Methodologies for highway capital program management vary widelyamong state departments of transportation in the united states despite common funding sources and functional disciplines. Capital program management consists of measuring current highway physical and operating conditions, estimating future conditions, determining deficient sections, identifying cost-effective treatments, ordering projects according to established goals and policies, and developing program strategies that create and exploit opportunities for system improvement. State practices diverge to the greatest extent in the areas of establishing and implementing dynamic program strategies. The well-documented decline in infrastructure investment in the united states, coupled with various institutional changes under way, demands that the capital program management strategies become more dynamic and innovative. An overview of the changing transportation environment in the united states and how this has affected capital program management is presented. A 7-element framework to explore and understand this management process is developed. Results from an analysis of practices in eight states in the united states are described. This analysis reveals how various external factors as well as self-imposed conditions hold back or promote the dynamics of the programming process. Fifteen factors were found to be critical in this analysis. Thesefactors ranged from obvious ones such as leadership, focus, and institutional relations to less obvious ones such as structured flow inprogram development, relief valves in the program structure, and real-time objective data for information analyses and program control.This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1262, Planning, management and economic analysis 1990.
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