| William Lyons
introduced the session by discussing the importance of evaluation in the TCSP program. The TEA-21 legislation establishing the TCSP program placed an emphasis on learning, specifically calling for "a comprehensive initiative to investigate and address the relationships between transportation and community and system preservation..." The true benefit of the TCSP program at a national level is generating knowledge, innovation, and insights that can be applied around the country. Furthermore, the TCSP program addresses the integration of transportation with other areas such as land use, community planning, environmental protection, and economic development. This is what's innovative. It is not enough to do a project and succeed at it; there also needs to be a credible and rigorous analysis process. A demonstrated commitment to undertake evaluation is an important component of a TCSP application. Since there are not enough resources to do independent evaluations, TCSP is primarily a self-evaluation program, and the grantee has the primary responsibility for the evaluation. Grantees need to meet the challenge of being objective, consistent, and credible in this self-evaluation. In addition to individual projects, the TCSP program as a whole is evaluated to maintain its accountability to Congress and the stakeholders who supported TCSP.
The program is working to build a national knowledge base to demonstrate innovation and successful approaches. Information about individual projects will appear on the TCSP web site. The goal is to provide summary information for each project, as well as current updated information and early evaluation results where available.
Mr. Lyons provided some suggestions for grantees in developing an evaluation plan. Since the initial application is limited to 15 pages, the evaluation component should be a preliminary plan that can later be expanded into a more comprehensive evaluation plan once a grant is awarded. Timing is important: evaluation should be built in from the start rather than considered only at the end. Interim reports can be helpful in addition to final reports. Grantees should focus on key expected innovations, rather than providing a laundry list covering every TCSP goal and possible performance measure. For many TCSP projects, innovation is in the process, more than the outcomes such as demonstrated VMT reductions; but process innovations should still be analyzed and evaluated rigorously. Understanding and describing the project is only the beginning; beyond this is a need for rigorous analysis. Finally, the efforts documented should be interesting to others.
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