Transportation Project Selection and Prioritization Methodologies for Small and Medium-Sized Planning Agencies

This paper examines methodologies to prioritize transportation projects in small and medium sized urban communities. First, the paper reviews two existing methodologies currently being used for project selection by various planning agencies. These are the point scoring template and index ranking methodologies. Secondly, this paper compares a project ranking methodology used in a larger city with a variation of a method published in the literature for prioritization of rural road projects used in a small community. In doing so, the paper attempts to propose an objective methodology for project ranking that can be used as a tool by small planning agencies which need systematic project selection methods, but have limited resources and minimal staff. As a case study, the two above mentioned methodologies are used to rank a set of potential transportation projects and the results are compared using two different non-parametric statistical techniques. Both methodologies are evaluated in terms of transparency, robustness, accountability, contemporariness, and simplicity. The analysis shows that there is a reasonable amount of correlation between the ranking of projects using the point scoring template and a modified version of the index ranking method. The latter can be used as a tool to assist in meeting federal requirements as well as an effective aid in the decision making process. This finding is of particular interest to small and medium sized planning agencies that are in search of a simplified need-based methodology to systematically rank transportation projects.