Mobility Measurements of the City of Houston Flextime Initiative

The City of Houston flextime initiative was led by Mayor Bill White in 2006 to encourage large employers to implement a flextime program to shift the peak hour traffic characteristics in the city. The City of Houston formed a committee to measure the mobility benefits in terms of travel time savings. The committee was composed of volunteers from the Greater Houston Partnership, the City of Houston, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the Texas Transportation Institute. The initiative started with two pilot programs to measure the change in traffic patterns at the city street level, and a city-wide program to measure the change in traffic patterns at the freeway level. The two site studies were conducted for Duke Energy in the Houston Galleria area, and for the Johnson Space Center/NASA in the Gulf of Mexico bay area. The freeway program was conducted on all of the Houston freeways using the travel time data collected by TranStar, Houston’s traffic management center. The analysis methodology consisted in conducting “before” and “after” travel time studies to measure the change in travel time with statistical confidence. The results were positive and a change in travel time was detected in all cases, making this an effective strategy to manage congestion. A follow-up study at the freeway was conducted in 2007, which also showed positive results. This paper documents the analysis and results of the two pilot projects, Duke Energy and JSC/NASA, and one the freeways, IH 45 (North Freeway).

• Corporate Authors:

  Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)

  Washington, DC  United States 
• Authors:
  • Lewis, Carol A
  • Joskowicz, Isaac F
  • Voigt, Anthony P
• Conference:
  • ITE 2009 Annual Meeting and Exhibit
  • Location: San Antonio TX, United States
  • Date: 2009-8-9 to 2009-8-12
• Publication Date: 2009

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: ITE 2009 Annual Meeting and Exhibit. Compendium of Technical Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Arterial highways; Before and after studies; Flexible hours; Freeways; Traffic characteristics; Traffic congestion; Travel time
• Geographic Terms: Houston (Texas)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I70: Traffic and Transport;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01164327
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jul 30 2010 8:28AM