Madison unveils 2025 TIP scoring tool to rank street reconstruction priorities

Jose Navarro, an engineer with the City of Madison Department of Transportation, on Feb. 19 presented the 2025 iteration of the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) screening and project development tool, a GIS-based scoring system that ranks street segments to help prioritize reconstruction work and capital budgeting.

Why it matters: The tool consolidates pavement condition, underground-utility condition, pedestrian and bicycle needs, transit proximity, and other datasets across departments into a single score. Commissioners and staff said the output will inform the city’s five-year capital planning for reconstruction streets and can be updated annually as departmental data improve.

How the tool works

Navarro described a two-part process: a 60-point core score from multiple criteria, plus bonus adjustments. Core categories discussed in the presentation included pavement (up to 30 points), sanitary mains (10), stormwater (10), water mains (10), pedestrian needs (8), bicycle needs (6) and transit proximity (6). The core score is then adjusted with bonus points for safety (a 5% bonus for High-Injury Network corridors) and an additional equity priority modifier (15% in the current iteration). Navarro said the system is a GIS dataset intended to “help do data driven decisions.”

Data and interdepartmental inputs

Navarro emphasized the tool’s reliance on data from multiple City of Madison departments and partners: engineering pavement surveys (conducted twice annually), sanitary and water condition assessments, watershed and stormwater studies, Metro Transit for bus-route proximity, and the MPO and UW–Madison for crash and high-injury network analyses. He said the stormwater layer remains a work in progress after watershed studies began on the west side following 2018 flooding.

Pedestrian, bicycle and transit scoring

Navarro said the 2025 pedestrian scoring incorporated updated ADA transition-plan data and awards: 0 points where sidewalks exist on both sides, 3 points for one-side sidewalks, 5 points for sidewalk gaps or ADA-access issues, and 8 points if segments are near schools, parks or bus routes. Bicycle scoring combines stress-level network data, road classification and presence of on-street facilities; Navarro said nearby off-street paths generally reduce the bicycle score on adjacent streets, evaluated case-by-case. Transit proximity uses a 60-foot buffer to bus routes (including school routes) for full points.

Commissioner questions and staff responses

Commissioners asked how the tool would interact with federal funding or MPO scoring; staff said the city uses the TIP tool primarily for city-funded projects and that federal funding competitions follow separate MPO procedures. Commissioners also asked how the tool handles urgent failing infrastructure that does not score highly; staff said engineering can elevate or call out projects outside the automated ranking during the budget process.

Next steps

Navarro said staff will publish maps and a memo explaining the 2025 iteration and will return to the commission with proposed projects for the TIP in March or at the following meeting. The scoring tool will continue to be updated annually as departmental datasets improve.

Ending

Commissioners welcomed the refinement and asked staff to continue coordinating with the MPO, traffic engineering and the ADA transition plan as datasets evolve.