The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area, recently shared with the FHWA and FTA the biennial FY2026 Congestion Management Process (CMP) Technical Report [cite: 1]. This technical report is in the form of an ArcGIS StoryMap (TPB FY2026 Congestion Management Process Technical Report), featuring interactive GIS web maps, apps, and dashboards, Microsoft Power BI dashboards, and other visualizations for users to easily get engaged with, and discover patterns across congestion-focused metrics [cite: 1]. The data for these metrics primarily came from RITIS, across numerous tools from within the Probe Data Analytics (PDA) suite [cite: 1].

As MPOs continue to roll out plans and products, ensuring accessibility to audiences of various levels of experience and knowledge in a particular area is paramount [cite: 1]. Therefore, with data-driven products such as the National Capital Region TPB’s CMP Technical Report, TPB staff think it is paramount to ensure that data is not only accurate but also shown in intuitive, interactive, and creative ways [cite: 1]. Utilizing RITIS’ tools, TPB staff found the process easy, understandable, and fast to pull probe data for all measures [cite: 1].

Utilizing PDA data from RITIS helps visitors and users of the Technical Report to not only better understand the aggregated trends of congestion-focused metrics’ data for a region but also geospatially pinpoint where segments and facilities are showcasing improvements, setbacks, and consistency [cite: 1]. The technical report was designed to be a decision-focused tool, which was able to come to fruition with the help of RITIS through the CATT Lab [cite: 1].

“We relied on RITIS’ Causes of Congestion Graphs, Massive Data Downloader, Performance Charts, Performance Summaries, Bottleneck Ranking, Temporal Comparison Maps, and User Delay Cost Analysis from within the PDA Suite to ensure that we could showcase data for this comprehensive technical report for regional trends across congestion intensity, system usage, congestion causes, and travel time reliability metrics in both a geospatial and non-geospatial manner for our stakeholders.”

— Ian Newman, Program Manager, National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB)