Transportation investments are multifaceted and provide an array of benefits, many of which are difficult or impossible to quantify. They are also inherently political and driven by the needs of citizens, which may or may not match up perfectly to quantifiable benefits. Decisions about where and how to invest should ideally be informed by a combination of quantifiable benefits, citizen feedback, and political reality.

The good news is that some states and MPOs already do this. The bad news is that at the federal level it is largely the politics that has been driving investment decisions. The federal government has very little quantifiable data regarding its investment decisions. While some goals may be more difficult to quantify than others, right now we have no goals and no data on whether progress is being made towards them. We must immediately begin the process of defining the goals and developing the measures for federal investment and the national interest. This is the only way we can hope to justify federal investment going forward.

First of all, happy National Transportation Week! It may not be the best-known holiday in America, but if anyone should be celebrating it, those of us in this forum should. The holiday has actually been around since 1957, when Congress established it to "to give complete recognition to the importance to each community and its people of the transportation system of the United States and the maintenance of the facilities of the system in the most modern state of adequacy to serve the needs of the United States.”

Of course, our national transportation system is currently far, far from "the most modern state of adequacy," as the new Urban Land Institute study reminds us. The report highlights the trillions of dollars that China, India, and Brazil are spending to expand and improve their transportation infrastructure, and the trillions we need just to get existing infrastructure back into serviceable shape.

When we’re talking about numbers like that—or even the small fraction of them that’s likely to trickle through Congress this year—there shouldn’t even be a debate about how important transparency is. It’s a no-brainer. Being able to calculate return on investment is part of the reason, but at least as important is being able to track the equity impacts of our investments. Are low-income communities and communities of color being fairly served by transportation investments, or skipped over? Are minority- and women-owned businesses getting a fair shot to build and maintain the roads, bridges, and transit our tax dollars pay for? What about disadvantaged workers?

More and more, Americans are coming to understand that our public investments reflect our values as a community. If we believe those investments should create more just, prosperous, and connected communities, we need to have full access to the details of those investments—and the right tools to evaluate them. That’s why TEN is partnering with the Center for Social Inclusion, Good Jobs First, and OMB Watch to create a new online resource that will give everyone from policymakers to ordinary citizens the ability to map Recovery Act transportation investments. Site users will be able to make their own assessment of whether these investments are likely to generate long-term prosperity for all of our communities, including communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

Stay tuned for more information on how to access the resource once it’s complete.

p.s.—It may be off this week’s topic, but the PBS documentary Freedom Riders, which was aired this week and is viewable online, is too important not to mention, and too good to miss. Together with the recent NPR piece Back of the Bus, it’s a great reminder that transportation has always been at the center of the fight to make the promise of democracy a reality for all Americans.

Identifying and tracking transportation goals is not only worthwhile, but also essential to spending federal dollars wisely and maintaining public trust. As the Pew and Rockefeller report demonstrates, states with the strongest benchmarks for success enjoy higher constituent approval and have an easier time seeking more resources when they need them.

With strong performance measures, regional officials survey several “what-ifs” to see how various housing, land use and growth scenarios impact their infrastructure needs, and constituents are able to get a look at how best to leverage their dollars. The draft version of the Obama administration bill makes a significant leap from the status quo by embracing these ideas.

“Livability,” as the administration has invoked it, is not a single metric, but a shorthand way of referring to a number of goals most communities would consider no-brainers: Increased access to jobs and affordable homes near those jobs; cleaner air; revitalizing once-depressed areas and reducing congestion are quantifiable measures of improvement for almost any community.

Transportation for America this week teamed up with Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Reason Foundation, two fiscally conservative groups, to release a report highlighting innovative transportation solutions. Our first joint proposal centered on transportation scenario planning, the idea that you first decide where you’re going, and how you’ll get there, before you invest precious tax dollars. All of us – regardless of ideological bent – can agree that that kind of thinking makes sense.

The next transportation bill ought to ensure that projects are chosen on a competitive basis, driven by the ability of each project to make progress toward clearly articulated goals. The federal government doesn’t need to dictate each and every goal, but the nation’s taxpayers have a right to ask that recipients of their money offer a clear rationale for their investments, and track their progress against performance measures.

Not only is the public fully entitled to know how tax dollars are spent — and the return on investment — it is in the best interest of state departments of transportation to ensure that information is easily available to any interested party. There is so much distrust of government in general and a sense that any money given to it may be wasted; being transparent and accountable must be an integral part of every DOT’s mission.

My experience includes serving as CEO of two state DOTs for nearly 14 years. Both departments became recognized leaders in their respective states utilizing a “performance management” approach: establishing a strategic direction that focused on exceeding customer expectations and gauging success through outcome-based measures. Each state had high customer satisfaction rates and high trust ratings from the public in general. These accomplishments would not have been possible without identified goals, benchmarks and measures that were regularly distributed to the administration, legislators, media and the public.

Additionally, by being customer focused, the departments were constantly driven by “better, faster, cheaper” as a means of providing better service to customers. Clearly, any resources saved allowed higher quality or additional services to be delivered to our customers.

While each state might have a different suite of measures, every DOT should have a core set that is shared among the other 51 DOTs (50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico). To be of value, the process needs to concentrate on outcome measures that are based on tangible results…what’s actually being delivered to the customer. Benchmarks of these measures should identify the best in the country at providing this product or service (which means public or private). Goals that can’t be distilled down into quantifiable actions cannot be measured. Vague notions of programs — whether state or federal — that are intangible might make good politics, but are not suitable to measurement or accountability.

Performance management is all about showing people that their taxes are being used for projects that provide real benefits. State departments of transportation know this, and have embraced the practice of measuring their performance against key objectives to better manage their programs.

A national example of how successful states can be when we focus our programs around strategic goals is in the area of traffic safety. During the past four years, traffic fatalities have declined from approximately 42,000 to 32,000, some of which can be attributed directly to the adoption and implementation of state highway safety plans.

Through the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ Standing Committee on Performance Management, state DOTs are sharing best practices, offering webinars, and supporting a performance metrics “synthesizer”, which makes it easier to see what others are doing and to learn from each other. A recent comparison of state construction scheduling and budgeting, for example, resulted in the identification of best practices to improve project delivery.

In my home state of Washington, we use performance data in all areas of our work. For example, we have made a specialty of using data to track the performance of our highway systems by including congestion and collisions and collision response. Our efforts have shown that responding quickly to incidents not only improves safety but also cuts down on the time wasted and mobility lost when a collision clogs the highway system.

Earlier this month, AASHTO’s Board of Directors – made up of the chief executive officers of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico – reaffirmed its commitment to making a performance-based, outcome-oriented transportation program one of our key recommendations for any new surface transportation bill that comes out of the House or Senate.

Our recommendations start with national “core performance measures”, developed through a process led by the U.S. Department of Transportation in collaboration with state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies. States and MPOs would set their own targets as part of a “state-driven” performance management program tailored to the unique circumstances found in their geographic areas as well as the conditions of their transportation systems. States would identify and implement funded strategies needed to meet these targets in their statewide and metropolitan-wide long-range plans and would report regularly to the public on their progress to ensure accountability.

Investing scarce taxpayer dollars in transportation infrastructure requires a clear focus – one aimed at meeting the specific needs and conditions of our communities while ensuring that the investment is effective and provides tangible results. Accountability and public engagement are critical to the process. Our ability to make transportation investments in the future relies on our credible, transparent and accountable reporting now.

Paula Hammond is secretary of transportation for the Washington State Department of Transportation and chair of AASHTO’s Standing Committee on Highways.

Public dollars are the cornerstone of transportation investment and yes, the public is entitled to detail on how those transportation dollars are spent. More public information is better both in terms increased understanding of why investment and fees/taxes matter and to build support for future investment. Transportation investment and performance information is important to increase the public’s understanding of how this investment affects jobs and the economy, and to support the premise that infrastructure investment is not an abstract policy goal but a key to economic recovery at the local, state and federal level.

Is it a worthwhile exercise to identify transportation goals and then measure the progress toward them?

The continual identification and evaluation of transportation goals, trends, data and performance is essential both at the investment program and project level. Transportation investment decisions do not occur in a vacuum and broad measures must be taken into consideration so that the best and most appropriate investment and planning decisions are made—both quantitatively and qualitatively. Per the adage “we treasure what we measure”, it is important to be able to show and not simply assert that progress is being made by all measures and to provide a sense of forward momentum even when it may still be that the pothole on your street is unfilled. The more we measure the more we know how the system is performing and the corrective actions we need to take to keep the system functioning.

What benchmarks, if any, should transportation officials identify?

There are a wide range of benchmarks that can be utilized to monitor impacts and progress, whether aimed at achieving mode shift, safety improvements, or access to jobs. As more data becomes available for active transportation and parking, these measures will prove to be more concrete and quantifiable rather than remain as broad goals. The transportation community should continue be an active partner in encouraging the on-going development and refinement of performance measures.