SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- DOT FTA Congestion Relief Benefits Support Services
- Notice Date
- 9/30/2010
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541690
— Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Federal Transit Administration HQ, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, District of Columbia, 20590
- ZIP Code
- 20590
- Solicitation Number
- DTFT60-10-R-00008
- Archive Date
- 11/23/2010
- Point of Contact
- GregoryEYoung, Phone: 2023668090, Carlene R Jackson, Phone: 202-366-0432
- E-Mail Address
-
Gregory.Young@dot.gov, carlene.jackson@dot.gov
(Gregory.Young@dot.gov, carlene.jackson@dot.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- Total Small Business
- Description
- DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION, OFFICE OF PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS SUPPORT SERVICES This combined sources sought/market survey synopsis is for information and planning purposes only ; it is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government. A contract may not be awarded as a result of this combined sources sought/synopsis. The Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration (FTA), on behalf of Federal Transit Administration, Office of Planning & Environment Analysis, intends to procure Research & Development Technical, Analytical and Program Support Services using competitive procedures under SBA Small Business Program. The capability package for this sources sought/market survey is not expected to be a proposal, but rather specific, detailed information regarding the company's existing experience in relation to the areas specified in the Statement of Work (SOW). Respondents who simply submit a standard brochure of its company capabilities may not qualify. Only small businesses are to submit capability packages. It is anticipated the NAICS code in the 541 series with a size standard of $7.5M may be designated for this procurement. However, interested parties are encouraged to submit a more specific suitable NAICS Code along with their capability packages. Capability packages must not exceed 15 pages and must be submitted electronically. Questions about this requirement are to be submitted by 07 Oct 2010 by 2:00 PM. Small businesses are to outline their experiences in providing expertise to assist with the following requirements. NOTE: The following performance criteria information in bold print is provided in DRAFT form in support of this Request for Information and may be revised in the final version. <h4 style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; tab-stops:.5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in"> Background Policy SAFETEA-LU revised the criteria for the selection of New Starts transit projects under the Section 5309 Major Capital Investments program. The legislation required that U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) consider six criteria in the evaluation and rating of proposed New Starts transit projects: mobility improvements, environmental benefits, operating efficiencies, cost effectiveness, land use, and financial commitment. One element of the mobility improvements criterion is the reduction in highway travel times resulting from a transit improvement. USDOT is committed to incorporating highway benefits into its mobility and cost effectiveness rating in every way feasible. The current regulation on the New Starts program defines user benefits to include benefits to highway users. Further, the "Summit" software used by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to calculate user benefits has had, since its initial release in 2002, the capability to capture congestion-relief benefits accruing to users of the highway system in addition to benefits accruing to new and existing transit users. However, FTA cannot currently credit proposed projects with predicted benefits to highway users because (1) FTA has found that most travel models around the country do not predict plausible changes in highway speeds resulting from transit improvements and (2) the absence of a consistent method for highway speed prediction leads directly to potentially large differences in the predicted benefits of transit projects with similar impacts. Instead, to account for the otherwise missing congestion-relief benefits, FTA adds a standard 20-percent allowance to the predicted benefits to transit users in the calculation of the cost-effectiveness of a project. In summary, while USDOT acknowledges the value of reductions in vehicle-miles of highway travel in terms of reducing congestion, the department has not yet been able to develop methodologies capable of making reliable, nationally consistent estimates of project-specific benefits. Previous USDOT-sponsored Research In 2002 and 2003, with the introduction of the user-benefits measure for New Starts projects, FTA observed that the forecasts for many proposed projects included congestion-relief benefits that appeared unrelated to the projects. Indeed, the geographic pattern of the benefits seemed entirely random. In response, FTA funded an intensive research effort intended to (1) confirm the apparent randomness of the congestion-relief forecasts, (2) identify the source(s) of the problem, and (3) develop effective solutions that could be implemented nationally. FTA also funded participation in this effort by a working group of seven senior travel forecasters from metropolitan areas that have built major transit projects with New Starts funding assistance. The research succeeded fully on the first two objectives and had partial success on the third objective. An effective national solution remained elusive, however, to the challenge of measuring the congestion-relief benefits of proposed New Starts projects. Specifically: The research examined in detail the congestion-relief benefits predicted by the travel forecasting methods in two metropolitan areas with current New Starts proposals. Forecasts for scenarios with and without the transit project yielded differences in traffic volumes and travel speeds scattered widely throughout the highway networks. These results confirmed the apparently random nature of the predicted benefits and, consequently, the absence of any explanation of the benefits as likely consequences of the proposed projects. Detailed analysis of this problem identified a variety of causes. By far, the largest source of error is incomplete closure of iterative methods used to reach "equilibrium" conditions in traffic assignment algorithms. Incomplete closure means that the assignment algorithms are not able to produce the result that is the central premise of these algorithms - that all travel paths through a congested highway network are loaded with traffic volumes that yield equal travel times on all paths available for travel between each origin-destination pair. The research results demonstrated conclusively that premature termination of these algorithms produces apparently random changes in traffic volumes and, therefore, in traffic speeds. A smaller - but still significant - source of error is inconsistency between the highway path builder and the mode choice model in terms of the weights applied to travel times and costs. This inconsistency leads to path choices that the highway path builder views as better in the build alternative than in the baseline but the mode choice model viewed as worse. The inevitable result is the occurrence of negative benefits for an apparently random set of origin-destination pairs. The research identified and demonstrated the effectiveness of specific solutions for each of these problems. The solution to the problem of incomplete closure is straightforward: an increase in the number of iterations sufficient to achieve closure. This solution requires only longer running times for the computer programs used to estimate traffic volumes and speeds. It requires no changes to travel forecasting procedures or their calibration in individual urban areas and therefore can be implemented more-or-less immediately. The solution to the problem of inconsistencies between highway path builders and mode choice models is less straightforward because it requires the adjustment of parameters within one or both of the component models and then recalibration of the model set. This solution would require more substantial effort and is probably inappropriate as a stand-alone update to travel models in most urban areas. Over the longer term, the solution can be implemented as part of routine, periodic updates of local travel models. The apparent success of the research into the technical issues was tempered, however, by a substantial problem that became clear during the course of the work: the wide variation in methods and assumptions used to predict traffic volumes and speeds across metropolitan areas in the United States. Presentations, discussion, and documentation of the procedures used by the seven members of the working group highlighted the many differences in local procedures, key underlying assumptions, data used to develop the procedures, and rigor used to test their performance. The discussions also highlighted the challenges in efforts to change these locally adapted procedures given their central role in air-quality conformity determinations - and the transportation funding jeopardy caused by conformity problems. In brief, local procedures to predict traffic volumes and speeds may differ in terms of the: •§ specific algorithm employed for traffic assignment (equilibrium, incremental, etc.); •§ commercial software package that is the platform for model application; •§ level of time-of-day disaggregation for which individual assignments are prepared: •§ method for estimating lane capacities for various types of roadways; •§ method for estimating the free-flow speeds of various types of roadways; •§ specific components of travel impedance (times and costs) considered in path selection; •§ form and parameters of the equation used to estimate highway travel times; •§ availability of data on current highway traffic and speeds; and •§ rigor used in the testing of assignment procedures against current data. These variations appear to be sufficiently large to produce widely different estimates of highway travel-time benefits for similar transit projects built in similar settings. The implication was that, to obtain nationally consistent estimates of congestion-relief benefits caused by major transit projects, FTA would have to launch a technical-assistance effort to identify, promote, and perhaps require a preferred approach to the highway-side analysis for all sponsors of New Starts projects. Given the implications for local air-quality conformity determinations, the already-large technical-assistance challenge that FTA faces, and the irony of an FTA leadership role on highway-side analyses, FTA concluded that further efforts to obtain decision-grade estimates of congestion-relief benefits were a low priority. Scope/SOW Because of continuing interest in measuring the congestion-relief impacts of transportation projects, USDOT has determined to explore ways to address the remaining barriers. In order to measure the mobility benefits of transit improvements, the USDOT requires a methodology that produces estimates of transit-caused changes in highway travel times that are technically defensible, summable with current measures of transit-side mobility benefits, and nationally consistent within reasonable tolerances. Further, implementation of the methodology must be possible within three years so that it can contribute to the evaluation of proposed New Starts projects within a reasonable time frame. The USDOT is open to a range of possible approaches: •§ One strategy might be to advance the state of the practice in metropolitan-area travel models by pursing one or more of the emerging methods - dynamic assignment, micro-simulation - for highway traffic assignment. •§ A second might be to identify best practice using conventional methods and demonstrate the national applicability of the best-practice method. •§ A third might be to derive an aggregate relationship between transit ridership increases and highway congestion changes and demonstrate its reasonableness as a replacement for the fixed 20-percent allowance that FTA currently makes for congestion relief. Other strategies may also hold promise so long as they offer technically defensible, summable, nationally consistent approaches that can be implemented within three years. USDOT does not anticipate groundbreaking research but rather expects that the results will build upon good practice already in place. Consequently, the anticipated approach relies on identification of candidate traffic assignment procedures already implemented in one or more metropolitan areas, rigorous testing of the properties of those procedures, possible updates to the methodologies, and - assuming technically acceptable results - exploration of ways that USDOT adapt the procedures nationally. A final clarification on the approach to this research deals with the conceptual framework for evaluating impacts on highway travel. Longstanding discussions on "induced travel" have wrestled with the reality that any project that adds capacity to the transportation system will lead to increases in the amount of travel that offset any short-term congestion relief. This general observation is a direct application of the simple principle that a reduction in the price of any product - travel, in this case - causes consumers to buy more of it. The details are more complicated, as always. Reductions in the generalized price of travel caused by reductions in the travel times lead to changes in a panoply of choices made by travelers: route, time of day, mode, destination, residence location, workplace location, and so forth. Current practice in travel forecasting is unable to predict the full range of these consequences, particularly when the price reduction is caused by improved transit options. Research on more capable travel forecasting procedures is proceeding elsewhere with USDOT support but is likely to succeed only in a much longer time frame that will be useful to the task at hand. Consequently, FTA has adopted an approach that views congestion relief as a proxy measure for benefits that occur at many other levels. If the transit improvement cause the first-order benefits for transit riders, then congestion relief in the highway system can be viewed as the second-order benefits for highway users, and consequent changes in trip-making and location choices can be viewed as the third-, fourth-, and higher-order benefits. Because these higher-order benefits are caused by first- and second-order price changes - and work to diminish those initial price changes, then a reliable way to evaluate the full set of benefits is to consider only the first- and second-order benefits without any attempt to predict the higher-order effects. In practice, this approach means that an estimate of congestion relief for highway users - unadjusted for changes in times of day, origin-destination patterns, or longer-term location choices - is sufficient to represent the full range of higher order choices, their benefits, or their offsetting impacts on congestion relief itself. This research therefore focuses on improving the accuracy and national consistency of methods to predict congestion relief and leaves to other efforts the much larger task of improving other aspects of travel forecasting practice. The sole exception to this narrow focus is the final task that provides for the inclusion of research recommendations that may address longer-term efforts to improve other elements of current travel forecasting practice. *NOTE 1: The following questions can be asked at the Contracting Officer's discretion. In addition, the following questions must be answered and elaborated on as part of the package: (1) Past Performance - Does your firm have the relevant past performance within the last three years (include contract numbers, contract types, dollar value of each procurements, point of contracts, and brief description of the work performed)? And (2) Corporate Experience - Does your firm have the work experience similar in nature, scope, complexity, and difficulty of work in the SOW? If at least two responsible small business concerns are determined by the Government to be capable of performing this requirement based on an evaluation of the capability packages submitted by 15 October 2010 @ 3:00PM EST, the requirement will be solicited as a 100% set-aside for small business concerns. If capability packages are not received from at least two responsible small business concerns by the response date or if the Government determines that no small businesses are capable of performing this requirement based upon an evaluation of the capability packages submitted, this requirement will be re-solicited as a fully competitive requirement under FAR Part 15. To assist us in determining the methodology for this potential procurement, please provide your company's name, point of contact (POC), address, phone number, cage code and your business size under the above NAICS code to the POC. A/An FAR Part 15 Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity type contract is anticipated. The anticipated period of performance will be One Eighteen (18) Month Base Period and One (1) Two Year Option Period beginning on or about 01 FEB 2011. The place of performance will be within Continental United States (CONUS). Contractor personnel will not require a current clearance. A written Request for Proposal (RFP) will be posted in FedBizOps on or about 08 Nov 2010 2:00PM EST. The Government may revise its acquisition strategy and solicitation requirement based upon industry responses. No hard copies of the RFP will be issued; all amendments will be posted and must be retrieved from the FedBizOps website. Responses to the RFP must be submitted by email to the POC identified below. No solicitation mailing list will be compiled. Contractors are responsible for all costs for submitting their capability packages. POC is Gregory E. Young, at 202/366-8090, or Gregory.Young@dot.gov.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/DOT/FTA/FTAHQ/DTFT60-10-R-00008/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: In the Continental US. (CONUS), United States
- Record
- SN02303587-W 20101002/101001000043-a9f4699b7dbfd78fa58e387461685e14 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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