The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued several rules related to performance measures. These rules require state Departments of Transportation, such as Caltrans, and Metropolitan Planning Organizations, such as AMBAG, to establish regional targets or adopt statewide targets set by Caltrans for each of the performance measures. The ability of the region to meet these performance targets will be reported in the next long range plan update.
The Federal Highway Administration has issued three rules related to performance management:
- Performance Management Rule 1 focuses on safety.
- Performance Management Rule 2 focuses on asset management (pavement and bridge condition).
- Performance Management Rule 3 focuses on system performance, freight and air quality, including reliability, travel delay, mode share and emissions reductions.
The attached report from AMBAG provides an overview of the performance management rules and focuses on the safety performance measures (including fatalities and serious injuries) as well as the target setting process. Caltrans has led a multi-agency effort with a variety of stakeholders, including the Federal Highway Administration, National Highway Traffic Association, California Highway Patrol, California Office of Traffic Safety, and Metropolitan Planning Organizations to develop statewide safety performance targets. Each of the performance measures involve target setting, data collection and reporting.
To date, no Metropolitan Planning Organization has elected to establish their own regional targets, and instead have all adopted the statewide targets. This places the responsibility to collect, track, and report performance management data to the Federal Highway Administration at the statewide level rather than with the Metropolitan Planning Organization. This also means that for regions that adopt the statewide targets, reporting of safety performance measure will be aggregated for the state as a whole, providing benefits to regions that perhaps would not have been able to meet those targets on their own. The repercussion of the State not meeting these targets would be that Highway Safety Improvement Program funding allocated to the State would need to be spent on safety projects until the targets are met.
For next steps, AMBAG will approve the statewide safety measures at their Board's February 2020 meeting.