. 

Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, How the 

CMP Gets Us There, November 14, 2007. 

AASHTO/FHWA Workshop on Congestion Management,

Presentation by Zoe Neaderland, Delaware Valley Regional 

Planning Commission, September 27, 2007.

FHWA-HOP-09-044