Title: RENAISSANCE FOR THE STATE TRANSPORTATION NEEDS STUDY
Abstract: State transportation agencies are faced with continued public expectations of improved transportation service. The interrelated issues of projecting revenues and inflation, anticipating the effectiveness of alternative investment maintenance programs, assigning priorities for future service level requirements, ensuring equity, and preserving the benefits from past investments affect the ability of the states to formulate reponsive policy. An historic framework for planning has been the periodic state transportation needs study. This process, however, has fallen into disfavor as the disparity between increasing needs and the ability to retire deficiencies has grown. The Michigan Department of Transportation has restructured the needs study through a procedure for disaggregating, stratifying, and assigning priority transportation needs as input to the preparation of the state's first transportation plan. The Michigan process is basically Zero-base budgeting done for each mode for each year of a study period-in this case, 1982 to 1990. Each defined deficiency is examined to see whether its cost is avoidable; if it is avoidable, the deficiency is placed into a hierarchy of classification. A set of priority rules defined by each mode is then applied. This results in the ranked decision packages needed in order to evaluate the implications of a particular fiscal policy or monetary reality on the ability to retire transportation deficiencies. This approach enables analysts to disaggregate needs into deficiencies, assign priorities, and stratify needs by planning objectives. With this new apporach, the needs study process is reaffirmed as a valuable element in transportation planning and a vital component in evaluating alternative policy options.
Publication Year: 1983
Publication Date: 1983-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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