This tool was created as a way to visualize all of the data being used in transportation project evaluations for the region. It is currently restricted to federally funded capacity projects, but we hope it will continue to grow until each project and its data are represented. The ARC wants to open up our data and our process used to evaluate projects for users to manipulate and compare.
Process
In order to fully understand this data you have to know where it came from. Here is a brief summary of what these data mean and how we calculated them.
Need and Performance
The current measures are all based on real world data where available. These measures determine the level of need and give a broad picture of what the conditions of the road are today.
The future measures are all calculated by running each project through a transportation demand model, a process which calculates individual project performance for each measure.
The current and future measures are then indexed, weighted and summed into a need score and a performance score, respectively.
Benfit/Cost (BC) Ratios
BC ratios monetize all of the costs and benefits of transportation projects to determine the overall value of each project. Since some projects are intended to solve current issues and some are meant to relieve anticipated problems, BC ratios for all projects were calculate for both 2015 and 2040 conditions.
List of variables