Frequently Asked Questions

RM3P is expected to include a variety of features to keep travelers in Northern Virginia and Fredericksburg moving more efficiently and safely, and to similarly assist partnering agencies in operating the transportation system collaboratively. These include:

• Real-time parking availability at select commuter parking lots, Metro stations, and other major transit hubs, so that travelers will be able to know where they can expect to find parking when transferring to public transportation and ridesharing.
• A dynamic incentives program that encourages travelers to make informed travel choices based on up-to-the-minute information on transportation conditions.
• A predictive Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that anticipates congestion and incident risk conditions before they happen, allowing a more effective and data-driven coordinated agency response.

All of these features are supported by a Data-Exchange Platform (DEP); a large collection of historical and real-time data about commuter parking availability, road and transit use, safety, and congestion; which will be shared among a variety of key partners and RM3P program element developers, so they are empowered to develop information that enhances data-driven decision-making.

Travelers will benefit from RM3P in many ways, including the following:

• Travelers will experience mobility improvements as a result of suggested travel options and incentives to switch up commutes.
• Travelers depend on accurate and reliable information to plan their trips. With RM3P, their expectations will be better met with more reliable travel times which could potentially reduce traveler stress and reduce harmful emissions caused by congestion.
• The reliable and efficient transportation system created by the RM3P initiative will help travelers make informed travel choices with its wide array of trip options, which provides trip costs and time estimates.

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA), and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) are jointly managing the project under the leadership of the Office of the Secretary of Transportation. The Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (FAMPO), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA) have also been great partners who have provided strategic direction and guidance.

Numerous partnering organizations throughout the Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Fredericksburg region including transit, Travel Demand Management (TDM) agencies, regional organizations, government agencies (local, state, and federal), chambers of commerce, academia, and others are involved in implementing the program through participation in a variety of working and stakeholder groups.

Through procurement and partnership agreements, RM3P leveraged private sector innovation and technology capabilities. Public sector agencies will be able to use the regional collaboration platforms.

RM3P is being funded through the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Innovation and Technology Transportation Fund (ITTF), which provides funding for pilot programs and fully developed initiatives pertaining to high-tech infrastructure improvements with a focus on reducing congestion, improving mobility, enhancing safety, providing up-to-date travel data, and improving emergency response. The funding for RM3P is included in the FY 2020-2025 Six-Year Improvement Program approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) on June 19, 2019.

In June 2020 the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) awarded VDOT an Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment (ATCMTD) grant of $4.3 million. The grant supports the addition of predictive parking capabilities using AI to the Commuter Parking Information Services (CPIS) and the expansion of the AI-Based Decision Support System (AI-DSS) to Fredericksburg.

• Executive Committee: Office of the Virginia Secretary of Transportation, VDOT, NVTA, DRPT, Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA), Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (FAMPO), and FHWA
• Program Principal and Executive Committee Chair: Cathy McGhee, Chief Deputy Commissioner (VDOT)
• Program Sponsor and Executive Committee Vice-Chair: Monica Backmon, Chief Executive Officer (NVTA)
• Executive Committee Membership:
  • DRPT
  • Zach Trogdon – Chief of Public Transportation
  • GWRC/FAMPO
  • Ian Ollis – Director of Transportation Planning
  • FHWA
  • Iris Vaughan – ITS/Operations/LPA Engineer
  • Karen King – ITS/Operations/Safety Engineer
  • VITA
  • Bob Osmond – Chief Information Officer
  • VDOT
  • Marcie Parker – Fredericksburg District Engineer, Special Projects Engineer to the Commissioner’s Office, Fredericksburg District
  • Bill Cuttler – District Construction Engineer, Northern Virginia District
  • Kevin Gregg – Chief of Maintenance and Operations
  • Hari Sripathi – Director of Office of Strategic Innovations
• Former members of the RM3P Executive Committee include:
• Renee Hamilton – (Then) Northern Virginia District Deputy Administrator, VDOT
• Jennifer DeBruhl – (Then) Director, DRPT
• Linda Millsaps – (Then) Executive Director, GWRC/FAMPO

RM3P program managers deliver the program within scope, schedule, and budget. Ensure that the program proceeds within the specified schedule and under established budget and resources while achieving its goals and objectives. They manage stakeholder relationships and are responsible for effective communications with all program participants. The Program Manager is Amy McElwain and Deputy Program Manager is Candice Gibson. They are supported by appointed staff from VDOT, DRPT, NVTA, GWRC/FAMPO, and the consultants.

Other groups make up the RM3P administration, including but not limited to four Program Element Guidance Teams, the Technical Working Group, the Contracts and Agreements Working Group, the Communications Working Group, Simulation/Modeling Technical Working Group, Prediction Technical Working Group, Stakeholder Advisory Group, Procurement Panel, Evaluation Team, Focus Groups, amongst others.

VDOT led planning studies on applying principles from Integrated Corridor Management (ICM), a proactive multi-modal transportation operations management approach, to Northern Virginia’s east-west corridors (study funded by a FHWA grant) and north-south corridors (study funded by VDOT).

Upon completing the planning studies, an executive-level program advisory group of representatives from VDOT, DRPT, NVTA, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), Arlington County, and FHWA saw the synergy and need to combine the two regions into a single, integrated “mega-region.”

VDOT staff have since worked on securing resources to implement two foundational initiatives of ICM for this mega-region: the Data-Exchange Platform (DEP) and the Decision Support System (DSS).

• NVTA, as one of many stakeholders involved in the planning studies, foresaw the utility of applying ICM to reduce congestion.
• NVTA submitted a funding request through the Smart Scale process for expanding VDOT’s planned initiative to add AI prediction to DSS and implement three additional data-driven applications: a Commuter Parking Information Services (CPIS), a Multi-Modal Analytical Planner (MMAP), and Dynamic Incentivization (DI) under the name RM3P. MMAP was put on indefinite hold in Fall 2020.

During the Smart Scale evaluation, the Office of the Secretary of Transportation took note of the forward-thinking and innovative nature of RM3P and recommended accelerating implementation of the initiative.

• The Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) shared the same vision as the Secretary’s Office and approved funding for RM3P in Fiscal Year 2020.
• The original RM3P scope assumed that the DEP and DSS would be established under separate initiatives. When this didn’t happen, the scope of RM3P was expanded to encompass the foundational program elements – DEP and DSS – to the RM3P ecosystem, although the funding was not adjusted.
• During the solutioning process, it was apparent that the approved funding would not be sufficient to build the foundations while adding AI to DSS and also developing CPIS, MMAP, and DI. At the time, agency stakeholders and DRPT leadership were analyzing a similar planning tool as MMAP and so the leadership collectively agreed to indefinitely put a hold on MMAP.

The geographic area scoped for RM3P is primarily Northern Virginia, anchored by I-395/95, I-66, and the Dulles Toll Road including Arlington, Fairfax, eastern portion of Loudoun, and Prince William Counties; the Cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Manassas, Manassas Park, and Falls Church; and the towns within this region. Based on commuting travel patterns, there are significant trips originating from Fredericksburg to Northern Virginia (NoVA) and through NoVA to the District of Columbia. As described below, an ATCMTD grant will expand components of RM3P to the Fredericksburg i.e. Stafford and Spotsylvania Counties and the City of Fredericksburg.

The initial development of all RM3P program elements is expected to be complete by 2027 (even though some milestones may be realized sooner), which will be followed by multiple optional years of operations and support. The development cycles for each of the four program elements began with different timelines, after having undergone a rigorous and drawn-out procurement cycle that concluded in 2024. Initial development for the Data-Exchange Platform (DEP) was completed in December 2022, whereas developments for the remaining three elements are expected to be complete between 2026-2027.

The ATCMTD grant is funding two sets of projects:

• Expand Decision Support System Capabilities to the Fredericksburg area, and
• Deploy Predictive Parking Availability Information Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for both Northern Virginia and Fredericksburg commuter parking lots.

Both projects will complement activities already in progress under RM3P initiative.

ATCMTD-funded efforts will augment activities under two RM3P program elements – specifically, the AI-Based Decision Support System (AI-DSS) and Commuter Parking Information Services (CPIS). Neither the ATCMTD/Decision Support System functions nor the ATCMTD/Parking functions can be deployed until the core RM3P DSS and CPIS components are ready. Planning and development for both the ATCMTD and RM3P will proceed concurrently, but the dependencies are necessary and inevitable.

The Data-Exchange Platform (DEP) is a reliable, continuously updated, cloud-based data storage and exchange system. It is expected to be used by RM3P developers, regional agency data scientists, and third-party providers to capture, process, and exchange information in real-time and historic multi-modal travel conditions.

Currently, historic and real-time, multi-modal travel condition data are stored in different ways, depending on who collects and owns the data. In addition, existing data-sharing dissemination systems, encompass different degrees of data availability and usage rules. With RM3P, data has been acquired, processed, stored, and shared with the right recipients at the right time to enable data-driven decision-making. Data management and sharing capabilities will provide a functional data ecosystem and democratize application developments. This Data-Exchange Platform is being used by the other three RM3P program elements, as well as the various agency stakeholders, as a one-stop shop that can be scalable statewide.

The AI-Based Decision Support System (AI-DSS) helps predict disruptions to the transportation network and provide coordinated response options to agencies. The tool for operators will use travel data to monitor emerging conditions and recommend plans for coordinated, multi-agency/multi-modal responses to congestion, incidents, and events.

Currently, transportation agencies respond to incidents that occur on their respective transportation systems and collaborate with other agencies on an ad-hoc basis. Collaboration among responding agencies is sometimes coordinated through the Metropolitan Area Transportation Operations Coordination (MATOC) program. With RM3P, responding agencies will be able to coordinate their responses through an AI-based multi-modal regional response collaboration platform. Furthermore, agencies will be provided with predicted information and will be able to respond proactively to travel conditions.

Currently, customers need basic knowledge of commuter and transit parking lots in order to plan trips via commuter bus or ridesharing. When customers are heading to the selected lots, the only way to know, in real-time, if the lots are full is to visit lot owners’ websites or mobile apps (e.g., WMATA, VRE) or on signs at the entrance of the lots (e.g., entrance of Ballston garage and Haymarket commuter parking lot). With RM3P, all parking data – whether static information about the lots, real-time availability data, or usage trends – will have a standard format for sharing via DEP with navigation and trip-planning private vendors, such as DI’s GoMyWayVA^TM. Customers will be able to search all relevant parking information, make informed trip plans, and receive real-time availability information from the navigation and trip-planning tools of their choice.

The Multi-Modal Analytical Planner (MMAP) was envisioned to be a data-driven planning tool for transportation mobility service providers to identify unmet needs within the transportation network. Simply put, when one overlays the travel demand with roadway capacity and transit services, gaps can be identified to assist agency planners to program resources or adjust services. When one service has undergone planned disruptions (i.e., Metro rail extended maintenance), that scenario can be analyzed collaboratively for identifying temporary services for impact mitigation. With MMAP, it was expected that planners across the agencies will use a common, data-driven platform to run scenarios and support their decision making on the optimal resource deployment from a regional perspective.

Currently, transportation mobility service planners use their own experience, data, and tools to determine the best resource deployment to meet their prospective customer’s demand. Testing of bus routing and bus stop placements through an existing tool took place during the pandemic. Agency resources were stretched thin for both testing the existing tool and adjusting the ever changing transit services demand, the timing of developing a scope of a new collaborative planning tool such as MMAP took a back seat. With DRPT’s recommendation and RM3P Executive Committee’s approval, MMAP was indefinitely deferred. The RM3P funding for MMAP was then re-purposed to fund the two unfunded foundational elements, the DEP and DSS.

Dynamic Incentivization (DI) is a data-driven system offering the public incentives to modify their travel choices and behaviors in response to real-time travel conditions through the DI developed app, called GoMyWayVA^TM . This initial vision was expanded to encompass a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) tool with inter- and multi-modal trip planning; navigation; real-time information on roadway, transit, and parking lots; challenges; and royalty rewards – to build the foundation for enabling users to change travel choices either before or during their commuter to optimize personal use of all transportation services.

Currently, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government (MWCOG) and major construction projects offer incentives to encourage commuters to alter travel choices on their daily commutes. Some commuters cannot routinely switch their everyday travel choices but may be able to do so occasionally. With RM3P, incentives will be offered dynamically when the transportation system is congested to encourage travelers to modify their travel activities and practices, thereby reducing the impact of the precipitating event and benefitting the overall transportation network performance for all users.

To maintain a sustainable incentivization program, the RM3P management team is seeking partnerships with regional transportation agencies as well as partnering with private sector for these offerings.

In fact, RM3P adopts an infrastructure-light principle to ensure it is a sustainable program with minimum impact on agencies’ operations and maintenance resources. RM3P’s Commuter Parking Information Services (CPIS), which encompasses five sub-projects, is utilizing drone and portable video camera technologies to validate the crowdsourced parking data generated through it’s Smart Parking Insights sub-project. The parking data gathered through these drones and cameras serves not just as a tool to validate crowdsourced data, but it also provides useful insights on parking trends to the agency lot owners and operators, while at the same time supplements the real-time parking availability data.

This is the first time that artificial intelligence will be formally used to predict traffic disruptions and other occurrences in the Commonwealth. AI will be a new tool available to state and local multi-modal operations management teams in Northern Virginia and Metropolitan Fredericksburg. Because this is a new undertaking, we are developing a comprehensive process to evaluate performance and efficacy of the decision support system. We are also expecting to develop a scalable solution. If the system performs well, expansion to other parts of the state will be a distinct possibility.

To the best of our knowledge, the full scope of RM3P has not been deployed previously. Individual elements such as traveler incentives provided by Commuter Connections are in use. The dynamic nature of RM3P’s incentive program is unique as is the overall approach of the effort.