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Published: 2005

Total Pages: 332

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The 2001 Montana State legislature and Governor's Office directed the Department (MDT) to conduct a study examining the economic impact of reconfiguring the State's major two-lane highways. To achieve this overall goal, the Governor created the Reconfiguration Study Steering Committee (RSSC) to guide the Highway Reconfiguration Study. The RSSC developed a scope of work for a consultant team that called for the development of an analytical tool box that would give MDT the ability to evaluate the economic benefits and costs of highway investments anywhere in the State that could be expected to generate significant economic benefits for the State as a whole. The consultant team, led by Cambridge Systematics, Inc., evaluated all of the available tools used for state-of the-practice benefit/cost analysis of highway investments. Their findings led to their development of the Highway Economic Analysis Tool (HEAT). HEAT combines seven automated and linked modules into a software package that MDT will operate in-house. Once fully tested, HEAT will become a fourth performance measure for MDT's Performance Programming Process (P3), which at present includes bridge preservation, pavement preservation, and congestion relief.