WSDOT's Role in Transportation Demand Management: Strategic Interest, Structure, and Responsibilities

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has posed several questions about its role in transportation demand management (TDM), including how it defines TDM, what its strategic interest in TDM is, how TDM relates to its transportation goals, what responsibilities it should assume, and how it ought to structure itself to implement TDM. WSDOT hired a research team at the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs to answer these questions, describing the current TDM environment, interviewing key stakeholders, and recommending approaches in each area. The research team found that TDM measures can enable the movement of more people and goods over existing and future state roads at far less capital, political, and environmental cost than construction of new highways. Among its recommendations are that WSDOT should do the following: (1) Call out TDM as an explicit framework for managing and increasing the person throughput of the existing state transportation system. (2) Take the lead in developing a TDM "brand," which will serve as a universal identifier for TDM campaigns at the local, regional, and state levels. (3) Set targets for the number of people--not vehicles--moving through key corridors during peak periods and targets for the number of people choosing to not drive alone in key corridors during peak periods. (4) Develop TDM Priority Areas where state transportation investments are linked to local transit-efficient land uses.