Arlington County Commuter Services, through its Mobility Lab, received a grant from the Federal Highway Administration and partnered with LDA Consulting and the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida to build upon proven evaluation methods and make them more readily usable by other jurisdictions nationwide. The TDM Return on Investment Calculator (TDM ROI Calculator) is one of two tools that were developed that help provide information to make more informed decisions on transportation policies, programs, and investments.
The TDM ROI Calculator, developed by LDA Consulting, builds upon earlier work in Arlington, the Washington D.C. region, and elsewhere. The TDM ROI Calculator was developed to help users calculate vehicle trips and miles travelled reduced by their TDM programs and to calculate benefit-cost ratios or ROI.
The TDM ROI Calculator tool consists of a user-friendly Excel spreadsheet that can be used and customized to different regions and sizes of programs. The tool serves primarily to evaluate existing TDM programs by converting program activities and costs into calculations of mode shifts of various types, vehicle trips reduced, VMT reductions, emissions reductions, fuel savings, congestion reduction, road construction deferred, vehicle safety (accidents avoided), noise pollution reduction, and calculation of ROI or Benefit-Cost ratio
Major TDM Benefits
The tools can be used to evaluate a specific worksite or area-wide programs. Among the TDM services that can be evaluated are:
- transit and other incentives
- carpool ridematching
- vanpooling
- parking policy
- bicycling and walking programs
- telework and compressed work schedules
- employer services
- marketing and promotion
- carsharing and bikesharing
- park-and-ride lots
- shuttle buses, and more.
For a deeper understanding of the TDM ROI Calculator, there is a webinar co-hosted by former Mobility Lab Research Director Dr. Lama Bou Mjahed.
To learn more about the two Transportation Cost-Savings Calculators, download the Project Overview Report for a brief explanation of what the tools do and for more information on the project.