Mobility Report Card 2019

Monitoring the performance of the multimodal transportation system in the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro region.

WHAT IS THE MOBILITY REPORT CARD?

The Mobility Report Card evaluates the performance of the multimodal transportation system throughout the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization (DCHC MPO, or the MPO) area by analyzing a variety of key transportation supply, demand, and safety indicators. These metrics provide a snapshot of the transportation system’s performance and its ability to safely and efficiently connect people, places, and goods throughout the MPO area. Understanding the system’s performance and calling attention to key trends, such as where traffic is increasing, enable the MPO to strategically plan for and invest in system enhancements where mobility needs and opportunities are greatest.

The Congestion Management Process

The Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act is the current federal legislation guiding MPO planning nationwide. The FAST Act requires MPOs to have Congestion Management Processes (CMP) in place. The DCHC MPO has developed a 5-step process:

The Mobility Report Card provides multimodal performance measures (step 1), analyzes transportation and travel data (step 2), and summarizes existing conditions and trends for the regional multimodal transportation system (step 4).

Subareas

The DCHC region includes the entirety of Durham County and parts of Orange and Chatham Counties in central North Carolina. There are meaningful differences in mobility among different subareas within the region. For this reason, many performance measures included in the Mobility Report Card are summarized for the region as a whole as well as for seven subareas (shown below) that reflect major travel markets with distinct characteristics and trends.

Report Content and Key Terms

The Mobility Report Card is organized into 12 chapters. Data dashboards have been prepared for each dashboard and are available below. Each chapter and dashboard focuses on a distinct aspect of the multimodal transportation system and its utilization. When exploring the contents of each dashboard, it is important to be familiar with the following key terms or concepts.

Peak travel periods: Data for many metrics are collected during peak periods, short intervals during which transportation facilities are typically busiest. The peak periods cited in the Mobility Report Card include:

  • AM peak: 7 am to 9 am
  • Noon peak: 11 am to 1 pm
  • PM peak: 4 pm to 6 pm

Level of service is a way to quantify the performance of roadways and intersections. It is expressed on a grading scale from A to F and is calculated differently for roads than for intersections. Generally, LOS scores of "E" or "F" are considered failing, indicating that excessive travel demand creates delays on/at facilities with these scores.

CMP Corridors: There are 95 roadways that are evaluated under DCHC's CMP process and some performance measures included in the Mobility Report Card are only available for these corridors. CMP corridors include a range of road types and are broadly representative of the region's transportation network as a whole.

DASHBOARDS BY CHAPTER

The Mobility Report Card was prepared on behalf of the DCHC MPO by Renaissance Planning

Durham, NC