MEASURING THAT WHICH CANNOT BE MEASURED--AT LEAST ACCORDING TO CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

The purpose of this conference resource paper is to examine the role of performance measurement in transportation systems and agency operations. The paper begins by examining briefly the experience in three important fields of study: water resources; ecology and sustainability, and economics. It then looks at transportation systems, using five case studies to illustrate different attempts to incorporate a much broader perspective of system performance into transportation planning and decision making. The cases are specific to the context in which the performance-based planning approach was developed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the key characteristics that performance-based transportation planning should exhibit.