The Use of Road Infrastructure Data for Urban Transportation Planning: Issues and Opportunities

In order to maintain and improve road infrastructure in their respective jurisdictions, the state (the Minnesota DOT), region (the Metropolitan Council), and seven counties in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area develop their respective decision making (investment) processes in which federal or local funding are periodically allocated to road projects, prioritized according to their funding needs based on measured road infrastructure conditions such as pavement quality, level of service, and safety. Including such an investment process in urban transportation planning enables forecasting changes to road infrastructure in the future. Periodic road infrastructure reporting provides standards the jurisdictions maintain, as well as the measures they adopt for the management of road conditions. These measures, developed and maintained by engineers, however, are inconsistent with transportation planning models, causing difficulties in fully using infrastructure reports in planning practice. This paper addresses the issues we encountered with regard to the use of road infrastructure reports in planning practice and identifies the opportunity to improve the inter-operability and integration of infrastructure reporting with urban transportation planning.