In 2007, the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) announced the designation of four metropolitan areas (Miami, Florida; Minneapolis, Minnesota; San Francisco, California; and Seattle, Washington) as “urban partners,” based on the results of a thorough review and competitive selection process. Each urban partner agreed to implement a comprehensive policy response to urban congestion that included four essential components known as the “4 Ts”: (1) demonstration of tolling (congestion pricing), (2) enhanced transit services, (3) increased emphasis on telecommuting and other transportation demand management (TDM) strategies that include flexible scheduling, alternate commute programs, vanpooling, or carpooling, and (4) deployment of advanced technology. Termed as the Urban Partnership Agreements (UPA), the approaches taken vary between partner jurisdictions (e.g., HOV-to-HOT lane conversion in Miami vs. full facility pricing in Seattle), but in each case the projects represented innovative solutions, involving variable pricing, that had the potential to lead to substantial reductions in urban congestion in the long-run. In 2008, the Department again solicited applications for a sister program identified as the Congestion Reduction Demonstration (CRD) Program. Under this similar initiative, the Department announced the designation of two additional metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, California and Atlanta, Georgia) as “urban partners,” again based on the results of a thorough review and competitive selection process. As with the earlier initiative, each urban partner agreed to implement a comprehensive policy response to urban congestion that included the “4 Ts”. Because they were innovative, had the ability to significantly influence travel behavior, and involved the application of a high degree of advanced technologies, the Department undertook a national evaluation of these six UPA/CRD projects. The national evaluation was funded by the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (formerly in the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA)) and jointly managed with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The contents of this “lessons learned” report are derived from the national evaluation and represent a cross-cutting review and assessment of the impacts of the UPA/CRD projects. This document summarizes the findings from the evaluation of the multi-year, multi-site demonstration of congestion pricing and other supporting strategies sponsored by U.S. DOT. It provides a high-level snapshot of a variety of impacts and lessons learned that will be useful to state and regional agencies interested in advancing new congestion pricing programs or expanding programs already in place. The report notes the strategies that worked well across sites and those that did not. At the end of the document, sources for more information about the evaluation and its findings are available to the reader. For example, in addition to this report, the national evaluation effort produced specific reports and analyses for each of the six sites, which are available online at http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/ congestionpricing/urb_partner_agree.htm and http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/congestionpricing/cong_reduc_demo.htm. A listing of some of the key findings and lessons learned from the national evaluation of the six sites are presented. Details of each of the topics are presented in report sections. (Author/publisher)
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