JFA team members designed practical tools to enable agencies to “right-size” their investment capital portfolio based on fiscal, performance, and environmental constraints. This implementation effort built on the same staff leadership behind NCHRP 917: Right-Sizing Transportation Solutions, which offered practical best practices for evaluating how investment needs and the present use of transportation infrastructure have changed since original design specifications. NCHRP 20-44(22) had a special focus on identifying and prioritizing facilities and areas where the return on investment and present use of infrastructure have changed since original design, evaluating the ongoing life-cycle cost-benefit of legacy facilities, and prioritizing for alternative economic, trade, and technology futures.

JFA staff, in association with Metro Analytics, prepared a practical playbook covering (1) the right-sizing challenges addressed in North Carolina, Utah, Iowa, and Georgia; (2) aspects of the NCHRP 917 research applied in each state and why they were chosen; (3) a description of the right-sizing approach taken in each state along with its findings and results; and (4) next steps for each state in integrating the research into its business processes. Each of the four states identified previously unrecognized needs and opportunities through the NCHRP 917 methods, expanded the guidebook’s principles to address topics not envisioned by the original research, worked through practical implementation obstacles with lessons learned for future practitioners, and developed techniques that may assist other states applying right-sizing in similar ways.