MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Since 1984, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the San Francisco Bay Area regional planning organization (MPO), has promoted pavement preservation principles. As most transportation professionals now know, it costs far less to keep roads in good condition through pavement preservation than it costs to allow the roadways to deteriorate to a point where major rehabilitation or reconstruction is required. Conversely, a “worst first ” strategy prioritizes major rehabilitation or reconstruction and is reactive instead of proactive. Recently, MTC’s efforts to encourage preservation strategies have begun to pay dividends and jurisdictions have shifted away from “worst first ” strategies. As a steward of federal funds, MTC is accountable for how funds made available for local street and road maintenance are spent. The maintenance of effort that was once required of local agencies is almost non-existent now. So how can regional agencies ensure that state and federal discretionary funds are being used to augment maintenance budgets instead of just supplanting existing funds? With the help of local jurisdictions and the pavement management software-- StreetSaver®, MTC was able to develop a regional funding policy that conditions funding not just on need, but on performance. The policy rewards jurisdictions for their efforts in the area of pavement preservation. This paper will describe how MTC has effectively moved toward performance-based accountability in the allocation of federal funds for street and road maintenance. The process that led up to the development of the funding policy including the setting of guiding principles, implementation challenges and lessons learned, will be discussed