Telus: this state-of-the-practice software is helping MPOs and DOTs improve their transportation planning

Public Roads, Nov-Dec, 2002 by John W. Epling

When the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 was signed into law, officials of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) across the country were delighted. ISTEA had made a dramatic change in how transportation planning in the Nation would be undertaken in the future. Now the local elected officials serving on the boards of MPOs finally had a chance to play a major role in shaping the transportation networks in their communities.

As Edward Weiner wrote in Urban Transportation Planning in the United States, "Each metropolitan area had to prepare a long-range plan, updated periodically, that identified transportation facilities, which functioned as an integrated transportation system, including a financial plan." Further, he wrote, "A reasonable opportunity for public comment was required before the long-range plan was approved." Also, "A Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) was required. ... The TIP had to include a priority list of projects and a financial plan consistent with funding that could reasonably be expected to be available."

It did not take long after passage of ISTEA, however, for the MPOs to realize that their expanded role in transportation decisionmaking brought new responsibilities. Citizens, elected and appointed officials, and other stakeholder groups now were coming to MPOs to advocate projects, ascertain the status of projects, and lobby for project priorities. MPOs soon found themselves having to reinvent their decisionmaking processes, expand their databases, and create more responsive public outreach programs.

Genesis of TELUS

The North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA), the fourth largest MPO in the Nation, took the challenge of ISTEA very seriously. Like most MPOs, the NJTPA initially tried expanding and modifying its existing information and decision-support systems. Although those efforts met with some success, the NJTPA quickly realized that piecemeal improvements to the existing approach would not adequately support the decisionmaking process. The NJTPA called upon Dr. Louis J. Pignataro, then-director of the Institute for Transportation at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), to help.

Early in this NJTPA/NJIT cooperative endeavor, Pignataro brought Dr. Robert W. Burchell, now codirector of the Center for Urban Policy Research (CUPR) at Rutgers University, on the team. Pignataro states, "Bob and I have worked together on several projects, so we know each other's capabilities quite well. He is a nationally recognized expert in modeling the fiscal impacts of land development."

Under the guidance of the NJTPA Board, the staffs of NJIT, CUPR, and NJTPA agreed on the objectives for the new system, and, in 1996, the consortium unveiled TELUS: Transportation, Economic & Land Use System. For its role in the development of TELUS, the NJTPA received the Technical Achievement Award at the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations' 1998 annual meeting in Texas.

The Original TELUS

The version of the TELUS software developed for the NJTPA included five components: (1) an automated TIP component containing basic information about each project; (2) an input-output model estimating project impacts on the number of jobs, per capita income, gross regional product, and tax revenues at the local, State, and Federal levels; (3) a property-value model estimating the impact of projects on the value of adjacent properties; (4) a project-interrelationships component identifying potential conflicts among projects; and (5) a geographic information system (GIS) reader.

Going National

In 1998, with the passage of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), knowing that many MPOs had a need similar to that of the NJTPA, provided support to modify TELUS for nationwide distribution. FHWA assigned Fred Ducca, travel model team leader, as the technical monitor for TELUS.

With a new mandate--reinventing TELUS to meet the needs of a nationwide audience of MPOs--the TELUS team wasted no time getting the effort off the ground. Convening a focus group of 13 MPOs in October 1998, the team hoped to gain a better understanding of the modifications that might be required. Anticipating that modifications resulting from the focus group's feedback would take a maximum of 3 months, the TELUS team looked forward to releasing a national version in January 1999. The thinking was that if the system met the needs of the fourth largest MPO in the country, how many modifications possibly could be needed? The answer quickly surfaced.

Coming Face-to-Face with Local Requirements

By design, the focus group represented MPOs of all sizes as well as different sections of the country. In addition to suggestions for data-field changes, the focus group raised three issues that had significant impact on the design of TELUS: (1) the potential interest that State departments of transportation (DOTs) might have in using the software; (2) the need for a stronger project-tracking feature, in terms of a project schedule and a complete history of all revisions made to a project; and (3) the need for some type of project-scoring module.