U.S. Department of Transportation

Federal Highway Administration

Federal Transit Administration

1

April 2009

Background

The Capital District Transportation Committee is the designated 

metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the Albany-SchenectadyTroy metropolitan area. The region has four central cities and a unique 

development pattern with much of the suburban development located 

between the cities. Albany is the largest municipality in the region with 

95,000 residents and a central business district with approximately 40,000 

employees. Ten other cities and towns within the region have at least 20,000 

residents and several employment centers of 3,000 to 15,000 employees. 

While CTDC was initially created with the responsibility to develop the 

region’s metropolitan transportation plan, the agency’s planning efforts have 

expanded to investigate broader issues critical to the future of the Capital 

District, such as land use planning, development patterns, and general 

quality of life and economic development issues. The CDTC’s planning 

efforts are intended to be action-oriented, ensuring that the goals of the 

region’s residents are incorporated into CDTC planning and programming. 

The most recent metropolitan transportation plan, the New Visions 2030 

Regional Transportation Plan, approved in October 2007, reflects this 

innovative approach. A new Congestion Management Process (CMP) was 

prepared as part of the development of the New Visions plan, and is fully 

integrated in the metropolitan transportation planning process. 

The Capital District Transportation Committee (CDTC) uses a broad and integrated approach for transportation planning in the AlbanySchenectady-Troy (New York) metropolitan area. This approach encompasses issues critical to the future of the Capital District, such as 

land use planning, development patterns, and general quality of life and economic development issues. These concerns are reflected in 

the agency’s Congestion Management Process (CMP). While congestion is an important issue, the public views many other issues as more 

important to its quality of life. To reflect this perspective, the metropolitan transportation plan focuses transportation investments to 

encourage urban reinvestment, mixed use, transit-oriented development, and context sensitive design. Likewise, performance measures 

balance congestion mitigation with a wide range of other measures. Moreover, by linking the CMP and planning process – in terms of 

input, data, performance measures, and regional objectives – the CDTC is able to engage a variety of groups in the regional decisionmaking 

process. Thus, the CDTC is able to ensure that broader regional goals, and the greater public interest, are met.

Capital District Transportation Committee

Albany, New York 

Placing the Congestion Management Process in the Context of Metropolitan Transportation Planning Goals and Objectives

The CDTC is composed of elected 

and appointed officials from:

•	 Thefour counties of Albany, Rensselaer,

Saratoga,and Schenectady.

•	 Theeight cities within thecounties, Albany,

Schenectady,Troy,SaratogaSprings,Cohoes,

Watervliet, Mechanicvilleand Rensselaer.

•	 NewYorkState Department ofTransportation

(NYSDOT).

•	 Capital DistrictTransportation Authority(CDTA).

•	 Capital District Regional Planning Commission

(CDRPC).

•	 NewYorkStateThruway Authority(NYSTA).

•	 AlbanyCounty Airport Authority.

•	 Albany Port DistrictCommission.

•	 At-largemembers representing thearea’s towns

and villages.

The Federal Highway 

Administration (FHWA) and the 

Federal Transit Administration 

(FTA) serve as advisory members.
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Federal Transit Administration

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Integrating the CMP and 

New Visions Plan

Congestion Goals in the Context of New Visions and the CMP

The CDTC recognizes that growing amounts of congestion 

are evident in the Capital District today but does not view 

current congestion as a major threat to economic vitality 

or to the overall quality of life for residents within the 

region. Congestion is generally confined to intersection 

delay, mid-block delay on certain two-lane suburban 

arterials, and erratic, but increasingly frequent breakdowns 

of freeway flow. While congestion is an important issue, 

surveys in the Capital District have indicated that the 

public views many other issues as more important to 

quality of life. For instance, the public strongly supports 

increased investment in transit, bicycle, and pedestrian 

infrastructure over highways, and cares about issues such 

as speed limit enforcement as much as congestion relief. A 

survey conducted as part of the CDTC Route 5 Corridor 

Study asked, “Would you be willing to accept traffic levels 

and congestion roughly as they are on Route 5 now if 

we could improve transit, walking, biking, landscaping, 

attractiveness and safety?” The respondents overwhelmingly 

(81%) answered “yes” to this question. Unreliability in 

travel times related to incidents, however, is viewed as the 

most important adverse effect of congestion. 

As a result, the New Visions plan focuses transportation 

investments to encourage urban reinvestment, mixed 

use, transit-oriented development, and context sensitive 

design. Performance measures are an important part of the 

New Visions plan; they were selected to consciously focus 

attention on meeting community goals. Consequently, 

congestion measures are one type of performance measure 

in the plan, but are balanced with a wide range of other 

measures, including access, safety, energy, environmental, 

and economic development-related measures. Figure 1. Aerial view of Albany, New York © Ritu Jethani - Fotolia.com.

In addition to being reflected in the transportation 

plan, the CMP is presented in a written document as 

well as an executive summary. The CMP consists of the 

following elements: 

1. Congestion Management Goals. 

2. Congestion Management Principles 

(from the metropolitan plan). 

3. Performance Measures. 

4. Identification of Critical Congestion Corridors. 

5. Data Collection and Performance Monitoring. 

6. Congestion Management Planning, Programming 

and Project Implementation. 
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The CDTC has established congestion avoidance and 

mitigation principles in the New Visions plan used to guide 

the CDTC’s selection of actions. The principles reflect the 

congestion goals of the CMP that were established through 

its visioning process. These principles focus on prioritizing 

travel demand management and operational improvements 

over highway capacity expansion. The principles also 

note that incident management is essential to effective 

congestion management to address “non-recurring” 

congestion and that any major highway expansion 

considered by the CDTC will include a management 

approach, such as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. 

Moreover, other performance measures, such as pedestrian, 

bicycle and transit access, community quality of life, and 

safety will be considered along with congestion measures in 

project development and design. 

Developing Performance Measures to Reflect Congestion Goals

The CDTC uses excess delay as its primary measure of 

congestion. Recognizing that nearly all travel experiences 

some amount of delay relative to free-flow speeds, excess 

delay is defined as the amount of time spent at a given 

location or along a road segment that exceeds the maximum 

amount of time that is generally considered acceptable. 

Previously in the CMS, excess delay was measured using 

the CDTC’s travel demand model, based on volumes 

and theoretical capacities. However, the working group 

recommended changes because of weaknesses in this 

approach, including the issue of theoretical highway 

capacities derived from the Highway Capacity Manual being 

routinely exceeded on many highways, drivers changing 

routes and time of travel to avoid congestion in ways that 

are not adequately addressed in the model, and the regional 

model not assessing the magnitude of incident-related delay. 

The CDTC recognized the importance of incident-based 

delay, since when congestion is predictable, it is generally 

considered to be more tolerable. However, when congestion 

Role of the CMP, Transportation Plan, and TIP

The CMP updates the Congestion Management System 

(CMS), which had been used in the region since 1995. 

The CDTC’s update renews many of their previous 

approaches to congestion management, but also includes 

new performance measures and data sources, updates values 

for the New Visions performance measures, introduces 

new congestion management principles, and describes the 

integration of management and operations (M&O) into the 

CDTC planning process. 

In fact, the CDTC has discovered, through its extensive 

efforts in developing its New Visions regional transportation 

plan, that the flow of policy from the plan to the data 

collection process is as important as, perhaps more 

important than, the flow of information from the CMP 

to the plan. That is, the visions, goals, and objectives in 

the metropolitan transportation plan should influence the 

performance measures and data collection in the CMP as 

much as the CMP should influence the plan. This is why 

the CDTC ensures that all the regional objectives from the 

planning process are reflected in the CMP, not just those 

relating directly to congestion. Since the CDTC stresses that 

congestion is not necessarily the primary issue facing the 

region, all performance measures from the regional plan are 

included in the CMP. The CDTC views weighing trade-offs 

as critical to the CMP and planning process, and the agency 

wants to ensure that decisions are based on broader regional 

objectives and public input.

The CMP includes two specific congestion goals to guide 

congestion management efforts and to help define success 

from the CMP: (1) Support growth in economic activity 

and maintain the quality of life in the Capital District by 

limiting the amount of “excess” delay encountered in the 

movement of people, goods and services; and (2) Make 

contributions to the avoidance and mitigation of congestion 

on all modes by implementing demand management 

programs before performing capacity enhancements. 
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is unpredictable, for example because of unpredictable 

incidents that have significant impact on travel time, 

the congestion can be more frustrating and disruptive to 

travelers.

As a result, the CDTC supplemented its modeled data in 

the CMP with a new data set called MIST (Management 

Information System for Transportation), which provides 

speed and volume data on each lane of expressway 

segment every 15 minutes throughout the year. This 

data is collected by the New York State Department of 

Transportation (NYSDOT) for a number of locations 

on I-87 and I-90 as well as one location each on I-787 

and Alternate Route 7. The CDTC uses a measure 

developed by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) 

called “planning time index,” a ratio of driving time on 

one of the slowest traffic days to driving at 55 miles per 

hour. For instance, a planning time index of 1.5 means 

that a trip which takes one hour in free flow traffic 

would take one and a half hours on average once every 

20 days during the peak period. So, if a traveler wanted a 

95% change of arriving on time, he or she would have to 

plan to leave one half hour earlier than if there were no 

congestion. 

Using the MIST data, planning time indices are 

calculated on Capital District expressway segments for 

AM and PM peak periods. Maps are developed showing 

the locations with the largest reliability problems. 

Although measures of non-recurring delay are not 

modeled for 2030 given current limitations in travel 

demand modeling capabilities, CDTC considers these 

measures of current conditions valuable for identifying 

problem areas and prioritizing investments in the 

transportation planning process. 

The CDTC uses a comprehensive set of performance 

measures for the Congestion Management Process that 

is identical to the performance measures defined for the 

CDTC’s New Visions. In terms of the transportation 

service, the selected core measures are identified in the 

table below.

The CDTC considers access, accessibility, and system 

flexibility, in addition to congestion, given that these 

are important aspects to encouraging consideration of 

alternatives to single occupant vehicle (SOV) travel. Several 

other measures are used by the CDTC relating to resource 

requirements and external effects. For example, since 

safety and air quality can be improved with congestion 

management, the CDTC considers these in developing 

congestion management strategies. Land use performance 

measures are also in the CMP because land use is seen as an 

important tool for congestion management.

Transportation Service Core Measures

Access Percent of PM Peak HourTripsTransit Accessible

Percent of PM Peak HourTrips with Transit Advantage

Percent of PM Peak HourTrips Accessible by Bicycle

Percent of PM Peak HourTrips Accessible byWalking

Accessibility TravelTime between RepresentativeLocations by

Quickest Mode

Congestion PM Peak Hour Recurring Excess Person Hours of Delay

Excess Person Hours of Peak Hour Delay per PMTx 1,000

Excess Person Hours of Peak Hour Delay per Person x

1,000

Flexibility Reservecapacity on the Urban Expresswayand Arterial

System(PM Peak Hour Vehicle Miles ofCapacity)

Community

Quality ofLife

Subjectivemeasureevaluated at regional, corridorand

project level scales
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District Transportation Authority (CDTA) implemented a full 

passenger count monitoring program that identifies ridership 

levels by route, location, and bus trip. 

Unfortunately, much of the data provided by partners is 

not collected in the frequency and consistency needed to 

fully support the CDTC’s congestion management process. 

Additionally, the identified performance measures require 

collection of some data that is not currently available, 

including continuous intersection counts, routine vehicle 

occupancy counts, and regular household travel surveys 

among other items. The CDTC has also identified 

improvements in the transfer of transit data to the formal 

CMP database as something to address as it advances its CMP. 

Funding for the Capital District Transportation Management 

Center (TMC) is a major commitment in CDTC’s TIP. The 

TMC is a source of extensive data on traffic volumes, speeds, 

and incidents that are necessary for the CMP. In addition, 

emerging technologies hold promise for even more extensive 

data collection through the TMC, such as the TRANSMIT 

system, which can monitor speeds of vehicles on different 

segments of the expressway system. The system is in place, 

but further work is still needed to collect data for planning 

purposes. 

References

FHWA/FTA Webinar, Christopher R. O’Neill, Capital 

District Transportation Committee, June 24, 2008.

Capital District Transportation Committee, The Metropolitan 

Congestion Management Process, May 29, 2007. 

http://www.cdtcmpo.org/rtp2030/materials/cm-doc.pdf.

Benefits of this Process

A benefit of linking the CMP and planning process – in 

terms of input, data, performance measures, and regional 

objectives – is that CDTC is able to engage a variety of 

groups in the regional decisionmaking process. While 

the CDTC still has a formal transportation improvement 

program (TIP) process to analyze projects, the involvement 

of operators and other stakeholders in the CMP allows 

the agency to collect information earlier in the process to 

generate the scope of projects for further development. 

Additionally, since the CMP reflects all the goals of the 

plan, not just those relating specifically to congestion, the 

agency is able to ensure that broader regional goals are met.

Challenges and Lessons 

Learned

The CDTC has found data collection to be a critical 

element of success to achieve performance-based planning 

and facilitate CMP integration with the planning process. 

The CDTC, supported by the New York State Department 

of Transportation, has had extensive data collection 

practices in place in the Capital District for some time. 

The region has a number of continuous count locations 

in the area and has recently established a three-year 

coverage count process to maintain current traffic volume 

information on the Federal-aid system. Furthermore, many 

of the counties and municipalities conduct ongoing traffic 

volume studies of county and local roads. Once collected, 

that data is forwarded to the CDTC, which includes it in 

its comprehensive traffic count system. 

During an earlier CMS development, the CDTC 

completed a 3 year intersection analysis process, 

including collection of AM and PM peak period traffic 

counts, vehicle classification, and operational data for 

approximately 400 intersections. Additionally, the Capital 

FHWA-HOP-09-043