Capturing Transportation Infrastructure Performance

Performance measures are used to communicate the operation of the transportation infrastructure, to build and enhance credibility and accountability, to guide investment, and to support budget and program proposals. Although considerable data are collected on a regular basis, these data have significant limitations and pose challenges for performance management. Experience in assembling the data for an infrastructure index for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is drawn on to describe the data publicly available to serve as indicators of transportation infrastructure performance, address the shortcomings in the available data, and present the challenges encountered in using the existing data and likely to be encountered in developing new data sources and resources. The transportation index, part of the infrastructure index project (which includes broadband, water, and energy), aims to develop a rigorous, quantitative, and repeatable methodology to capture the performance of infrastructure in order to connect this performance with economic health and prosperity. Four barriers to developing comprehensive performance measures are focused on—varying levels of data aggregation, missing and erroneous data, prediction, and institutional issues—and a summary of data needs is given.