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 TRIMMS model 4.0 (Trip Reduction Impacts of Mobility Management Strategies) is one of two Transportation Cost-Savings Calculators that were developed that help provide information to make more informed decisions on transportation policies, programs, and investments.
The TRIMMS model 4.0 (Trip Reduction Impacts of Mobility Management Strategies) developed by CUTR has incorporated new background data on TDM strategies, making it now easier to perform analyses for your area. TRIMMS 4.0 estimates the impacts of a broad range of TDM initiatives and provides program cost-effectiveness assessment, such as net program benefit and benefit-to-cost ratio analysis at an area-wide or site-specific level. TRIMMS 4.0 evaluates the impact of TDM programs based on default literature-based parameters for 99 metropolitan areas and constant‐elasticity demand functions.
TRIMMS 4.0 is a Visual Basic model (advanced Excel spreadsheet) and serves as a major update and upgrade from TRIMMS Version 3.0. The TRIMMS tool serves primarily as a predictor of the benefits of enhancing TDM services or policies, including air pollution emissions, congestion reduction, fuel savings, global climate change, health and safety, and noise pollution
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.
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.