The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. Carrying out the Commission’s directives is a staff of some 200 persons headquartered at the Bay Area Metro Center in San Francisco, California.
MTC functions as both the regional transportation planning agency — a state designation — and, for federal purposes, as the region’s metropolitan planning organization (MPO). As such, it is responsible for regularly updating the Regional Transportation Plan, a comprehensive blueprint for the development of streets and roads, mass transit, highway, freight, bicycle and pedestrian facilities.
A pioneering, computer-based pavement management system (known as StreetSaver) developed by MTC, is helping Bay Area cities and counties better maintain their local streets and roads.
In 1982, MTC completed a study of local road and street maintenance needs and revenue short falls in the San Francisco Bay Area. The results of the study indicated that local jurisdictions were spending only 60 percent of funds required to maintain roads in a condition considered adequate. This indicated a need to improve pavement maintenance and rehabilitation techniques and practices. A committee was formed to evaluate pavement management efforts. At approximately the same time, six public works directors reviewed a proposal to develop a prototype PMS; however, it was felt that the proposed system was too complex. This group strongly emphasized that simplicity was the most important objective to be developed in a PMS if it was to be adopted and used by cities and counties.
In 1983, a consultant was retained to assist MTC in determining MTC PMS needs, PMS resources, and problems. In addition, they were to develop three basic elements of a standardized prototype PMS: a pavement condition index (PCI), effective maintenance treatments for the Bay Area, and a network level assignment procedure. The result was the first version of the MTC PMS in 1987!
With the release of version 8 in 2003, MTC has renamed MTC PMS to StreetSaver. The StreetSaver v.8 Online was launched in April 2005. MTC becomes the first and is the leader in cloud-based provider for pavement management software. The latest version of the StreetSaver v.9 Online, .NET edition was released in July 2008.
With the passage of MAP-21, StreetSaver has branched out to include not only pavement, but other non-pavement assets within the right of way. StreetSaver Plus was released in November 2014, with the sign asset that helps local agencies to meet the minimum retroreflectivity requirements mandated by FHWA.
StreetSaver scored a huge success in 2017 with the approval of California Senate Bill 1, dedicating approximately
$1.5 billion annually for local streets and roads repair for the next 10 years. Since 2008, StreetSaver has been the workhorse that powered the
California Statewide Needs Assessment.
With more than 30 years of experience in pavement management and continuing research and development, StreetSaver has become the most popular software in the West Coast.