RM3P started with a team based in Northern Virginia, reflecting the program’s initial focus on addressing mobility challenges in the NoVA region. As RM3P moves from development to long-term operations, stewardship of the four program elements is shifting to the agencies best suited to manage them. CPIS, AI-DSS, and DEP will transition to VDOT’s Traffic Operations Division (TOD). The DI program element will transition to DRPT.
In our last newsletter, we highlighted the approval of the RM3P Sustainability Plan and shared early steps taken to prepare for permanent stewardship of the four program elements. Since then, planning has advanced with both detailed transition planning and a nationwide benchmark analysis of peer programs.
In August 2025, group meetings were convened for each RM3P program element, bringing together current stewards who are responsible for the design, development, deployment, and initial operations of the RM3P program elements and the future stewards who will assume responsibility for long-term operation, management, and expansion. The discussions focused on transition milestones and timetables, expected staffing and outsourcing, level-of-effort requirements, future procurements, funding considerations, and the key actions required before handoff.
To help shape this transition, the RM3P Management Team conducted a national outreach effort to Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) programs, an approach RM3P builds upon by integrating data and operations across agencies and modes, in an effort to learn how other agencies manage long-term stewardship of comparable programs. The purpose of the outreach was to gather practical insights on staffing, contractor use, governance approaches, and sustainability models. For RM3P, the outreach reaffirmed that successful stewardship can be achieved with a lean staffing model, provided that roles are clearly defined, data ownership is protected, and specialized work is procured strategically.
A Full Group meeting in November 2025 brought all four program element teams together to address cross-cutting issues such as governance, resource needs, and program-wide coordination. During the meeting, the group agreed to convene twice a year, identified individuals who will make up the core working group members for future stewards and subject-matter experts to support ongoing collaboration. Each program element also outlined near-term actions to advance transition planning. One of the most urgent priorities is ensuring that a new DEP contract is secured before December 2027 to avoid disruptions to other RM3P elements and external users who rely on DEP, an effort that will require careful funding coordination.