FY2026 Work Program

Minimize congestion in the DVRPC region and enhance the ability of people and goods to get where they need to go by means of a well-maintained, safe, integrated, multimodal transportation network that serves everyone. The Congestion Management Program (CMP) is a medium-term planning process that advances the goals of the DVRPC Long-Range Plan, strengthens the connection between the Plan and the TIPs, and helps to implement and achieve the federal Transportation Performance Management requirements.

The CMP is a data driven, performance-based approach that addresses all elements of federal CMP regulations. DVRPC's CMP has five major components:

1. Identify, assess, and prioritize congested facilities, intersection bottlenecks, and other locations on the regional transportation network using data and performance measures.
2. Recommend multimodal transportation strategies to reduce congestion to allow for better mobility, accessibility, and connectivity across the region.
3. Determine when, where, and how projects that add single-occupant vehicle (SOV) capacity are appropriate. 
4. When SOV capacity is deemed appropriate, develop multimodal supplemental strategies to get the most value out of SOV-capacity adding projects.
5. Evaluate the effectiveness of implemented CMP strategies. 

CMP analysis incorporates archived operations and other data for planning, Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO), Transportation Demand Management (TDM), coordination of transportation and land use planning, goods movement, Complete Streets, safety, and transportation resiliency planning. The CMP incorporates the federal Transportation Performance Management (TPM) system performance metrics that include PM3 reliability and CMAQ congestion measures and targets. The use of archived operations data for planning has been essential to the CMP and preparing for TPM requirements. This has been facilitated in part through participation in the Eastern Transportation Coalition. The CMP strives to coordinate and share data and information with planning partners for alternative analyses and other studies.

DVRPC endeavors to stay in the lead of the state of the practice, and will be using the results from a FY25 FHWA Transportation Planning Capacity Building CMP peer exchange and research on other MPOs around the country to inform the next update cycle. The CMP also continues to evolve as more refined data and software tools are available to identify and analyze congestion. The focus areas for FY 2026 include: developing and updating the status of CMP supplemental strategies, updating the CMP strategies and publishing them in a webviewer, performance monitoring, and conducting before/after evaluation of projects for measuring performance and strategy effectiveness, and supporting Transportation Performance Management (TPM) requirements. Completion of this project may require the purchase of materials, supplies, and other services.

1. Use the CMP in Project Development
   • Get the most long-term value from investment by developing supplemental strategies for projects that will add road capacity by coordinating with multimodal partners, and tracking the progress being made in keeping with regulations. Update a CMP Supplemental Projects Status Memorandum report that provides the current status on supplemental project commitments for major SOV capacity-adding projects. Develop and maintain an online database that provides access to Supplemental Strategies report information.
   • Participate in internal DVRPC processes to implement high priority recommendations from NJDOT problem statement reports. Participate in NJDOT Complete Team, Congested Places, and CMS-21 programs, and conduct field work or prepare draft problem statements, as necessary, for submission to NJDOT staff as requested and track results.
   • Participate in the PennDOT problem statement development process as applicable for major SOV capacity-adding projects, which is now partially facilitated through the PennDOT Connects process, and work with PennDOT and DVRPC subject matter experts.
   • Review TIP and Plan projects with respect to consistency with the CMP Objective Measures and perform any other multimodal alternative analyses. Coordinate results using TIP and Long-Range Plan benefit evaluation criteria for prioritizing projects.
2. Start the 2027 CMP Update
   • Update range of strategies to reduce congestion.
   • Develop web viewer for range of CMP strategies to reduce congestion, using DVRPC Muncipal implementation Toolbox as a template.
3. CMP Data Collection and Analysis
   • Perform before and after traffic evaluation studies of projects intended to mitigate congestion to help understand the effectiveness of the strategies. Incorporate archived operations data, and consult with project stakeholders and the CMP Advisory Committee. Analyze pre- and post-pandemic travel data to monitor shifts in travel.
   • Use existing CMP analysis, including evaluation of implemented strategies, and other studies to refine CMP strategies to manage congestion by subcorridor, especially TDM and transit strategies.
   • Maintain the CMP page on the DVRPC website.
   • Perform ongoing CMP data collection and analysis using INRIX travel time, traffic volumes, and other data to identify trends in system performance across the CMP network, including focus roadway corridors. Refine and update strategies to mitigate congestion based on performance measures with guidance from the CMP Advisory Committee.
   • Collect, prepare, and analyze non-recurring congestion traffic events from Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) databases, such as traffic incidents, adverse weather, short- and long-term construction, and special events to better understand where these events are occurring on the transportation network, and the causes of congestion. Coordinate with PennDOT, NJDOT, planning partners, and other DVRPC staff.
4. Stay Current with CMP Practices
   • Review other peer MPO CMP programs, FHWA information, and other reporting and research (such as TRB or National Cooperative Highway Research Program) to further improve CMP approaches, project identification, and implementation, and inform DVRPC and regional plans and policies.
   • Stay engaged with the fast-evolving use of archived operations and origin/destination data for planning. Important areas include: calculating travel times and traffic delay from INRIX and other sources; creating corridor performance reports; and integrating origin/destination trips data into the CMP to better understand where shorter and longer trip patterns are occurring to help in identifying mitigation strategies for different corridor areas. This can be done, in part, through engagement with The Eastern Transportation Coalition and with DOT partners.
   • Continue to improve understanding of the effectiveness of individual CMP strategies through sketch-level models, cost/benefit studies, and before-and-after analysis.
   • Participate in CMP-related efforts by regional and national partners based on invitations and time available.

1. Documentation of the status of agreed to supplemental projects and documentation of new supplemental strategies.
2. Updated CMP strategies and new strategies web viewer.
3. Develop before/after project assessment reports reviewing performance for corridors and/or intersections using various measures, including, speeds, travel times, congestion, reliability, delays, and bottlenecks to help understand which treatments and strategies may be more effective than others, and continue to promote the more effective ones. The RITIS PDA Suite platform and tools will be used to help in this effort.
4. Further develop processes for monitoring congestion and reliability along CMP focus roadway corridors on a systematic, semi-yearly or yearly basis, for project assessment and evaluating the effectiveness of improvements for managing congestion. Assessments would be made for specific projects like adaptive signaling treatments, or more broad programs, such as travel demand management. The processes could be further developed for pre-defined intersection areas.

Member governments and agencies, organizations involved in managing congestion, businesses and citizens served by a more efficient and reliable multimodal transportation network.