EFFICIENCY IN THE MAKING--INDIANA ADOPTS FACTUAL PROGRAMMING

Increasing the efficiency of long-range highway programming is made difficult not so much by the need to determine the total number of elements that measure highway-user benefits, but by the importance assigned to those elements. The Indiana State Highway Commission has developed a flexible and rational sufficiency rating program for the 10,000 miles of rural state highways. The Division of Planning has used sufficiency ratings with great success in the early 1960s in determining project priority. Ratings have been used as guide in the preparation of highway construction programs projected in future years as well. This paper is an analytical inquiry into highway needs analysis by the use of sufficiency ratings. It will point out some of the major differences between Indiana ratings and those used elsewhere.