Transportation System Performance

CONGESTION MANAGEMENT PROCESS

Federal law requires metropolitan planning organizations to identify areas with congestion and to work on reducing the impact of congestion on new and existing facilities.  As part of the 2003 update to the Regional Transportation Systems Plan (RTSP), a congestion management process (CMP) was developed for the Salem-Keizer area.  Corridors where congestion is identified as a current or future issue are listed in the CMP.  The CMP includes a framework for ensuring that projects proposed to the RTSP, and thus the TIP (Transportation Improvement Program), are necessary and that they address the congestion in the corridor and reduce the possible impact of congestion in the future.

Three programs were identified in the CMP to provide a basic understanding of the operations of the regional transportation system:  travel time on the corridors; traffic counts at selected locations; and transit ridership.  A fourth program, tracking collisions on the region’s corridors, was identified after the adoption of the RTSP.  The recently completed Regional Operational Characteristics Report contains a more detailed description of the four programs and includes a summary of the data gathered through December 2008.  The report will be updated annually.

PUBLICATIONS

Regional Operational Characteristics Report, 2008 Edition.  The Regional Operational Characteristics Report (ROCR) provides an assessment of how the regionally significant roads perform over time based on several metrics.  The current 2008 edition contains detailed information about travel times along selected major transportation corridors and a summary of data pertaining to traffic-related collisions.  Future editions will also include transit ridership data and traffic counts at selected locations. 

SKATS Regional Crash Report, 2007.  Each year, The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Crash Analysis and Reporting Unit releases data pertaining to the number of traffic-related collisions that occurred the previous year.   The information contained in the 2007 SKATS Crash Report is derived from geographic information system (GIS) coverages provided by ODOT and includes  the number crashes, number of vehicles involved, the vehicle types involved, collision type, number of injuries, and number of fatalities.