Overview
Background
The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC) is one of the key transportation stakeholders in the Las Vegas Valley. RTC oversees public transportation,traffic management, roadway design and construction funding, and transportation planning for Southern Nevada. This uniquely positions RTC as a leader for TransportationSystems Management and Operations (TSMO) development in order to provide unified regional TSMO Strategies that builds consensus from all local agencies in Southern Nevada.Through formally adopted interlocal agreements with NDOT and the local public agencies, RTC actively operates and maintains the ITS devices on the freeway and provides arterialsignal coordination on the arterials. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity and recognizing the value of TSMO, RTC initiated the development of a Regional TSMO BusinessCase to communicate the value of TSMO, raise awareness about the program’s strategies and benefits, and take the lead in developing a TSMO Plan Guide that would outline thepath forward to develop a Regional TSMO Plan in order to ultimately integrate TSMO into day-to-day business processes of all partnering agencies. A key accomplishment with thisproject was facilitating a capability maturity model (CMM) self-assessment to benchmark the existing level of TSMO maturity internally within the RTC and identify opportunities forimprovement across all six key dimensions of the framework.
TSMO Planning, Strategies and Deployment
Following the successful participation of RTC in the Nevada Department of Transportation’s (NDOT) 2020 CMM workshop and Active Traffic Management (ATM) Capability Maturity workshop, the agency identified an opportunity to locally take the lead with TSMO and established a framework for organizing for TSMO. For this first step, RTC decided to establish the TSMO Planning Steering Committee (PSC), conduct a CMM self-assessment, perform a TSMO state-of-the-practice review, and use the findings to develop the Regional TSMO Business Case and a TSMO Plan Guide. Although NDOT established multiple Statewide TSMO business cases, RTC recognized that there is not a one-size-fits-all version, and every business case should be tailored to the specific priorities of the targeted audience.
Conducting the CMM assessment was the first task that was completed. The self-assessment workshop was held on August 18, 2022. The purpose of the CMM workshop was to assess RTC’s capability maturity and readiness for regional TSMO adoption by evaluating the RTC’s business processes, institutional capabilities, and technology systems. In developing the workshop materials, RTC used a combination of components including overall assessment (6 questions), department specific evaluation (77 questions), and strategy implementation status (14 questions). This was indeed an innovative and comprehensive methodology to benchmark maturity from all aspects of internal business.
Workshop responses were then reviewed and analyzed to determine RTC’s level of maturity with TSMO. These findings were later shared with the TSMO PSC members, including internal and external stakeholders, providing an opportunity for everyone to digest and react to the results. The final results together with the one-on-one TSMO interviews with partnering agencies were used to develop the Regional Business Case topics and areas of focus within the TSMO Plan Guide. These not only included existing and emerging transportation challenges, but also Institutional, Organizational, and Procedural (IOP) arrangements and changes.
Communications Planning and Execution
Figure 1 demonstrates RTC’s TSMO level of maturity across the six key dimensions of CMM.
Overall, it was concluded that RTC is working towards maturing its TSMO capabilities. Results are evident that some TSMO activities and processes are in place, yet the challenges mostly revolve around the cultural shift and involvement of the wider RTC stakeholders beyond the RTC’s Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation (FAST) department. Key findings from this assessment include:
• Stakeholders, in general, are not broadly familiar with the TSMO-specific activities.
• Internal stakeholders rated themselves at a low maturity level for each dimension compared to activity-specific responses, which indicates there are more TSMO activities being performed than what the agency as a whole realizes.
• Responses generally indicated that participants are critically rating themselves because they have a willingness to strengthen and improve their maturity under the different dimensions of the assessment.
• TSMO is currently championed by the RTC FAST department, as they are more aware of content about the TSMO-specific activities and strategies compared to the rest of the stakeholders.
• The RTC scored a maturity level below 2 in most categories based on the CMM findings. A TSMO Plan with prioritized strategies is essential for the RTC as an organization to streamline operations, serve the community efficiently, and enable collaboration with regional partners.
The FAST department was found to be the most versed with TSMO activities, as anticipated, and they have laid the foundation to implement specific strategies, performance metrics, and business processes. While other departments, such as the Planning or IT Departments, were not familiar with the strides FAST has made, it was clear during the workshop that the greater RTC supports the goals FAST is aiming to achieve via TSMO. Figure 2 provides a summary of key findings and gaps from the feedback received in the workshop.
Outcome, Learnings and Public Benefit
Figure 3 presents outcomes and learnings to reduce gaps and enhance TSMO capabilities within RTC, aligning with the NDOT statewide TSMO Program, yet specific to the needs and opportunities in the southern Nevada region. To establish a fully mature TSMO community, it is important to recognize that achieving all the desired objectives is not practical in a single year. Instead, it will require a well-coordinated plan and a phased approach to attain the ultimate TSMO goals. To that end, the identified actions provide steps that can be taken to gradually develop a more robust local TSMO community. These are the focus areas established within the Regional TSMO Business Case and the TSMO Plan Guide for the next steps.
Fourteen of the 97 questions of the questionnaire were focused on the implementation status of specific FHWA ATM strategies. The questions were provided to assess RTC’s maturity in work zone management, integrated corridor management, and incident management and understand the participants’ level of awareness of the specific strategies implementation as unknown, yes, or no. These findings are shown in Figure 4. In general, not all participants are fully aware of strategy-specific ATM activities that RTC is performing, which was anticipated since the workshop attendees included some of the RTC team internal partners such as Human Resources and Marketing.
The assessment confirmed that the TMC activities and coverage are broadly aligned to FHWA standards, while there is a potential to improve the current operations for work zone management, incident management, and integrated corridor management. As RTC pursues other strategies outside of the FHWA focus, a similar approach is recommended through an ATM assessment. Strategy specific CMMs can help RTC build a better understanding of the current state and attend to specific details prior the strategy implementation.