STEAM
Surface Transportation Efficiency Analysis Model

One of the Federal government’s primary transportation economic analysis tools, STEAM helps state and regional agencies estimate the benefits, costs, and environmental impacts for a wide range of transportation investments and policies. Cambridge Systematics developed this innovative software for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to enable detailed, system-wide analysis of regional and corridor multimodal alternatives.

Benefits of STEAM

Now in release 2.0, STEAM allows development of impact estimates for capital projects, pricing changes, and travel demand management (TDM). In fact, STEAM was the first FWHA impact analysis product to use input directly from the four-step travel demand modeling process, enabling more accurate projections of user benefits and congestion impacts. Powerful and flexible, STEAM can:

• Provide default analysis parameters for seven modes — auto, truck, local bus, express bus, light-rail, and heavy rail — which can be varied by the user to address special circumstances
• Enable reporting of mobility and safety benefits by user-defined districts — and accommodates user-specified values of time by district as well
• Be applied to average weekday traffic or to peak- or off-peak traffic, based on user definitions of these periods
• Perform risk analysis to clearly describe the levels of uncertainty in analytic results, enabling more informed and productive discussions of transportation investment

Getting the Most from STEAM

As the developer of STEAM, Cambridge Systematics possesses detailed technical knowledge of the model’s capabilities, and its interface with travel demand modeling. Equally important, we can help clients apply STEAM effectively to evaluate the merits of proposed transportation solutions, and forecast their impact.

How Can You Obtain STEAM?

STEAM is owned by the FHWA. For more information, visit the FHWA’s STEAM web site at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/steam/.