Using strategic tools for long range performance-based planning is becoming increasingly valuable as a means to help State and metropolitan area governments select policies and actions to address pressing issues that are fraught with uncertainty. Strategic tools are designed to explore efficiently the joint effects of a wide range of trends and policies in order to equip decision makers and the public with a clearer understanding of possible outcomes.

In order to support these benefits, strategic models must not only rapidly generate results for a diverse range of scenarios, but they must also be amenable to revision as new technologies such as autonomous vehicles emerge. Strategic models also need to be augmented frequently with new assumptions about future outcomes, as well as new policy responses that decision makers may wish to make.

This task order shall develop VisionEval documentation for users and developers; design documents specifying new R code for VisionEval modules, support functions, and framework capabilities; and prototype code implementing some of those capabilities, as described in the Detailed Requirements.

TPF-5(369) Collaborative Development of New Strategic Planning Models.
Objectives:

The “Collaborative Development of New Strategic Planning Models” pooled fund will make strategic tools affordably available to pooled fund members. The pooled fund will support efficient investment in new and upgraded tools, as public funds are not spent doing something more than once, and innovations can be efficiently built on the basis of existing working tools. The pooled fund will allow participating agencies to have access to: 

• Working models that can assess new challenges such as shared mobility or automated vehicles.
• Tools to set up and run these models very rapidly for a large number of policy and scenario combinations.
• Web-based interactive visualization tools to display results,
• Cost-effective technical support for the implementation, customization and application of these tools to each agency’s needs.
• Credible, maintained, documented tools adhering to clear standards and development guidelines, with thorough quality control. 
• A community of active users and developers, which will reduce the likelihood that models will become obsolete, fall under the control of a single developer, or be abandoned by their developer while there is still interest in using them.

• 693JJ321D000017
• 693JJ322F000014

• Planning, Environment, and Realty

• FY 2002-2022 / Planning, Environment, and Realty / Accelerating Project Delivery
• FY 2002-2022 / Planning, Environment, and Realty / Modeling and Analysis Tools

• Integrating Advanced Technologies to Actively Manage Traffic
• Pedestrian / Bicycle

Updated software, documentation, case studies and related materials to support the VisionEval Strategic Modeling Framework.

• Project is implementing pooled fund TPF-5(369)

This project supports strategic evaluation of transportation programs, policies and projects, as well as scenario planning to support visioning and related elements of performance-based plant. The system is currently in active use by four member MPOs and several States.