What is Transportation Asset Management?
The FHWA and the state transportation organization AASHTO define Asset Management as a strategic and systematic process of operating, maintaining, upgrading, and expanding physical assets effectively throughout their lifecycle. It focuses on business and engineering practices for resource allocation and utilization, with the objective of better decision making based upon quality information and well defined objectives. Simply put, Asset Management is putting limited transportation dollars to work where they do the most good. That means maintaining an aging transportation infrastructure before it becomes unusable. This is common sense, but it is easier said than done, and it requires balancing many competing interests. Departments must consider tradeoffs between paving, bridge, new highways, rail, airports, park & ride lots, and more. Performance Measures VTrans has been systematically developing performance measures since 2001, and they have become a crucial part in managing the assets
