FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION (FHWA)

Renaissance has been leading a range of innovative projects, analysis, guidebooks, and training courses for the Federal Highway Administration for over a decade.

Integrating Transportation and Land Use Web-Based Training (WBT)

National Highway Institute, FHWA

Renaissance led the development of content, course knowledge areas, and teaching materials – including videos – for the NHI’s web-based curriculum titled, Integrating Transportation and Land Use. This course targets a wide range of planning professionals that include federal planning and transportation professionals, state and regional planners and engineers, and other transit agency planners. The video contains 12 lessons and an accompanying workbook with fact sheets, case studies, references, and exercises that address the dynamic interplay between dynamic interplay between transportation systems and land use development patterns, the processes and principles that influence integrated transportation and land use planning, and strategies for applying integrated land use and transportation principles to different types and scales of planning and decision-making processes. 

Scenario Planning Guidebooks 

Renaissance has been providing scenario planning expertise for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) since 2013. We began by preparing a survey, webinar, and a white paper summarizing the State of the Practice of Scenario Planning in Transportation. Renaissance worked with a team and served as key authors on Advancing Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Through Scenario Planning, a primer on the use of scenario planning to advance TSMO. Renaissance helped develop and facilitate hands-on workshops that demonstrate and enable transportation managers and other officials to use scenario planning as part of their planning for operations approach. 

Renaissance was asked to support the follow-up, working as part of a consulting team to develop the guidebook: Supporting Performance-Based Planning and Programming (PBPP) through Scenario Planning. This report described how metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) and other transportation agencies can incorporate scenario planning into the performance-based planning and programming process. The guidebook presents a framework for connecting established scenario planning processes with the four phases of PBPP, which include direction, analysis, programming, and implementation. An important piece of the guidebook is three case studies. Renaissance screened MPOs across the country and then visited the Hillsborough MPO (Tampa, FL) and led a day-long workshop that obtained the information necessary to prepare a case study on that region’s recent scenario planning effort (Imagine 2040). Renaissance developed and facilitated the workshop that attracted professionals from throughout the Tampa Bay region and the state of Florida.  

National Planning Environmental Linkages (PEL) Framework

Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC

Renaissance worked with the Federal Highway Administration to develop a proposed National Framework for Planning and Environment Linkages. Also known as PEL, it represents a collaborative and integrated approach to transportation decision-making that considers environmental, community, and economic goals early in the transportation planning process; and uses the information, analysis, and products developed during planning to inform the environmental review process. Among the key objectives of PEL are faster and more efficient transportation decision making that is meaningfully informed by community goals and environmental resource needs. Renaissance Planning staff brought its extensive experience developing and applying Florida’s Efficient Transportation Decision Making (ETDM) process into the collaboration with FHWA to develop a National PEL Framework.

Renaissance engaged three states – Oregon, Utah, and Arizona – in the development of the proposed Framework. These engagements helped FHWA and Renaissance better understand needs and opportunities related to PEL. Our team interviewed key personnel in the planning and environmental review processes in each state and used the findings to set up productive workshops with each. The workshops yielded several best practices that informed the Framework and provided important context as to why a Framework is needed what it should emphasize. As a result, the proposed National PEL Framework focuses on methods and opportunities for early and continuous resource agency involvement in the transportation planning process; avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating potential impacts to resources as early as long-range systems planning; and access to reliable and up-to-date environmental data.

The Framework helps advance PEL by advising state DOTs and regional metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) on ways that PEL can be applied as early as long-range transportation systems planning to coordinate the needs of transportation, environmental, and community systems. Prior to the Framework PEL has been primarily seen as a tool to apply during the project development phase to individual projects at a corridor level. Starting the coordination between transportation and resource/regulatory agencies earlier in long-range systems planning can help realize the potential of fully integrated planning that looks beyond the corridor to achieve better environmental and community outcomes from transportation improvements.

In 2021, FHWA hired Renaissance to continue working on the National PEL Framework through outreach to three additional states (Minnesota, Colorado, and North Carolina); a peer exchange that will include these states plus Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Florida; and technical assistance to advance the PEL Framework concepts in several states across the country.

PEL Training Course

Planning and Environmental Linkages (PEL) represents a collaborative and integrated approach to transportation decision-making that considers environmental, community, and economic goals early in the transportation planning process, and uses the information, analysis, and products developed during the planning to inform the environmental review process in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). PEL could be applied to undertake a multimodal, system-level, corridor or subarea planning study.  

Renaissance, in partnership with ICF, developed the instructor-led FHWA training to an NHI instructor-led PEL Training Course. The Course introduces terminology associated with PEL and the implementation of PEL into the transportation planning and environmental review processes, as well as implementation approaches, tools, benefits, and the state-of-practice. Renaissance and ICF instructed the pilot training course that emphasized the benefits of PEL, such as: 

•   Accelerated project delivery 
•   Development of purpose and need early in the planning process 
•   Elimination of unreasonable alternatives during the planning process 
•   Early and improved relationships and coordination 
•   Improved program and informed project decisions  
•   Less duplication 
•   Promotion of efficient and cost-effective solutions 
•   Earlier consideration of potential environmental effects 
•   Enhanced community involvement 

Multimodal Transportation System Performance Measures Research & Application

Renaissance was selected by the Federal Highway Administration to lead a research study on measuring multimodal transportation system performance. Such a measure, which would place all modes of transportation on common ground, has long been a challenge to planners and policy makers. Not only do modes like autos, transit, walking and bicycle operate in very different market settings, but the data to support comparable analysis of each mode has been severely lacking. As a result, existing measures of performance have tended to emphasize both the highway side of the transportation system and focus on the movement of vehicles and not users.

The study has been given impetus through FHWA’s recent attempts to introduce a system of national transportation system performance measures, as required under MAP-21. By its admission, FHWA was unable to come up with a satisfactory measure or measures of multimodal system performance prior to its draft Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), and so this research study is intended to more comprehensively assess those options to guide future responses.

A major emphasis in the current study is on evolving data sources that may finally support effective performance measurement. Most notably are the data which are being crowd-sourced from cellphone and mobile navigation (GPS) technology. Broadly known as “big data”, these sources are furnishing massive volumes of real-time travel data, which technicians are transforming into information on actual trips made by people. These data can be linked to mode of travel, facilities used, and conditions (speed, congestion) on those facilities. Renaissance has proposed a concept that would tap these data to create moment-to-moment snapshots of how the transportation system is processing the demands being placed on it. Because the data are streaming, activity can be monitored over time to ascertain person travel times by mode, multimodal throughput, and system reliability at any scale. The final version of the measures were tested in a set of national pilot tests.




Scenario Planning for Management & Operations 

FHWA sought assistance in creating a primer on advancing management and operations planning through scenario-based planning processes. This project supports FHWA’s ongoing interest in incorporating scenario planning into all elements of transportation planning. Renaissance worked with other consulting partners to conduct a workshop and develop a primer targeted to transportation planning and operations practitioners.  

Renaissance has a long history working with the FHWA on scenario planning initiatives:

  • We developed a scenario planning model and tool called CorPlan which  was funded by a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Transportation and Community and System Preservation (TCSP) grant. 

  • We were part of a team to develop a guidebook for the Office of Planning & Environment designed to help MPOs and other transportation agencies incorporate scenario planning into the performance-based planning and programming process. Renaissance helped advise an Advisory Team of transportation planning experts, provided insights and guidance on the guidebook format and outline and facilitated a learning session with the Hillsborough MPO to learn about their cutting edge scenario planning practices. 

  • Renaissance developed a white paper which presented a brief synopsis of the state of the practice in scenario planning. We conducted a literature review and prepared a survey that was distributed nationally to MPOs and state transportation agencies. We presented the findings of the survey during a national webinar.