The Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments (PPACG) is the metropolitan planning organization for the City of Colorado Springs and surrounding two county region. The agency embarked on a coordinated effort to develop a regional priority analysis system for rating proposed highway capacity projects. The system, developed by PPACG staff, integrated a VISUM travel network model with the TREDIS economic benefit model.

The prioritization system considered four dimensions of transportation impacts: (a) Vehicle Operating Cost Savings, (b) Time & Reliability Savings, (c) Logistics Process Savings, and (d) Environmental Benefits (air quality and noise). The system drew on strengths of TREDIS, including valuation of environmental factors, differentiation of vehicle type and trip purpose classes, distinctions between regional and pass-through traffic, congestion/ reliability relationships, and variation in industry sensitivity to logistics cost factors.

The system and initial analysis results were reported in a 2011 TRB paper. It showed that the benefit cost ratio was highest for proposed highway projects that had (a) high fraction of traffic being regionally based, (b) with right-of-way already publically owned, and (c) with little or no alternative routes that have remaining excess capacity.

PPACOG Poster Presentation at TRB 2016

TRB Paper, Working Paper by Meiwu An and Craig Casper, Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, 2011: Integration of Travel Demand Model and Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) Method for New Capacity Highway Project Evaluation

Presentation at the 13th TRB National Transportation Planning Conference: "Integrating Assessment of the Economic Benefits of Transportation Improvements in Project-Level Alternatives Analysis", by Meiwu An et al, May 2011, ...Abstract... Power Point Presentation