Transportation Performance Management

To effectively manage the condition and performance of transportation infrastructure, state transportation agencies must assess and manage risks to transportation assets. NCHRP Web-Only Document 366: Risk Assessment Techniques for Transportation Asset Management: Appendices, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, presents the risk management resources summarized in NCHRP Research Report 1066: Risk Assessment Techniques for Transportation Asset Management: Conduct of Research in fuller detail.

The assessment of climatic and extreme weather risks is increasingly becoming important to the operation of transportation agencies. There are easy-to-use tools and techniques that can be implemented by agencies. NCHRP Research Report 1066: Risk Assessment Techniques for Transportation Asset Management: Conduct of Research, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, discusses how to assess risks and summarizes 12 studies that demonstrate how to enhance the measurement of risks, quantify risks, and better link risk management processes with the appropriate tools.

In a lean environment, manage transportation performance by implementing demand-driven systems, optimizing routes and schedules, and utilizing technology like transportation management systems.

NCHRP Research Report 1035: Guide to Effective Methods for Setting Transportation Performance Targets, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, is designed to help state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations identify effective methods for setting transportation performance targets based on established national measures.

The National Highway System Pavement, Bridge and Tunnel Condition in Skagit County web mapping application shows the most recent performance information available for the National Highway System in Skagit County.

Grants intended to spur adoption of modern digital project delivery and asset management systems among agencies

Biden-Harris administration to fund digital tech that saves time and money.

Data on passenger movements, vehicle fleets, fare payments, and transportation infrastructure has immense potential to inform cities to better plan, regulate, and enforce their urban mobility systems. This report specifically examines the opportunities that exist for U.S. cities to use mobility data – made available through adoption of new mobility services and data-based technologies – to improve transportation's environmental sustainability, accessibility, and equity.

FHWA has announced the allocation of more than $52 million in grants to eight states through the Advanced Transportation Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) program. These grants aim to support technology-based solutions that enhance the travel experience for millions of Americans using highway and transit systems.

FHWA has announced that the application period is open for the first year of a new, $85 million grant program under President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Advanced Digital Construction Management Systems (ADCMS) grant program will focus on digital construction, such as computer modeling and 3D design, to encourage state-of-the-art practices in project delivery.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) today announced the immediate availability of $3 million in “quick release” Emergency Relief (ER) funds for use as a down payment by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to offset costs of repair work on a section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia that collapsed as the result of a gasoline tanker truck fire. More funding is available through the FHWA’s Emergency Relief program.

The Spring 2023 edition of FHWA's "Public Roads" Magazine focuses exclusively on Equity in Transportation. Included are a guest editorial from FHWA Administrator Shailen Bhatt and several articles highlighting efforts at both FHWA and at partner agencies.

This document highlights Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) Rapid Response program (RR Program or RR team) and shows how the program takes a systemic approach to safety and aligns with the Safe System principles to achieve Vision Zero in Denver.

The USDOT National Roadway Safety Strategy outlines a comprehensive approach to reducing injury and death on roadways across the country. It emphasizes the need to make construction and maintenance zones safe for workers. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is committed to improving safety for road construction workers as part of this year’s National Work Zone Awareness Week (April 17-21).

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has published four Transportation Asset Management (TAM) Case Studies Based on Managing Risk Associated with Major Funding Uncertainty on its Asset Management website. The case studies detail how Florida, Michigan, Indiana, and Minnesota use TAM principles to manage risk.

StreetLight AADT covers nearly every road in the U.S. and Canada, providing traffic estimates for all road segment types, including highways, low-volume, and recently developed roads. Get more granular monthly and hourly All Vehicles traffic counts split by vehicle weight categories for historical time periods. Traffic counts remain an essential metric for federal reporting, supporting Safe Streets for All (SS4A) grant applications, and achieving Bipartisan Infrastructure Law emissions goals. With deadlines for FHWA’s Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) reporting and SS4A grants around the corner, transportation professionals can now get the most recent AADT counts to help advance their applications and create more efficient, safe, and sustainable transportation systems for all.

Measures of accessibility provide important information about the performance of the transportation system across all modes in meeting human needs. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 1000: Accessibility Measures in Practice: A Guide for Transportation Agencies describes measures of accessibility—defined as the ease with which travelers can reach valued destinations—and how these measures can be implemented by transportation agencies.

Performance-driven programming involves the use of performance measures, metrics, targets, and/or data to help inform or guide the development of a Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) or Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). This report highlights how State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are implementing performancedriven programming processes and aligning transportation investment decisions with the Federal performance areas for safety, infrastructure condition, and system performance.

Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) enable travelers to order and pay for rides on-demand using an online application that connects them with drivers using their personal vehicles. While these modes present opportunities to increase individual mobility and access, they also can worsen congestion and increase vehicle emissions. Better understanding these services could help to maximize potential benefits and minimize negative externalities. Increasing TNC user pooling, where users with different origins and destinations along a common route are picked up and dropped off by the same vehicle, is one strategy toward this end. This research explores the factors impacting the willingness and propensity to use pooled TNCs and identifies strategies/policies that could be employed to reduce TNC congestion.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) supported a project to explore planning-level analysis of interchange configurations during alternatives analysis or Interchange Access Requests (IARs). FHWA sought to identify the most commonly considered configurations in IARs and develop a predictive model and implementation tool. The purpose of this predictive model and associated implementation tool is to use an approach with more robust considerations than a single crash modification factor and provide reliable predictions using information commonly known during interchange project planning. This tool can be used to evaluate the predicted crash frequency and severity for interchange configurations under consideration using basic inputs for the entire interchange area.

This lecture addresses an urban mobility story covering the history of managed lanes spanning more than 50 years.

Charles A. Fuhs, III presented the 2023 Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lecture on Monday, January 9 as part of TRB's Annual Meeting. His lecture is titled Re-envisioning Mobility on Urban Freeways: The Emergence and Evolving Roles of Managed Lanes.

Lowering vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets through land use and transportation planning and investments is a primary goal of planning organizations in California. This report provides information about the landscape of methods and tools available to regional and local governments to evaluate the land use efficiency and equity within their jurisdictions.

Developing country megacities suffer from severe road traffic congestion, yet the level of congestion is not a direct measure of equilibrium inefficiency. This study looks at the peak-hour traffic congestion equilibrium in Bangalore. To measure travel preferences, it models departure time choice to design a field experiment with congestion pricing policies and implement it using precise GPS data. Commuter responses in the experiment reveal moderate schedule inflexibility and a high value of time. In Bangalore, traffic density has a moderate and linear impact on travel delay. The policy simulations with endogenous congestion indicate that optimal congestion charges would lead to a small reduction in travel times, and small commuter welfare gains. This result is driven primarily by the shape of the congestion externality. Overall, these results suggest limited commuter welfare benefits from peak-spreading traffic policies in cities like Bangalore.

The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 584: Visualization of Highway Performance Measures documents current practices and methods used by state departments of transportation (DOTs) for visualizing highway performance measures and their use of visualization techniques for communication and decision support.

The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 589: Automated Data Collection and Quality Management for Pavement Condition Reporting documents the experiences, challenges, and state-of-the-practice solutions used by state departments of transportation that are in the midst of transition or that have transitioned to automated and semiautomated processes for collecting pavement data. It also summarizes the data for state and federal reporting requirements, such as Transportation Asset Management Plans and MAP-21.

Gabe Klein is instrumental in the Biden administration’s plans to build out infrastructure for America’s future electric cars, buses and trucks. Klein, who has run transportation departments in D.C., and Chicago, was named in September executive director of the new Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed by President Biden last November. Klein's primary job is to oversee the $7.5 billion that the infrastructure law allocates to support the construction of EV charging stations over five years.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) recently released guidance to help states address roadway deaths as part of the National Roadway Safety Strategy. The guidance clarifies how states should develop their Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment. Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the assessment identifies areas of high risk to vulnerable road users and determines safety improvements that could help mitigate safety risks.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced more than $703 million to fund 41 projects in 22 states and one territory that will improve port facilities through the Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program. The funding, made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and additional Congressional appropriations, will benefit coastal seaports, Great Lakes ports, and inland river ports, helping improve supply chain reliability through increased port capacity and resilience, more efficient operations, reduced port emissions, and new workforce opportunities.

This study examines travel behavior and opportunities to increase transportation sustainability in rural areas. Interviews were conducted with Vermont residents about day-to-day challenges of travel, suggestions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, responses to fuel prices, and opinions on electric vehicles. Research showed some key differences between urban and rural travel that were relevant to understanding how to shift to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some key findings include that rural areas struggle most with traveling long distances to reach services, urban areas are more concerned with traffic, and opinions on electric vehicle (EV) ownership are consistent across the state, with people being likely to consider owning an EV if costs were to decrease.

The U.S. Department of Transportation released an update on its National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS), which was released in January, and shared a new online dashboard that allows stakeholders and the general public to track the Department’s progress on commitments made as part of the NRSS. The NRSS lays out a roadmap for addressing the national crisis in roadway fatalities and serious injuries.

Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced that millions of dollars in federal funding will pay for hundreds of truck parking spaces in Florida and Tennessee, along with technology to help truck drivers struggling to find available spots. Infrastructure investments include a $15 million grant to add 120 new truck parking spaces along the Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando, Florida, and $22.6 million in funding to add about 125 spaces along Interstate 40, east of Nashville, Tennessee. Additionally, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), awarded $1.4 million in High Priority Innovative Technology Deployment grants to Montana and Kentucky to improve truck parking.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced that it has approved Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plans for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico ahead of schedule under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, established and funded by President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. With this approval, all states now have access to all FY22 and FY23 NEVI formula funding to help build EV chargers covering approximately 75,000 miles of highway across the country.

Later this month, a new program aimed at awarding $500 million in federal grants will be used for new road technology. The competitive program Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) calls for $100 million annually for five years for the grant initiative. The end goal is to fund projects that show how technology like autonomous vehicles, roadside sensors, and aerial drones can be incorporated into transportation systems to tackle problems like congestion, crashes, and lacking options for commuters.

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) selected 26 projects, including nine rail/intermodal-related projects, to share $1.5 billion INFRA (Infrastructure for Rebuilding America) grants. The INFRA competitive grant program evaluated highway, multimodal freight and rail projects based on safety, how they supported freight movement and job creation, their efforts to address climate change and resiliency, impacts on equity and quality of life, how they applied innovative technology, cost-effectiveness, and demonstrated project readiness. Projects were also prioritized on their ability to deliver national or regional economic benefits. USDOT said it awarded a "significant amount of funding to rural areas, historically disadvantaged communities, and areas of presistent poverty to address historic underinvestment in these communities."

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) discretionary grant program awarded $20 million for a critical road-railway grade separation project at the Port. Once completed, the new rail-roadway will connect trucks directly to the highway system in two directions, resulting in a reduction of truck delays and miles traveled, and a decrease in emissions and potential accidents in the area.

Phoenix City Council Approves Vision Zero Road Safety Action Plan and allocates $10 million in annual funding.

The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) have awarded US$49.2 million in innovative technology grants to improve mobility and multimodal connections on America’s highway and transit systems. The FHWA awarded US$45.2 million in Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment (ATCMTD) grants to ten projects using advanced intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies that improve mobility and safety, reduce congestion and support underserved communities.

President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Shailen P. Bhatt, for Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. Shailen Bhatt is Senior Vice President of Global Transportation Innovation and Alternative Delivery at AECOM, a multinational infrastructure consulting firm. Bhatt previously served as the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, Cabinet Secretary of the Delaware Department of Transportation, and as a presidential appointee at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

FHWA announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for states and municipalities to track and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) makes available more than $27 billion in federal funding to help State Departments of Transportation (State DOTs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) meet their declining GHG targets. The new rule would take two important steps to combat climate change: · Establish a national framework for tracking state-by-state progress by adding a new GHG performance management measure to the existing FHWA national performance measures to help states track performance and make more informed investment decisions. · Create a flexible system under which State DOTs and MPOs would set their own declining targets for on-road greenhouse gas emissions from roadway travel on the National Highway System.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has issued a final rule that updates and revises its highway bridge inspection standards for the first time since 2009. A key focus in the MAP-21 provisions is a directive that FHWA use a “risk-based” approach in revising bridge inspection requirements and that approach is a theme in the agency's new standard.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that became law in November 2021 not only lays out a spending plan for the repair of roads and bridges but also requires vehicle safety standard revisions and research as well as safety component additions over the next one to three years.

The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority is trying to make the case for more turnpike systems improvements following recent traffic accidents that either caused significant slowdowns or brought major traffic to a halt.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its early estimate of traffic fatalities for 2021. NHTSA projects that an estimated 42,915 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year, a 10.5% increase from the 38,824 fatalities in 2020. The projection is the highest number of fatalities since 2005 and the largest annual percentage increase in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System’s history.

The Minnesota Legislature commissioned MnDOT to do a study to analyze ramp meter effectiveness and identify the public perception of metering in 2000. All 430 meters were turned off for six weeks. It evaluated traffic flow and safety impacts. The results of the study found there was a 22% increase in travel times, a 7% decrease in freeway speeds, and a 26% increase in crashes, showing that ramp meters are effective.

This new approach to Pavement Management using 3D laser technology adds high-accuracy blended global navigation satellite system + inertial navigation system positioning systems, as well as specialized software, to map the absolute position of 3D profiles in real-world coordinates.

Transit signal priority (TSP) and freight signal priority (FSP) allow transportation agencies to prioritize signal service allocations considering the priority of vehicles and, potentially, decrease the impact signal control has on them. This paper reports on a study conducted to provide guidelines for implementing signal control considering both TSP and FSP.

This study performed a before-after analysis using data from intersections in Charlotte, North Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to evaluate the safety effects of PCS. Following the implementation of PCS, total crashes decreased by approximately 8% and rear-end crashes decreased by approximately 12%, and these reductions were statistically significant at the 95% confidence level.

In this paper, a comprehensive literature review was conducted on the utilization of recycled concrete aggregate (RCA), which is the dominant construction and demolition waste material, in base and subbase layers and its comparison with natural aggregate (NA). Developing integrated construction and demolition waste management will help achieve the primary goal of preventing and reducing the generation of these wastes, both locally and globally. In this way, not only is the main purpose of preventing the increase in the production of construction and demolition waste achieved, but also the reuse and recycling of the waste materials produced are encouraged. Results show that RCA has equivalent or better performance than virgin aggregate for almost any application with proper care and process control, and can be used in unbound pavement layers or other applications requiring compaction.

Colorado DOT has developed a comprehensive statewide set of dashboards to report on national performance metrics, performance plan and strategic goals, project accountability, statewide plan goals and objectives, and CDOT projects.

A new analysis from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) projects that U.S. drivers struck and killed 3,441 pedestrians in the first six months of 2021, up 17% – or 507 additional lives lost – from the same period the year before. This troubling projection continues a decade-long trend of rising pedestrian deaths on our roadways and comes as speeding, impaired and distracted driving, and other dangerous driver behaviors remain at unacceptably high levels. A combination of factors are believed responsible, which include a surge in dangerous driving that began at the start of the pandemic and has not abated, larger vehicles that are more likely to seriously injure or kill people on foot in the event of a crash, roads designed to prioritize fast-moving traffic over slower speeds that are safer for pedestrians, and inadequate infrastructure such as sidewalks and lighting in many parts of the country.

This paper presents an investigation of the use and frequency of use of ride-hail services. Initial results from the fixed-effects model showed that the younger cohorts, including Millennials and Generation Z, showed a significantly positive preference for more frequent ride-hail use, whereas the older cohorts’ preferences (Generation X, Baby Boomers, and older) did not show any significant effects on ride-hail frequency. This study's results could help predict the future market comprising autonomous vehicles and other emerging mobility options.

Areas of Vandalia, Ohio are dealing with increased traffic congestion due to thousands of trucks hauling goods for newly-located logistic companies surrounding the Dayton International Airport. To try to remediate traffic congestion within Vandalia, the city is teaming up with Montgomery County to reconstruct and widen sections of Northwoods Boulevard, North Dixie Drive, and Lightner Road. The $18.7 million project, known as the Northeast Logistics Access project, will provide trucks with an alternate route into the warehouse area northeast of the Dayton airport, lessening the traffic issues within the center of Vandalia, according to Montgomery County Engineer Paul Gruner. This project, which will begin soon and continue through 2023, aims to improve livability in Vandalia as development takes place around the airport and help meet the region's economic development goals.

The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) announced that $10 million is available to distribute as grants for projects and activities that help advance the state’s long-range transportation and planning goals. Awards will be chosen based on the interested organization’s ability to study or implement a goal, strategy, or objective of IDOT’s Long-Range Transportation Plan or one of the agency’s multimodal plans, such as the transit, rail, bike, freight and highway safety plans. Acceptable activities to get a grant include planning studies, data collection and analysis, research and program development, performance management, and outreach efforts. According to IDOT Secretary Omer Osman, "these grants are a tremendous opportunity for [IDOT's] stakeholders to do the critical work of planning to better connect communities across all modes.”

To reduce congestion in Atlanta, GA, Atlanta City Councilmember Amir Farokhi is considering implenting self-driving vehicles like shuttles in midtown and a congestion fee, where anyone who drives into the city would pay a fee to use city roads. Farokhi would like to do a pilot project in a certain part of the city to see how it works. Instead, voters will decide if they want to fix the roads through a four-tenths of a cent retail sales tax, or Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, with the goal to reduce traffic congestion in Atlanta.

This article discusses tools for policymakers and infrastructure planners to reduce traffic and air congestion. A study from Carnegie Mellon University zeroes in on how micromobility — namely e-bikes — can affect congestion in Seattle, finding that if even 10 percent of short car trips during peak afternoon travel were replaced with micromobility, more than 4,800 car trips would not happen, decreasing vehicle miles traveled by more than 7,300 miles a day, a 2.76 reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In Seattle, it's estimated that 18 percent of short car trips could be replaced with micromobility, and during peak travel times, some 70 percent of trips in the Puget Sound region are made by private vehicles, according to the study. Metropolitan planning agencies, cycling advocates, and transportation planners can use this research to invest in infrastructure that reduces congestion.

This study evaluates the integration of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) technology into current state Department of Transportation (DOT) bridge inspections. The paper provides an examination of current standard bridge inspection procedures and protocols currently carried out by state DOTs; an evaluation of state DOT experiences with the integration of UAS technology into bridge inspections; and an assessment of the issues and challenges associated with this technology. The results of recent studies indicate that UAS can serve as a useful tool in many highway bridge inspection procedures, while significantly reducing costs and time and improving safety.

This study leveraged data from the second Strategic Highway Research Program Naturalistic Driving Study to gain important insights into the risks posed by driver distraction on both freeways and two-lane highways. More than 50 types of secondary tasks were aggregated into ten distraction type categories and mixed-effects logistic regression models were estimated to discern how the risks of near-crash events varied by distraction type while controlling for the effects of driver, roadway, and traffic characteristics. In general, the types of distractions that created the most pronounced risks were those that introduced a combination of cognitive, visual, and manual distractions, such as drivers using their phones. From a policy standpoint, the results of this study provide further motivation for more aggressive legislation and enforcement of distracted driving.

This paper aims to advance the current research on the new super diverging diamond interchange (super DDI) design on highways by evaluating the operational efficiency using real-world locations. As part of a comprehensive research effort on improving the performance of failing service interchanges in the mountain-plains region, the study identified three interchanges in Denver, Colorado as the potential candidates to model for future retrofit. Four interchange designs (i.e., existing CDI [conventional diamond interchange], DDI, super DDI-1, and super DDI-2) were tested in this study. The study considered two simulation networks: (1) when no adjacent traffic signal exists, to determine how the four interchange designs would perform if there were no adjacent signals or they were far away from the interchange; and (2) when there are two adjacent traffic signals, to evaluate the performance of the four interchanges in a bigger corridor with signal coordination needed. An important finding is that super DDI designs outperformed DDI with adjacent signals and higher traffic demand, while DDI performed similarly to or sometimes insignificantly better than super DDI if no adjacent intersections were located in the vicinity and if the demand was lower than the DDI’s capacity.

An increasing number of corporations and workplaces are providing flexible working hours or flextime for employees, which is expected to reduce congestion by redistributing the temporal pattern of commuters’ departure time. This study examines the impact of flextime on departure time choice using a Bayesian continuous-time hazard duration model. The model accommodates the time-varying effect of covariates and unobserved heterogeneity. Results from the Austin Household Travel Survey collected between 2017 and 2018 show that workers who have a flextime option choose to leave later, with a predominant effect deterring morning peak departures. Other trip and individual-specific variables, such as travelers’ job type, trip duration, number of trips during the travel day, and household income, are found to have significant impacts on departure time choice. The findings of this study support the theory that implementing flexible working hours may ease congestion by staggering the travel demand from peak to off-peak hours.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has adapted, customized, and enhanced Federal Highway Administration’s Life Cycle Cost Analysis software RealCost for California's traffic patterns and maintenance practices in RealCostCA. However, the different types of roadways, traffic distributions, and work zone types have not been analyzed. This study aimed to build easy-to-use look-up tables to obtain Road User Costs for a factorial of different work zone and traffic conditions. The data obtained were subsequently used to combine into mixed regression models. These models enable calculation of RUC at any traffic level customized to the location of the project. Future work will be undertaken to combine the models into Caltrans’ network-level pavement management system.

This E-Circular documents the 2021 Workshop on the Use of Traffic Speed Deflection Device (TSDD) Data in Network- and Project-Level Pavement Decisions. TSDDs are designed to measure pavement deflections or deflection velocities in response to loads applied by trucks moving at or near prevailing traffic speeds. Ten planned presentations organized into three topics were given at the workshop in which State departments of transportations shared their experiences and applications with TSDDs. The presentations were followed by a panel discussion and then an 11th presentation summarizing the key workshop findings.

The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJ DOT) will be providing in-cab traffic alerts to alert drivers of congestion and slow-moving traffic about 2 to 3 miles ahead, giving drivers additional time to slow down. The feature will be available on several state highways, including the New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway and Atlantic City Expressway. The system was developed by Intelligent Imaging Systems and INRIX, a transportation data and analytics company. Since commercial trucks take longer to stop while traveling at higher speeds, officials hope drivers adhering to the warnings will help prevent crashes and make about 647 miles of state road safer.

This paper evaluates the performance of connected vehicle (CV) technology deployed in Wyoming to mitigate the risk of secondary crashes; crashes that occur as a consequence of primary crashes with their spatiotemporal distances. This study investigated the safety performance of CVs in mitigating the risk of secondary crashes on heavy trucks, more specifically under adverse weather conditions, by conducting a driving simulator experiment to assess the effectiveness of CV distress and rerouting applications in mitigating the effects of secondary crashes. The results showed that the tested CV applications succeeded in enhancing driving behaviors by reducing the operating speed as well as the speed variation, and all the participants avoided a secondary crash in the CV environment.

This study investigates vehicles’ microscopic driving behavior at signalized intersections operating under weak lane discipline with mixed traffic (disordered) conditions. For this purpose, a comprehensive vehicular trajectory data set is developed from field-recorded video footage using a semi-automated tool for data extraction. Microscopic parameters such as relative velocity, spacing between vehicles, following time, lane preference, longitudinal and lateral speed profile, hysteresis evidence, and lateral movement of different vehicle classes during different traffic phases are presented in the study. The data is then segregated into three flow conditions: stopped flow, saturated flow, and unaffected flow. The observations and results from this study are expected to help better understand prevailing driving behavior in disordered traffic and contribute toward robust calibration of microscopic traffic flow models for better replicating disordered traffic conditions at signalized intersections.

This paper evaluates new ways to better manage the flow of traffic on existing facilities, and more efficiently utilize available and unused capacity. This paper presents an analysis of data that was collected to evaluate the operational impacts of the implementation of a freight and transit (FAT) lane, and to guide the development of future FAT lane projects by learning from the case study in Seattle, U.S. The video data was converted to vehicle counts, which were analyzed to understand the traffic impacts and used to construct a discrete choice model. Overall, the results are promising for a lane management strategy that may improve freight system performance without reducing transit service quality.

This paper discusses the various strategies transportation agencies have implemented to mitigate traffic congestion in metropolitan areas. One of the measures applied is the application of managed lanes, which provide benefits to road users and operating agencies by integrating advanced technologies such as electronic and dynamic tolling systems. Agencies that are already implementing or considering implementing the managed lane strategy are seeking a solution to effectively and properly charge toll rates based on vehicle occupancy and penalize violating vehicles. This study confirms that the performance of the deep learning algorithm, a core vehicle passenger detection systems technology, declines under certain adverse weather conditions because of lack of training data sets.

To reduce hydroplaning accidents and evaluate the hydroplaning potential of Florida's roadways, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) recently developed and implemented a new hydroplaning prediction (HP) program for predicting the traveling speed at which a vehicle would start hydroplaning. This paper presents an overview of the HP program, including how it works by incorporating a total of four water film thickness models and three hydroplaning speed models developed in the past. The primary use of the new HP tool is to check the final geometric roadway design parameters for hydroplaning potential.

This paper evaluates the operational performance of 11 adaptive signal control system (ASCS) corridors located throughout South Carolina. An ASCS can adjust signal timings in real time based on traffic demands but the operational benefits of ASCS vary depending on the type of ASCS, corridor characteristics, and geographical area. The 11 ASCS corridors evaluated in this paper are operated using SynchroGreen, developed by TrafficWare. Results from the operational analysis show that when SynchroGreen is operational, it reduces the travel time on the corridor by an average of 6.4% and improves travel time reliability by an average of 31.4% compared with when the conventional traffic signal control system (e.g., pre-timed and actuated signal control) is operational.

Risk-based transportation asset management program (TAMP) gives transportation agencies the ability to have a mechanism for documenting and measuring risks to their operations, as this will help drive the potential mitigation activities. A review of the initial TAMP documents submitted by U.S. transportation agencies showed that although risks are acknowledged, there does not exist a clear line of sight between risk management and agencies’ programming. This paper proposes a data integration framework for developing a cross-asset comprehensive database for risk management that integrates many of the common risks that state highway agencies have identified in the initial TAMP documents.

This study assesses the impact of the introduction of connected and automated vehicles on Virginia freeway corridors. Three vehicle types: legacy vehicles (LV), automated vehicles (AV), and connected automated vehicles (CAV), were considered in mixed traffic scenarios. According to the basic freeway test network results, AV and CAV increase road capacity by 29% and 91%. In the merging freeway test network, AV and CAV increase road capacity by 48% and 60% compared with LV, respectively. The study predicts that in the future, as the traffic demand grows, AV and CAV can reduce traffic congestion.

This paper assesses the spatiotemporal traffic impacts of Hurricane Irma on Florida's major highways. The authors of the study conducted a time-series-based analysis to evaluate the temporal evacuation patterns of this large-scale evacuation. The study employed a geographic information system-based analysis to visually illustrate the CI values of corresponding highway sections with respect to different dates and times. Findings clearly showed that imperfect forecasts and the uncertainty surrounding Irma’s predicted path resulted in high levels of congestion and severe delays on Florida’s major evacuation routes.

Here Technologies recently launched Advanced Real Time Traffic, which is an expansion of the company's standard real time traffic service that delivers current information about traffic flow and incidents which can cause delays. This new service introduces new lane level information and expanding inner-city coverage across all street types. It is claimed to be the first traffic service which provides accurate speeds on arterial lanes with congestion at intersections, as well as the different speeds on roads with high occupancy vehicle lanes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. This service will enable the display of traffic conditions on all roads for optimal ETA calculations.

The city of Long Beach, California is working with Mercedes-Benz and Xtelligent to deploy a fleet of up to 50 smart vehicles and artificial intelligence software that will communicate real-time traffic data to an intelligent intersection control system. This pilot will test whether traffic signals can respond to changing driving patterns in real time. The vehicles will share location data with each other and with city infrastructure to allow city planners and engineers to measure traffic congestion based on the type of vehicle and distance travelled. The system is expected to not only improve traffic flow by anticipating congestion based on crashes or school pick-up and drop-off times and re-routing traffic using customized red and green periods at specific intersections.

This paper examines how major events, such as football games, can cause a signifcant source of traffic congestion, especially in large metropolitan areas. This paper presents a case study of two different football teams' (the Los Angeles Rams and the University of Southern California (USC) Trojans) games played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a venue near downtown Los Angeles, California, with a capacity of about 80,000. The traffic impacts of game days are analyzed by comparing game day traffic with traffic on control days on both the highway and arterial systems. The data include speed records from in-road detectors. The results show that Rams and USC impacts are different. Rams fans arrive in a more concentrated time interval closer to the start time of games and, therefore, have a greater impact on the major approach routes than USC fans. The greatest impacts on highways are around nearby freeway-to-freeway interchanges. Arterial traffic is more consistently affected by distance from the venue. This case study provides the basis for better management of major planned events.

The National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 17-76 investigated factors that influence operating speed and safety through a review of the literature and an analysis of the relationships for speed, safety, and roadway characteristics on urban/suburban streets. Results from that research was used to develop a Speed Limit Setting Procedure (SLS-Procedure), which relies on a set of decision rules that consider both driver speed choice and safety associated with the roadway. The SLS-Procedure was designed to be applicable across different roadway types and contexts by having a set of unique decision rules for four combinations of roadway types and contexts: limited-access, undeveloped, developed, and full-access facilities. The goal of the SLS-Procedure, as well as the spreadsheet-based SLS Tool, is to help engineers make informed decisions about the setting of speed limits

This report summarizes a workshop held at the 99th Annual TRB Conference in January 2020, which covered highlights from selected State DOTs on quality assurance (QA) practices in the materials, construction, and design areas. The workshop also featured a presentation from Robert Conway from FHWA, who shared FHWA’s perspective on implementing new technologies and QA.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has kicked off a series of public hearings and a 16-month review process to study the environmental effects of a proposal to charge drivers to enter the bustling Central Business District in New York, NY. The goal of charging drivers to enter this area is to decrease the number of cars, improve air quality, encourage the use of mass transit, and raise money for the MTA's capital plan. There will be 20 hearings for members of the public and interest groups to weigh in on the proposal, all of which will take place virtually.

A team at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), in collaboration with a professor at the University of Glasglow, have developed a model to analyze traffic congestion. The team has applied the model to more than 100 American cities to better understand the link between congestion and land use. This source combines real-time speed data, volume and roadway information from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Specifically, congestion was defined according to annual excess fuel consumed during rush hours and free-flowing traffic, annual hours of delay during rush hour and off-peak times, and a time travel index based on the ratio between travel time during rush hour divided by the time of the same trip under free-flowing conditions. The UTSA-Glasgow model indicated that cities with more urban land use were associated with higher congestion levels and that cities that had one dominant urban core generally were associated with lower levels of congestion while more polycentric cities, those with multiple urban centers, suffered from more traffic.

To improve traffic efficiency and reduce congestion, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) is bringing STOP (Signal Timing and Optimization Program) to the heavily driven Ridge Road corridor from Pearl Road to Denison Avenue in Brooklyn, OH. The plan is to target outdated and inefficient signal timing, which can cause unnecessary delays and congestion while also degrading air quality. NOACA’s STOP initiative will be conducting traffic counts over the next two months before taking the analyzed data to the NOACA board in February.

Recently, the Illinois governor signed House Bill 253 into law, which requires Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to establish and implement a transportation performance program to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the state's transportation system. This is part of the bipartisan Rebuild Illinois capital plan that invests $45 billion into the state's roads, bridges, railways and other critical projects over the next six years. IDOT will also develop a statewide highway system asset management plan with the goal of preserving and improving the conditions of highway and bridge assets and enhance the existing system while reducing costs. Beginning January 1, 2022, IDOT will be required to select projects for inclusion in their multi-year plan based on a selection process that weighs a variety of factors including congestion mitigation or improved traffic operations, economic development, livability, environmental impact, accessibility and safety.

This paper documents the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT)'s testing of a new apparatus for measuring passing sight distance (PSD) on two-lane highways. The two-vehicle method involves two successive vehicles spaced at a gap, equivalent to PSD, and both vehicles travel at the speed limit. The driver of the rear vehicle operates a switch when the lead vehicle becomes invisible because of sight obstructions, such as vegetation, signaling the beginning point of the no-passing zone. The results showed that overall discrepancies between WYDOT’s no-passing zone markings and those designated by the apparatus ranged from 1% to 7%. This research will help reduce passing-related crashes and improve highway safety.

This article focuses on a study that describes the modeling approach adopted in developing cracking deterioration models of bituminous sprayed seals from historical time series subjective condition ratings. In this approach, a multilevel analysis has been applied to capture the variations between observations, segments, and highways. The overall model developed here using multilevel analysis and incorporating the significantly contributing factors predicts earlier deterioration than the MC model currently used. The latter predicts 70% of segments to be in good condition at the age of 5 years, whereas the first predicts only 49%.

This article discusses results from a three-year traffic signal retiming project done in Camden County, NJ. The Camden County Department of Public Works, in partnership with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVPRC) and the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJOT) recalculated 12 traffic signals on a stretch of road in Camden County. According to officials, weekday morning commuters can expect to see a 34 percent reduction in travel times when travelling south, and a 30 percent reduction travelling north. This project has shown to dramatically reduce the average travel delay and number of vehicle stops and congestion in this area.

This article discusses how intelligent transportation system technologies (ITS) can help to reduce congestion and emissions. Idling in traffic congestion contributes to increased gas emissions and negatively impacts air quality. Innovations in transportation technology such as connected and electric vehicles, predictive analytics, and AI can help to reduce congestion on the roads and in doing so, reduce emissions. Deploying intelligent transportation technologies can transform our system—from reducing emissions and congestion to saving lives and providing equal access to mobility for all.

This article discusses results from a study conducted by Cubic Transportation System that shows transportation leaders believe Mobility on Demand (MOD) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS) are the ultimate forward-thinking solutions for traffic congestion. The study surveyed respondents from 135 global transportation industry stakeholders, members of associations and alliances, agency executives and mobility technology providers. More than half the respondents were in favor of MOD and MaaS services but many identified data sharing and privacy as the main challenges to MaaS deployment, with secondary concerns about costs of deployment.

The Utah Department of Transportation (DOT) has awarded Iteris two additional contracts for smart mobility initiatives. Iteris will extend UDOT's use of its freeway transportation performance measures solution, which provides real-time vehicle speed, volume and classification data, and historical analysis. Under the new multi-year SaaS contract extensions, UDOT will expand its use of two Iteris commercial vehicle operations solutions, CVIEWplus and Inspect, for improved safety compliance for commercial motor carriers in Utah state.

This article explores how removing left turns can save time, money, carbon emissions, and improve safety. According to a 2010 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report looking at crashes at intersections, about 40% of vehicle crashes happen at intersections and more than 60% of those crashes involve someone turning left. This article discusses how driving a block further instead of turning left would improve traffic flow. This article discusses how in 2004, UPS implemented a policy for delivery drivers to avoid left turns. In this case, UPS claims eliminating left turns resulted in saving 10 million gallons of fuel, and the ability to deliver 350,000 more packages. While not being able to take a left turn may make a route longer, it can improve efficiency and reduce traffic congestion.

The Utah Department of Transportation (DOT) is partnering with Blyncsy to provide dashcam imagery showing road conditions in and around Salt Lake City. The images will be gathered from dash cameras propped in the cars of ride-hailing drivers, truck drivers and others operating in the professional driving space. This technology will allow officials to see the condition of roadways, such as where the striping has worn away or been recently replaced, in a more immediate fashion than what UDOT has previously had.

This paper documents best practices gathered from the technology exchange on Local Roads Bridge Programs on September 15–19, 2019, in Kalispell, Montana. This technology exchange between representatives from Alaska, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin, covered a variety of topics, such as research, development, and technology transfer needs in the areas of design, construction, maintenance, and safety on low-volume roads (LVRs). This document presents the summary of those sessions, including key takeaways from the panelists’ remarks in Summary of Panel Sessions, Key Takeaways, and Concluding Thoughts, and best practices from each State on strategies for overcoming certain challenges related to bridges and LVRs.

This paper analyzes the safety of passing zones, which afford sufficient passing distance for passing vehicles on two-lane rural highways. This study aimed to assess the effects of geometric and traffic variables on the safety of short passing zones using the rate of passing maneuvers ending in the no-passing zone as a surrogate safety measure. A Poisson regression model was applied to aerial data collected by drone at seven passing zones. The findings showed that increase in the length of the passing zone corresponds to decrease in the rate of passing maneuvers ending in the no-passing zone. The presented model can serve as a tool for evaluating and improving the safety of short passing zones.

This study evaluated the safety effectiveness of the systemic implementation of centerline rumble strips on New York State-owned roads. In New York State, rumble strips installed on the centerline are referred to as centerline audible roadway delineators (CARDs). This study evaluated the effect of CARDS on head-on sideswipe (HO/SS), run-off-road (ROR), injury crashes, and fatal crashes using a treatment group (segments of road where CARDs were installed) and a control group (segments of road in the same region without CARDS). The study showed that CARDs are an effective treatment to reduce ROR and HO/SS crashes.

The city of Tempe, AZ's Transportation Demand Management and Transportation Management Association is hosting virtual meetings to receive public feedback on a slate of local transportation projects. These projects aim to improve Tempe's air quality and public health, in addition to reducing congestion, automobile use, and costs associated with the city's transportation system. Part of the plan is to provide incentives to motivate Tempe residents to use other forms of transportation besides cars to reduce congestion.

El Dorado County in California is launching a pilot program that hinges on the cooperation of way-finding apps to reduce traffic congestion in residential neighborhoods caused by growing tourism. The pilot program will prohibit right-hand turns between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Sundays and holidays in two distinct locations. The El Dorado County Department of Transportation (DOT) hopes the way-finding apps will not direct people to go through residential communities. If residents provide positive feedback on the turn restriction program, it will be considered a success and the El Dorado County DOT will determine if it is worth implementing the full program, which would include 21 turn restrictions. This program aims to reduce traffic congestion and quality of life for nearby residents.

MnDOT recently launched the first statewide deployment of Iteris' newly expanded ClearGuide software-as-a-service solution for smart mobility infrastructure management. With this deployment, the ClearMobility Cloud’s standardized data architecture enables ClearGuide to seamlessly provide real-time travel-time data to Intelligent Roadway Information System for the automatic update of variable message signs (VMS) through work zones across Minnesota, as well as overlay VMSs on ClearGuide’s real-time maps. This deployment will help MnDOT improve the performance of its roadways, as well as the safety of the traveling public.

This study evaluates the comprehensiveness of the project development process (PDP) of 40 State Department of Transportations (DOTs). The authors developed a three-step method to assess a PDP’s comprehensiveness, which was informed by reviewing each state’s PDP and related literature, then developed a series of criteria for assessing the comprehensiveness of the PDPs of the State DOTS, which was used to amass and analyze that multi-state information to explore individual PDP variations and comprehensiveness. Data analysis indicated a wide variance from state to state in each criterion’s comprehensiveness with a similar comprehensiveness characterizing the PDPs in 20 states.

This article discusses how North Florida Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) is working with Urban SDK, a company that developed a smart mobility platform that combines data collection practices with performance measurement analytics to better inform decision-makers as they evaluate policy and projects to improve infrastructure. North Florida TPO is utilizing Urban SDK's cloud-based automation and process modernization to facilitate data-driven policy decisions, enabling them to plan better integrated transportation networks. With an automated, real-time Congestion Management Process at its disposal, the organization can ensure investment decisions are made with a clear focus on desired outcomes.

This paper aims to develop a model which will enable design hourly volume (DHV) prediction on rural roads in cases of insufficient data. DHV represents one of the most significant parameters in the procedures of developing and evaluating road designs. DHV values can be accurately and precisely calculated only on the road sections with the implemented automatic traffic counters (ATCs) which constantly monitor the traffic volume but many road sections do not contain ATCs due to implementation costs. The paper discusses a model which is based on the correlation between DHVs and the parameters defining the characteristics of traffic flows, that is, the relationship between the traffic volumes on design working days and non-working days, and annual average daily traffic. The results indicate that the application of the proposed model enables the prediction of DHV values with a significant level of data accuracy and reliability.

The objective of this paper is to examine how perceptions of yielding, comfort, and safety for pedestrian interactions vary among observers, ranging from members of the public to road safety experts. Video clips of pedestrian interactions with motor vehicles and bicycles were collected from 11 crosswalks and shown to three groups of participants (traffic safety experts, an engaged citizen advisory group, and members of the general public) along with questions about yielding, comfort, and risk of injury. Findings from this study can help inform rules and regulations to increase pedestrations safety.

This article summarizes a study by Accenture in conjunction with Frontier Economics which analyzes the impact of micro fulfillment centers in Chicago, London, and Sydney. The economic model Accenture used estimates the impact on outputs such as emissions and traffic congestion, based on inputs including local fulfilment center prevalence, population density, average distance travelled per parcel, delivery vehicle mix and consumer demand projections. The results of the study shows that post and parcel organizations, retailers and delivery companies could reduce harmful emissions and traffic congestion within cities by taking bold steps to transform how last-mile delivery ecosystems operate.

The Colorado State Patrol (CSP) has employed Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, to investigate crashes on the state's highways. Dozens of troopers across the state are becoming certified operators of small UAS, which will significantly speed up data collection for crash scene reconstruction. Drones are helping investigators clear roads much quicker after an accident, and thereby helping to reduce the potential for secondary crashes. In addition, the use of unmanned aerial vehicle technology allows troopers to complete an investigation without subjecting themselves to standing within the roadway or, at the very least, greatly reduce the time they are standing within the roadway placing themselves at risk for a struck-by incident.

This study seeks smart credit-based congestion pricing (CBCP) solutions for improving travelers’ welfare by varying toll levels and locations across the Austin, Texas network. Scenarios evaluated include selecting links with maximum delays by variably tolling bridges and by recognizing congestion externalities across all links. Travel demand models deliver inputs for normalized logsum differences to quantify and compare consumer surplus changes across traveler types, around the region. Results suggest limited tolling locations under four broad times of day can do more harm than good, unless travelers shift out of the PM and AM peak periods or revenues are returned to travelers as credits. When using CBCP across all congested links at congested times of day (with 10% of revenues retained to cover system administrative costs), an average net benefit of $1.61 per licensed driver per weekday is estimated, with almost all travelers benefiting.

Pennsylvania DOT (PennDOT) is asking the public to assist in setting goals to improve the state’s transportation system by reviewing the state’s Transportation Performance Report. The report is prepared by PennDOT; the Transportation Planning Commission, which is PennDOT’s board of directors; and Transportation Advisory Commission, a board that advises the commission. According to PennDOT, they will use this report to help develop their next 12-year program, as well as inform their statewide long-range transportation plan and the freight movement plan. The public has an opportunity to provide feedback on PennDOT's transportation performance, including in safety and traffic congestion.

Iteris, Inc., the global leader in smart mobility infrastructure management, announced that it has been awarded a three-year software-as-a-service (SaaS) contract from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) District 5 for use of its ClearGuide™ solution to improve mobility throughout the central Florida district. With real-time and historical traffic data from HERE Technologies – a global leader in mapping and location platform services – ClearGuide, which has been upgraded to include automated signal performance measures (ATSPM) capabilities, will enable the analysis and visualization of traffic data to improve roadway mobility and safety across Florida’s District 5, one of the fastest-growing areas in the state. Under this agreement, Iteris will provide powerful ClearGuide features, including dynamic maps to support detailed traffic analysis; features to help identify and mitigate congestion; animations to analyze events and optimize response plans; historical trend reports and dynamic congestion charts to track reliability and support planning; and easy, customizable analysis of major Florida roadways.

This paper evaluates how ridesource pick-up and drop-off activities can affect traffic and cause delays. This paper researches two strategies in Seattle, WA, in an area where large numbers of workers commute using ridesourcing services: (i) a change of curb allocation from paid parking to passenger load zone (PLZ), and (ii) a geofencing approach by transportation network companies (TNCs) which directs their drivers and passengers to designated pick-up and drop-off locations on a block. An array of data on street and curb activity along three study blockfaces was collected, using video and sensor technology as well as in-person observations. The results showed that the increased PLZ allocation and geofencing strategy reduced the number of pick-ups/drop-offs in the travel lane, reduced dwell times, increased curb use compliance, and increased TNC passenger satisfaction.

This paper studies the safety performance of offset-T intersections, which represent a special geometric configuration where two three-leg intersections adjoin the major road from opposite directions within a short separation distance. This paper evaluates a series of safety performance functions for rural stop-controlled intersections. The results showed that compared with conventional four-leg intersections, offset-T intersections exhibited 35% more crashes regardless of the offset distance or direction and single motor vehicle crashes occurred more frequently at offset-T intersections, and increased as the offset distance increased. Rear-end crashes also occurred more frequently at offset-T intersections, with left offsets having greater crash occurrence than right offsets. However, angle crashes were 40%–69% lower at offset-T intersections

This study analyzed data from the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the public transit provider in the Austin, Texas area, to evaluate the influence of narrow travel lanes on bus crashes. It included a comprehensive review of literature, interviews with cities and transit agencies, an analysis to determine the correlation between lane width and target bus crashes (sideswipe, fixed-object, and mirror-to-mirror), and an assessment of the impact of a curb or parked car immediately adjacent to the narrow outside lane on bus crashes. The results suggested that more target bus crashes were associated with narrower lane widths (9-10ft width instead of 12ft wdith).

San Bernardino County Transportation Authority (SBCTA) in California has extended its contract for traffic signal synchronisation-related managed services across 16 municipalities in the San Bernardino Valley. The contract is with Iteris, who will continue to perform on-call traffic signal synchronisation and will virtualise agency processes to provide system support and maintenance services for the San Bernardino Valley Coordinated Traffic Signal System corridors. The service will address traffic signal timing improvements, and ongoing traffic device and infrastructure maintenance, both within cities and across jurisdictional boundaries for up to 1,250 signalised intersections on an as-needed basis. This work will continue to decrease travel times and overall traffic congestion, as well as improve air quality and reduce the existing transportation system’s impact on the environment.

This study analyzes the effectiveness of Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs) at the network level by utilizing both vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication technologies. The impacts of CAVs were evaluated based on traffic efficiency (e.g., travel time rate [TTR], speed, and average approach delay, etc.) and safety surrogates (e.g., standard deviation of speed, real-time crash-risk models for freeways and arterials, time exposed time-to-collision). The results showed that the application of CAVs reduced TTR significantly compared with the base condition, and safety evaluation results showed a significant improvement of traffic safety in the freeways and arterials under CAV conditions with different market penetration rates.

This paper studies the relationship between traffic safety and driveway land use for rural roadway segments, including analyzing why the rates of fatal crashes on rural highways are substantially higher than that on urban roads. This study analyzed the safety impacts of various classifications of driveway land utilization on rural two-lane state and county roads in Michigan. The results indicated that commercial driveways possess a stronger effect on crash occurrence than other driveway land use types, including residential and industrial driveways.

To better characterize the impact of safety on traffic, the authors of this paper developed visualizations that examine different aspects of safety. This paper examines small areas (e.g., a corridor or intersection) to gain additional insights about local differences in on-road and off-road safety. This paper examines vehicle incidents and non-vehicle incidents in the Chattanooga Metropolitan Area. Web-based adaptive visualizations are presented at the county scale (Hamilton County, Tennessee), as well as for three regions of interest: downtown Chattanooga, a shopping district in the Shallowford Road area in East Chattanooga, and interstate/highway incidents. This paper has demonstrated a variety of different approaches to visualizing traffic safety data at adaptive scale for the Chattanooga Metropolitan Area. Through studying both abstract and spatial visualizations, it has been possible to obtain insights about incident hot spots and pedestrian safety risks.

This article discusses the growing demand for incorporation of video imagery to keep a check on the high occupancy vehicles (HOV) lanes and how this factor is likely to work in favor of the global vehicle occupancy detection system market over the timeframe of analysis, from 2020 to 2030. Vehicle occupancy detection systems refer to those electronic systems that find use for counting, detection, and identification of passengers inside a vehicle. In addition, this system offers new solutions for ensuring traffic safety and minimizing congestion on roads in urban areas. The global vehicle occupancy detection system market is likely to expand at a double-digit growth rate of ~18.5% over the analysis timeline, from 2020 to 2030.

This study researches three different strategies to determine effective messaging and sign positions for dynamic speed feedback signs (DSFS) when used for speed management at freeway ramp curves. It also assesses the impacts of a DSFS on driver speed selection and braking characteristics while approaching and entering the curve. Based on the findings, the continued use of DSFS as a speed reduction treatment at freeway ramp curves is recommended. Specifically, the sign should be positioned to provide adequate time for drivers to perceive and react to the "Slow Down" message, such that comfortable braking can be accommodated while approaching the curve.

This paper develops a “first responder-specific” training program for the Wyoming Highway Patrol (WHP) on safe interaction with connected vehicle (CV) technology and an in-depth assessment of how these new technologies are perceived by the troopers. The training program contains an E-training module and a hands-on driving simulator training module, which presents concept of various CV warnings and notifications, including forward collision warning, spot weather warnings, work zone warnings, and other travelor information messages. This training program provides impressively realistic real-life-like scenarios for the troopers to practice the CV technology, which will help to reduce the frequency and severity of crashes by providing timely road and traveler information messages to troopers.

WSDOT is asking for comments on its draft of the new State Active Transportation Plan, 2020 and Beyond. The draft plan assesses the needs for accessible pedestrian and bicyclist facilities, highlights safety concerns and provides the first-ever examination of state right of way and its suitability for active transportation. An online open house and a series of webinars will provide opportunities to learn more about the draft plan and to provide comments. Receiving feedback will help WSDOT understand how Washingtonians use active transportation connections to better inform their transportation plans.

COTA and Waycare Technologies are implementing Waycare’s cloud-based connected mobility platform to track real-time traffic situations for 13 Ohio counties on one platform. This is part of the U.S. DOT's Integrated Mobility Innovation Demonstration Research grant awarded to the Central Ohio Transit Authority and 13 partners, including the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, the City of Columbus and Ohio State University. The pilot program is meant to reduce travel times and increase safety for drivers and passengers, and will allow COTA and emergency responders to view ODOT camera feeds through one platform and figure out how and where to respond to accidents while keeping buses on schedule.

This paper studies two hypotheses related to whether it is possible to use just aggregate carriageway data for the evaluation of congestion warning systems (CWS) in large networks. The first hypothesis is that it can be done by comparing large-scale congestion patterns on road stretches with and without CWS and the second hypothesis is that it is possible to compare differences in average (maximum) deceleration distributions into congestion waves between road stretches with and without CWS. Both hypotheses have been tested for similar bottlenecks with similar demand patterns and the results suggest the first hypothesis must be rejected. The results found significant differences between (maximum) deceleration distributions on road stretches with and without CWS that suggest CWS do—as expected—contribute positively to traffic safety. It thus seems to be possible to monitor safety effects using just average speeds.

This paper studies the effectiveness of using express lanes to reduce traffic congestion. The goal of this study was to quantify the mobility benefits of express lanes by comparing the performance of express lanes with that of their adjacent general-purpose lanes, and by assessing the performance of the general-purpose lanes when the express lanes were open versus when the express lanes were closed. The study results showed mobility improvements on both the express lanes and the general-purpose lanes, although the extent of the improvements varied by direction (northbound or southbound) and time of day.

To help encourage travelers to use the subway to reduce traffic congestion, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) plans to charge a toll to drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street. Due to delays at the federal level, the congestion pricing program may not be up and running until 2023. The MTA is planning to use the toll money to improve the public transit systems and hopes congestion pricing can reduce traffic congestion, air pollution, and improve the health of millions of New Yorkers as well.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is planning a Data Collection for Smartphone Travel Incentives Study that will look at how insight into congestion levels affects people’s decisions about when and how to travel. FHWA wants 7,500 volunteers from up to 15 cities to install a smartphone app that would track their trips for two years. The app would engage volunteers with “information tiles” that highlight the advantages of changing travel times or modes to reduce congestion, “action tiles” that present specific actions travelers could take based on their past choices as well as show associated benefits, and even money incentives to reduce traffic congestion. This study will assess travel behaviors to enhance systems and policies that reduce traffic congestion.

This paper studies mixed traffic of conventional and connected/autonomous vehicles (CAVs) on freeways, and capturing driver behaviors both for the merging vehicle on the ramp and the freeway vehicles. The mixed distribution of vehicle headways of the freeway vehicles, developed based on various market penetration rates of the CAVs, was used to randomly generate vehicles through Monte Carlo simulation, and assigned as headways in a driving simulator. It was observed that the subject drivers accepted shorter headway gaps for increased CAV penetration levels.

This paper describes a corridor planning effort using FHWA’s PlanWorks decision-support tool in which selection of performance measures was used to engage community members and to create solutions for a highway corridor that had the backing of citizens and elected officials. This paper demonstrates how the use of performance measures can increase stakeholder involvement and develop transportation improvements that are ready for implementation.

This study analyzes the effectiveness of light emitting diode (LED)-embedded pedestrian crossing signs at pedestrian crossings. A recent study by Texas Department of Transportation focused on examining driver yield rates, a surrogate safety measure, for signs installed across the state. Based on the findings from this study, LED-embedded signs would be a suitable candidate treatment at sites with sidewalks, lower operating speeds and traffic volumes, and narrow lanes.

This paper studies the relationship between individual vehicle speeds, aggregated speeds, and crash frequency on roadways, and specifically examines the relationship between percentile speeds and crashes on a principal arterial in Metropolitan Atlanta. This study used data from the National Performance Metric Research Data Set (NPMRDS), the Georgia Electronic Accident Reporting System, and the Highway Performance Monitoring System. Results suggested that differences in speed percentiles, a measure of speed dispersion, are related to the frequency of crashes. The results of this analysis are easily measured using NPMRDS probe vehicle speeds, and provides a practical performance metric for assessing safety on roadways.

This paper presents a framework, consisting of two Deep Learning (DL) models, to predict traffic speed under normal conditions and during adverse weather, considering prevailing traffic speed, wind speed, traffic volume, road capacity, wind bearing, precipitation intensity, and visibility. This paper studies how DL models and data analysis may significantly elevate the performance of traffic speed prediction to increase safety in adverse weather.

This paper proposes a deep reinforcement learning-based driving strategy for individual vehicles to mitigate oscillations and optimize traffic safety in stop-and-go waves on federal highways. A deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-based driving strategy, which requires information that is directly obtained by in-vehicle sensors, is proposed for system performance optimization. Two typical scenarios were simulated based on simulation software (SUMO): (i) the leading vehicle slowed down according to real trajectory data to produce one oscillation; (ii) the leading vehicle conducted several abrupt decelerations with various degrees of disturbance to produce multiple oscillations. Results showed the proposed strategy outperformed other oscillation mitigating strategies in reducing crash risks.

This study conducts an exploratory analysis to understand the inter-relationships between highway system reliability, freight, and traffic congestion in light of the federal rulemaking that establishes these performance measures. To do this, several traffic and roadway related characteristics of each reporting segment of the National Highway System (NHS) of South Carolina were processed and modeled for the travel time reliability and peak hour excessive delay using generalized linear models with a log-link function. The results from the study indicate that the unreliable Interstate segments contributed to about 87% of the excessive delays on the entire Interstate.

The city of San Francisco has a Vision Zero goal to end traffic violence deaths by 2024. Since they are not currently on track to meet this goal, they are looking for new solutions on how to reduce traffic fatalities. Some of the solutions they are looking at are installing more red light cameras, which are intended to mitigate the roughly 9 percent of injury crashes that result from speeding through stoplights; developing a roadmap-style dashboard to track progress; and collaborating with other partners to improve enforcement, education and outreach on street-safe behavior.

This paper tracks the history of fighting traffic congestion in Los Angeles (LA). The paper describes the ways in which city officials, Southern California Association of Governments, and Metro have tried to solve the congestion solution since 1920. The many solutions proposed for solving traffic congestion include public transit, encouraging people to move out to suburbs, building ever wider freeways, inventing traffic management regulations and technological fixes but these solutions have not helped the growing congestion in LA.

This paper assesses how “aerodynamic damping” can be an active means to mitigate the large amplitude vibrations of cantilevered-arm traffic structures (e.g. structural supports of signs, luminaires, and traffic signals) caused by a windy weather environment. The proposed method uses the inherent characteristics of the traffic light (specific dimension ratios) to ensure that the aerodynamic damping is maximized during the gust events. The tests that were conducted in the Wind Simulation and Testing (WiST) Laboratory have shown that the proposed approach will help improve the performance of traffic signal structures.

This paper assesses the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)'s use of continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) as the preferred pavement type for high-volume truck corridors across the state. This project included a review of national CRCP practice, documentation of Caltrans’ statewide practice, and condition assessment of select CRCP projects statewide. For the most part, Caltrans’ CRCP practice is similar to national guidance and other state highway agency practice but a condition assessment of 14 CRCP projects revealed a wide range of performance with various degrees of distresses (i.e., transverse, cluster, and Y-cracking, and punchouts). Results from this study will be used to provide recommendations to advance Caltrans’ CRCP practice.

This paper explores the relationship between freight-haul growth and large truck-related crashes. In this study, the project team applied taxicab correspondence analysis (TCA), a data-mining method known for dimension reduction, to large truck fatal crash data to investigate the complex interaction between multiple factors under a two-dimensional map. The study found five clusters of attributes that show patterns of association between different crash attributes such as two-lane undivided roadways, intersection types, posted speed limit, crash types, number of vehicles, driver impairment, and weather.

This study explores the adoption of road automatic (or autonomous) delivery robots (RADRs) on freight efficiency and travel. This paper covers an analysis of the characteristics and regulation of RADRs in the U.S. and a study of the relative travel, time, and cost efficiencies that RADRs can bring about when compared to traditional van deliveries. The results show that RADRs can provide substantial cost savings in many scenarios, but at the expense of substantially higher vehicle miles per customer served.

This study aims to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of truck-mounted attenuator (TMA) use by determining how and when they should be deployed as well as the best supporting measures. The paper researches the effects of three different traffic management plans (TMPs) on driver behavior. Three TMPs at night time highway work zones were examined: (1) two tail vehicles in the advance warning area, (2) three tail vehicles in the advance warning area, and (3) addition of a marked police car with flashing lights in the buffer area downstream of the TMA. Analysis showed a positive effect of police presence in the buffer area on driver behavior.

This paper presents an automated traffic safety diagnostics solution named “Automated Roadway Conflict Identification System” (ARCIS) that uses deep learning techniques to process traffic videos collected by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is expected that the proposed detection and tracking method with UAVs could help diagnose road safety problems efficiently and appropriate countermeasures could then be proposed.

The city of Pheonix, Arizona has installed new traffic light technology at intersections in central Pheonix as part of a pilot program within the city to improve traffic flow and reduce vehicle and pedestrian delays based on demand. The smart traffic light technology, which was created by California-based NoTraffic, autonomously operates traffic light grids to allow smooth and efficient traffic flow. The technology uses software identification that can distinguish between different modes of transportation and can reduce the time vehicles and pedestrians sit waiting at traffic lights. It can also enable different services, including emergency vehicle preemption, transit signal priority, and pedestrian prioritization.

NH DOT displays a department scorecard that summarizes the 2011 Actual, 2012 Expected, 2015 Projection and Goal, and 2017 Projection and Goal data for each of its thirty performance summaries. Each performance summary has a strategic goal, strategic objective, performance measure, and purpose section to show why it is important. The website compares information from several years and performance areas on the same page to facilitate analysis.

This paper demonstrates the advanced capabilities of FHWA's Work Zone Driver Model version 2.0 (v2.0) in predicting work zone impacts and traffic conditions along freeways. The paper shows results from comparison tests to the Version 1 case study from 2017, including testing v2.0's performance along the same interstate work zone in Springfield, MA.

The city of San Francisco has a Vision Zero goal to end traffic violence deaths by 2024. It believes automated speed enforcement (speed cameras) may be the best way to help do this, but it is currently illegal in California. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), automated speed enforcement cameras have helped reduce crashes and speeds in cities around the country where they are used. The Mayor is calling for the legalization of this tool, since speed is one of the main factors in whether a collision results in severe injury or death.

Virginia DOT's website links to a dashboard that shows performance, safety, condition, and finance highway statistics and VDOT management, citizen survey results, and projects statistics. This information is set up in a visually appealing way, with each category's statistic shown in a colorful odometer. From first glance, the user sees an overview of all the statistics and can click into each category to learn more.

This paper studies travel time reliability on the national highway system (NHS) and the factors influencing it, specifically since the transportation performance management rules were made in 2017. This study analyzes the characterstics of the unreliable segments of the NHS in 13 south eastern states. This analysis provides context for how highway infrastructure and traffic patterns affect reliability.

The Oklahoma DOT's website links to an interactive ArcGIS map and data portal that shows the state's progress toward meeting its performance targets. The portal includes a map of the state overlaid with interactive performance data.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)'s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee will begin new research on the safety operations of small commercial trucks and vans that appear to be making more deliveries for online retailers. According to FMCSA, there is an apparent gap in safety oversight of the small vehicles and their drivers: the agency has no regulatory authority to oversee commercial vehicles that weigh between 6,001 and 10,000 pounds. The Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee will conduct a fatality data analysis for these small vehicles in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and obtain injury and property damage information from NHTSA's Crash Report Sampling System, among other actions, to gain a more thorough understanding of their place in the country's transportation landscape.

The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), an MPO, displays a chart and line graph on its website that demonstrate the region's progress toward its safety performance targets. NOACA tracks safety performance using the five federal safety measures: fatalities, serious injuries, rate of fatalities, rate of serious injuries, and non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries. Its target for each safety measure is a 1% annual reduction to the rolling 5-year averages for the previous calendar year.

Alaska DOT uses bar charts and dial graphics to visually demonstrate the state's progress toward its performance targets. The state displays eleven performance targets related to safety and infrastructure on its website.

This article examines the biases in big data about transportation safety and ways to mitigate them. It demonstrates how maintaining the central role of transportation experts and the public in determining the proper goals and metrics to evaluate transportation safety can lead to improved population representation in the data. The study relies on semi-strutured interviews with big data experts to make its findings.

This paper discusses the impacts of automated and cooperative systems in mixed traffic containing conventional, Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), and Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) vehicles. The paper describes a study conducted with a platoon of five vehicles with different vehicle type combinations in various scenarios The study found that adopting the CACC system in a five-vehicle platoon reduces driving volatility, the risk of rear-end collisions, and fuel consumption compared with the ACC system and manually-driven vehicles in some scenarios. On the other hand, results of the a merging traffic scenario show that while the cooperative merging system slightly reduces the driving volatility, the fuel consumption and emissions can increase because of sharper accelerations of CACC vehicles compared with manually-driven vehicles.

The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) provides an interactive dahsboard on its website that displays the MPO's progress toward several performance targets. Users can select a specific performance measure, time period, and location and view how the MPO's performance compares to its target. The dashboard uses line graphs to illustrate its performance.

This guide, prepared under the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 20-83(03)A, “Long-Range Strategic Issues Affecting Preservation, Maintenance, and Renewal of Highway Infrastructure,” tries to generate interest among leaders of transportation agencies in fostering emerging and innovative practices related to the preservation, maintenance, and renewal (PMR) of highways. The guide highlights 16 noteworthy emerging highway PMR practices for longterm (30-50 years) stewardship of highways that State and local departments of transportation (DOTs) may find helpful in meeting their transportation performance management targets.

This article explores the viability of cargo cycles in urban areas as an alternative to deliveries made by vans and trucks. Since deliveries by vans and trucks in cities often lead to congestion and van and truck drivers face difficulty parking in urban areas, cargo cycles could be a useful alternative. The researchers found that under certain conditions, cargo cycles can have significant benefits.

The San Francisco Metropolitan Planning Commission (MTC) created a public-facing dashboard, called Vital Signs, that tracks the region's progress toward targets related to safety, infrastructure condition, system reliability, freight movement and economic vitality, congestion reduction, and environmental sustainability. The dahsboard uses graphs, maps, and other visual aids to display information about the performance measures. Users can also download the public data MTC used to do their own own analysis.

The Maricopa Association of Governments, a metropolitan planning organization located in Phoenix, AZ, displays the status of the roads in its jurisdiction according to a number of transportation performance measures, including travel time, congestion, travel speed, and delay. The map is interactive and can display data from 2010 to 2018 down to the road segment level.

The March 31, 2020 edition of Wisconsin DOT (WSDOT)'s quarterly performance report continues to follow the agency’s progress with its strategic plan by focusing on inclusion, practical solutions and workforce development. This performance report • Illustrates how the agency is using online tools to communicate COVID-19 multimodal transportation trends with communities throughout Washington • Shows how WSDOT is investigating innovative, cost-effective options to replace its aging permit program for oversize and overweight vehicles • Demonstrates how WSDOT's Sustainability in Prisons Project removes barriers for individuals interested in opportunities related to wetland mitigation and other environmental fields Performance measure highlights from this report include: • During the COVID-19 pandemic, vehicle volumes on state highways dropped 63% on March 28 and 29 compared to corresponding days in 2019 • WSDOT responded to 13,168 incidents during the quarter, providing about $22.2 million in economic benefit • Washington State Ferries (WSF) completed 38,632 (99.3%) of its 38,921 regularly-scheduled trips in the third quarter of FY2020 • Amtrak Cascades revenue increased by 6.3%, from $31.3 million in 2018 to $33.2 million in 2019 • WSDOT's Commercial Vehicle Services helped the trucking industry avoid approximately 153,000 travel hours and $19 million in operating costs in 2019 • WSDOT added six new wetland and stream mitigation sites on eight acres in 2019, bringing the total to 306 sites on 1,631 acres • WSDOT completed 18 traffic noise studies between April 2018 and March 2020

The Delaware DOT performance dashboard uses colorful bar graphs to display department performance over time on several measures, including on-time performance (transit), average wait time (vehicles), fatalities, transit accidents, bridge and pavement condition, and customer satisfaction.

This document represents FHWA's web-based Performance Management Form (PMF), which will be open for use September 1, 2020. It includes all the required contents for the 2020 Mid Performance Period (MPP) Progress Report described in 23 CFR 490.107, and illustrates the input options and general functionality of the web-based form. The PMF is a component of the Policy Information Data Portal (PIDP), which is an application of the FHWA User Profile and Access Control System (UPACS).

Like other major U.S. cities, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has tried a variety of initiatives to alleviate the strain commercial vehicle activity places on the overall transportation system. These include metering or otherwise pricing loading zones and parking, expanding the size and increasing the number of loading zones, increasing the number of metered parking spaces, extending loading and metering time periods, simplifying and standardizing truck parking rules, and encouraging nighttime or off-peak goods delivery. This paper describes the efforts and results of DDOT's actions to strategically implement these approaches to commercial loading zones, and provides lessons learned along with next steps expected by DDOT.

The Washington State DOT uses its performance dashboard to display its performance against 15 measures. The measures are organized according to three categories: Inclusion, Practical Solutions, and Workforce Development. The state uses small scorecards on the webpage to provide a snapshot of its performance on each measure. The scorecards use one of seven icons to represent the state's progress, give a one-sentence description of the measure, and show the state's progress in terms of a percentage.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released preliminary estimates for the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) 2019 data on highway crashes. The data show a decline of 1.2% in the number of fatalities, from 36,560 to 36,120. This continues a downward trend from the past two years.

On September 15–18, 2019, more than 350 professional transportation planners, consultants, industry experts, and academic researchers, from 42 states and three countries, participated in the Conference on Performance and Data in Transportation Decision Making, in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference had four themes: multimodal planning; performance and data; programming and investment prioritization; and communications and stakeholder engagement. This report summarizes the proceedings of the conference.

The Michigan DOT uses graphs and charts to visually communicate the state's progress related to six performance areas (pavement, bridge, traffic, safety, maintenance, and finance). Users can also customize the information they see displayed by filtering data according to county, town, and period.

The Missouri DOT updates its performance dashboard each quarter to display its performance on seven measures. The DOT shows its success meeting the targets associated with each of the measures by displaying a green check mark, yellow line, or red X next to the performance measure.

This article examines the effects of truck platooning on steel girder bridges in the United States (US). A multi-dimensional parametric study was conducted, which evaluated a variety of bridge span configurations and span lengths. Load ratings (using three different methodologies) were calculated for each of these structures for a range of truck platoons (both the number of trucks within a platoon and spacing between trucks). The study was able to identify the potentially inadequate existing bridges based on the original design methodology, configuration, and span length. This information is intended to be valuable to bridge owners as an initial screening process along corridors that will be subjected to regular truck platoon traffic.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TX DOT) has included Tableau-based graphs on its performance dashboard that allow the public to interact with the state's transportation performance data. The graphs show Texas's safety, asset management, project delivery, congestion and reliability, vehicle miles traveled, and annual delay per person. The dashboard also includes a description of the performance measure, the overall trend of the data related to each measure, and explanations of why the performance measure is important.

Idaho Transportation Department recognized early on the value of using performance measures for asset management balanced by available funding and predicting future asset condition. The state created an online dashboard to make information about transportation performance more accessible to the public.

This research explores the pseudo-causal impact of the presence of bus routes and bus traffic on observed crash frequencies by developing safety performance functions (SPFs) that include the presence of a bus route and estimated weekly bus traffic as input variables. The SPFs were developed using the propensity score–potential outcomes (PS-PO) framework to reduce unobserved biases that might exist between segments that have and do not have bus routes. The results suggest that PS-PO reduced standardized biases significantly, allowing stronger causal inferences to be obtained. The results revealed that the presence of a bus route was associated with a 27% increase in expected crash frequency after controlling for other infrastructure-related variables.

This paper introduces a comprehensive approach that considers an entire freeway corridor as a system consisting of successive independent bottlenecks with different characteristics, and can be used to estimate the optimum sustainable volume. The methodology is based on the sustained flow index, which is defined as the product of traffic volume and the probability of survival at this volume. Optimum volumes of two real-world corridors are estimated based on the new derivations. The empirical results reveal that the optimum volume and the capacity of an entire corridor is less than those of its most restrictive bottleneck.

This article evaluates the predicted air quality impacts of the 2016 revision (rollback) of a Clean Truck Program at the Port of New York & New Jersey. Air pollution emissions from marine port truck activity can pose significant health risks to communities living near ports. One approach to reducing these risks is requiring the use of low-emission trucks at port facilities. This analysis uses the best publicly available information to estimate emissions, concentrations, and health risks at a fine spatial scale across eight counties in New Jersey in 2017 and 2018. The examination of pollution and health outcomes of clean truck programs can inform the design and implementation of pollution reduction plans for other ports, some of which are considering implementing programs similar to the Clean Truck Program.

This report presents work completed for NCHRP 25-25 Task 115: Estimates of Emissions Reductions from Future Fleet Changes for Use in Air Quality Models. The goal of this work was to quantify emission changes of criteria pollutants, mobile source air toxics, and greenhouse gases as a result of varying future battery electric vehicle (BEV) and fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) adoption rates in the U.S. This work aimed to provide state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations with technical insights, while identifying emission reduction strategies and their relative effectiveness that could inform policy decisions to advance penetration of zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) into the light-duty vehicle fleet.

This paper develops and evaluates a methodology to assess the impacts of incident-responsive signal control. This study demonstrates the utilization of a multi-resolution and multi-scenario modeling approach to support the evaluation and design of incident management strategies and the associated incident responsive signal control. Results of the case study indicate that implementation of incident responsive signal control strategies provided a reduction in total delay of through movement in the incident direction of 18.5% and 24.5% for 30-min and 45-min incidents, respectively.

Understanding how the type and location of intersections affect crashes is important to reduce these crashes effectively. This paper discusses the development of regional safety performance functions (SPFs) based on a new context classification system developed by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). This classification system (which has not previously been used) categorizes intersections into eight different categories based on land use and other parameters, allowing SPFs to be developed for up to 32 different types of intersections. 

This study develops four different safety performance functions to evaluate the effect of pavement roughness, measured by the International Roughness Index (IRI), on the number of crashes using the interstate highway data from five U.S. states representing different geographical and weather regions: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, and Michigan. The modeling results identify many significant variables including traffic volume and proportion of trucks, through lane count, shoulder type, median width, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane operation and HOV lane count, speed limit, area type along with IRI-related factors. The results indicate that increased IRI (deterioration of pavement quality) contributes to large numbers of total crashes.

This study discusses the operational and safety effects of emergency shoulder use (ESU). The operational effects of ESU were studied and compared with other alternatives including one-way operation (contraflow) and both left and right shoulder use. The study refers to when ESU was implemented in Florida in September 2017 to aid in evacuation before Hurricane Irma made landfall.

Relatively little research has studied the influence of commercial vehicle parking deficiency on crash frequency involving parked commercial vehicles along the ramps. This study examined 179 police-reported illegally parked commercial vehicle-involved crashes on 1,221 rural and urban ramps in the Tennessee. Several ramp characteristics were significantly associated with an increase in the occurrence of an illegally-parked commercial vehicle-involved crash and include the presence of a parking facility on exit, ramps with illegally parked CMVs, diamond-shaped ramp configurations, larger ramp shoulder widths, and exit ramps. This study illustrates the impact of the CMV parking shortage on the safety of ramps and highlights the need for more parking facilities.

This study developed a Multivariate Poisson-Lognormal model for the city of Edmonton, Alberta to quantify the correlation between collisions and crime and to determine whether automated enforcement programs can also reduce crime within a neighborhood. The results of this study found a high correlation between collisions and crime, which indicates that collision hotspots were also likely to be crime hotspots. The results of this paper also showed that increased enforcement presence resulted in reductions not only in collisions but also in crime.

In the state of Arizona, the proportion of fatal and severe injury crashes on several areas of tribal land are 4.0% higher compared with statewide statistics. This study presents an analysis of factors affecting injury severity in crashes occurring within five tribal reservations in the state of Arizona: The Hopi, Navajo, White Mountain Apache, San Carlos Apache, and Tohono O’odham. Several person-, vehicle-, roadway-, and environmental-related variables were found to impact injury severity. For instance, alcohol and safety device usage were significantly associated with severity outcomes. The results of this study have the potential to aid transportation agencies in effectively planning strategies to reduce traffic crash injuries and fatalities on tribal lands.

Work zones are an important cause of highway safety incidents. This study compares two methods - one based on a binary mixed logit model, and one based on machine learning (support vector machines) - for predicting the predicting work zone safety hazards. Using highway safety data from Florida, the authors found that the machine learning model had a higher prediction accuracy than the binary mixed model. They also identified several roadway and environmental conditions that worsened crash severity and frequency at work zones.

Many researchers and transportation agencies have studied the potential benefits of autonomous vehicles' ability to communicate with each other to improve safety, fuel efficiency, and travel time. However, researchers from Cornell recently studied the benefits of smart intersections, in which traffic control devices communicate with autonomous vehicles individually and as platoons. The researchers' model shows that dynamically adjusted green and red light cycles can be dynamically adjusted to allow an optimal number and size of platoons of cars to pass, potentially increasing vehicle capacity on city streets by up to 138% and would hav

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are an important emerging technology in the field of last-mile freight deliveries. As they are electric vehicles, many assume they provide a reduction in greenhouse and other emissions compared to conventional gas or diesel powered delivery trucks. The author develops a model to simulate the energy demand of various last-mile delivery solutions, including drones, diesel trucks, and electric trucks. The results of the model indicate that drones consume a similar amount of energy as diesel trucks, and therefore do not provide a benefit to air quality. Electric trucks require the least amount of energy and produce the least amount of emissions, although drones may consume the least amount of energy in rural contexts with large distances and low customer density.

There has been an increasing interest in active transportation because of its many health, environmental, and economical benefits. However, active commuters are subjected to an elevated level of severe crash risk, which can be a deterrent to many road users to shift to active transportation. Therefore, there is a need for developing systematic approaches to improve the safety of active commuters. This paper presents a new approach for identifying, diagnosing, and remedying active transportation safety issues.

Truck platooning attracts considerable attention thanks to the promising fuel consumption benefits and business model. Nevertheless, concerns over the influence of long truck platoons on other traffic are raised by road operators. It is intriguing to understand under what conditions truck platooning will influence other traffic and what are the magnitudes of the influence. To this end, this paper reports a simulation study on examining the effects of truck platooning on freeway operations near an on-ramp. Systematic experiments were conducted with varying demand, market penetration rates (MPRs), intra-platooning gap, and platoon size.

Automated enforcement programs have been an important tool for improving traffic safety. Previous work provides strong evidence supporting the impact that these programs have on increasing safety either on a micro-level (e.g., road segments), or at a macro-level (e.g., neighborhood, city). In both cases, there are many variables that can influence and affect the safety impacts of the enforcement program. Additionally, there is a lack of understanding of how specific deployment parameters (e.g., how often to visit an enforcement site) can influence the overall safety on a macro-level (e.g., traffic analysis zone). The objective of this study is to quantify the impact that automated enforcement has on collisions on a macro-level as well as to develop models that would provide enforcement authorities with an empirical tool to help plan their deployment strategy.

Waze has added a new feature to its popular navigation app that allows users to report and be notified of real-time winter road conditions, including snow and icy and unplowed streets. The feature is touted as a tool to help commuters safely navigate winter’s hazardous conditions. It also is expected to aid local governments in improving their storm response. Transportation agencies across the United States will have access to reports from Wazers and be able to use the data to identify unplowed roads and more quickly and efficiently deploy crews to clear snow.

The State of Wyoming experiences a high percentage of truck traffic along all its highways, especially Interstate 80 (I-80). The increased interactions between trucks and other vehicles have raised many operational and safety concerns. This paper presents a safety analysis and a development of safety performance functions (SPFs) along I-80, with a focus on truck crashes.

Much of the earlier work on rural safety focused on state-maintained roadways and little is known about the safety performance of low-volume county-maintained roads. This study involved the estimation of safety performance for rural county roadways (paved and gravel). This was accomplished through the development of safety performance functions (SPFs) to estimate the number of annual crashes at a given highway segment, crash modification factors to determine the impacts associated with various roadway and geometric characteristics, and severity distribution functions (SDFs) to predict the crash severity.

This paper presents a framework for establishing targets for national system performance measures for reliability. The paper outlines step-by-step procedures followed using the National Performance Management Research Data Set and provides a possible range of estimates for future years’ targets for South Carolina highways.

Ford and Microsoft have launched a research project aimed at reducing congestion by using quantum computing to quickly consider all the various route requests from drivers and optimize route suggestions. Initial trials in metropolitan Seattle have resulted in a 73 percent improvement in total congestion. Applying the methods used by the companies in Seattle more widely could lead to smoother flows of traffic, more efficient commutes, and reduced pollution.

The US Transportation Department (DOT) is looking to partner with state, local, and tribal governments on developing data analysis tools to improve roadway safety. In a Notice of Funding Opportunity published November 14, USDOT asked government agencies and related organizations, such as metropolitan planning organizations, to apply for grants to “develop, refine and implement safety tools that address a specific roadway safety problem.” Up to $3 million in funds are available through the program, and DOT expects each grantee to receive $250,000 to $300,000.

The NCHRP 20-24 Task 124 Performance Management Reporting Peer Exchange was held on October 16-17, 2018 in Washington D.C. Representatives from 18 state DOTS, FHWA, AASHTO, and TRB attended. Participants were subject matter experts in performance management, pavement management, and communications. The goal of the Peer Exchange was to help DOTs develop a toolkit and strategies for communicating the difference between state and Federal pavement performance in a consistent narrative. While this Peer Exchange focused on pavement performance, the process can be used as a framework to develop strategies to help states communicate other performance measures.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recently urged all 50 states to enact laws that would require cyclists to wear helmets. The NTSB argued that helmet laws will help stem the increasing number of bicyclist fatalities occuring on U.S. roads. However, bicycle advocates are disappointed with the helmet component of NTSB's announcement. They contend that the proper way increase cyclist safety is to improve roadway infrastructure for bicyclists, which, along with lower speeds, are the other cpmponents of the NTSB recommendation.

The City of London recently released a report on the city's air pollution levels. It states that since the city instituted a "toxicity charge" in the city center in February 2017, nitrogen dioxide pollution has fallen 36 percent. The toxicity charge applies to vehicles with higher emissions levels. The city built on its toxicity charge by implementing an Ultra Low Emissions Zone in April 2019, where cars are required to meet specific emissions standards or pay a daily fee. Since implementation, there have been 13,500 fewers cars entering the zone each day.

When incidents occur on the roadway, normal traffic flows are disrupted. Designing accurate traffic flow models that reflect conditions shortly after accidents is very challenging for traffic engineers. They often have to adapt to unforeseen scenarios in real time. A team of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab computer scientists is working with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to use high performance computing and machine learning to help improve Caltrans’ real-time decision making when incidents occur by executing coordinated multijurisdictional traffic incident response plans to limit the negative impacts of these events. The first iteration of the system they develop will be deployed in the cities of Arcadia, Duarte, Monrovia, and Pasadena in 2020, with plans for future deployments around the California in the future.

On October 3, New York City began restricting the number of vehicles that could travel on Manhattan's busy 14th Street between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The change was originally planned as a mitigation measure to allow for the high number of shuttle buses that would travel down 14th Street to replace L train service while the train line was under construction. A recent change in the construction plan allowed the L train to remain operational, but the plan to restrict traffic on 14th Street remained in effect. In the first two weeks since the restriction went into effect, the on-time performance of the buses on the 14th Street bus route has increased 16 percent, trip times have decreased from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and ridership has increased 18 percent. Metropolitan Transit Authority officials are considering other streets where similar restrictions could reduce congestion for buses.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released data on October 25, 2019 about the rate of traffic fatalities on U.S. roads in 2018. The data shows that the overall number of people killed on U.S. roadways in 2018 decreased 2.4 percent from 2017, while the number of pedestrians filled increased 3.4 percent and the number of bicyclists killed increased 6.3 percent. Federal officials say that the increases were concentrated in metropolitan areas. Traffic safety advocates and experts say that the increase in pedestrian and bicyclist deaths is particularly troubling because the share of people walking and biking to work in urban areas continues to increase.

A study by TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit, examines road and bridge conditions, congestion, economic development, highway safety, and transportation funding in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana area and across the State of Louisiana. The report found that Baton Rouge residents spend about $730 per year on vehicle repairs resulting from driving on poor or mediocre roads. Randy Cangelosi, chair of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, argued that the report demonstrated the importance of Louisiana instituting a gas tax to fund road improvements. He noted that the longer repairs are delayed, the more expensive they will be.

The City of Cupertino has partnered with ride hailing app Via to provide on-demand public transportation within the city's boundaries. The partnership will allow riders to order a shared ride through the app. The app will direct them to a convenient location to join a ride. City officials envision the partnership, which will begin operations on October 29th, will provide more affordable, convenient, comfortable, and fast connections to and from traditional public transportation, and decrease roadway congestion and vehicle emissions.

The City of Denver is planning to reduce the number of solo car trips by 50 percent and increase the number of commuters biking, walking, or taking public transit by 15 percent. One strategy the city intends to use to achieve this is to leverage infrastructure being built around the city by requiring that developers offer a suite of Transportation Demand Management (TDM) options to new residents. These options could include transit pass discounts, car-share and bikeshare membership discounts, and bicycle parking. This would help reduce roadway congestion and decrease harmful vehicle emissions by incentivizing people to avoid single person car trips.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation received an $8.4 million grant last week from the U.S. Department of Transportation to test the safe integration of automated driving systems into work zones. Since many work zone cues are designed for human drivers, automated vehicles do not perform well in them. The grant will be used to study whether improved connectivity, enhanced visibility, and high definition mapping will help AVs travel safely among work zones.

To relieve the Boston area's serious car congestion problem, Massachuestts Governor Charlie Baker has proposed building new dedicated lanes on the state's major highways that would be reserved for paying customers. If the plan is adopted, the new highway lanes will be the first added toll lanes since the Massachusetts Pike was constructed in 1957. it

INRIX, a mobility analytics and car connectivity firm, recently released a study that analyzed data from connected devices to rank the top American, British, and German cities where micromobility services could reduce the most vehicle trips. The study found that, in the U.S., approximately 50% of vehicle trips are less than three miles, which an electric scooter or bicycle could easily replace. In the City of Boston, Massachusetts, the study found that 49% of all car trips are less than three miles long and 21% are under one mile.

School districts in Northern Virginia, central Virginia, and Hampton Roads are being offered the opportunity to apply to partner with Dominion Energy to obtain 50 electric school buses by the end of 2020. The program would be the largest fleet of its kind in the U.S. Dominion Energy plans to expand the program to 1,000 electric school buses by 2025. The electric school buses will reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality, and will save school districts money in gas and bus maintenance costs.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that air pollution, particularly ozone, which is increasing with climate change, makes emphysema progress faster. The study found that living in a city with high ozone levels for a decade is similar to smoking a pack of cigarettes every day for three decades. Ozone is formed when sunlight reacts with chemicals emitted from cars and other sources of pollution. The study is the first to look at the longterm effects of air pollution on lung health in adults.

Uber and Lyft released a joint analysis showing that their vehicles are responsible for significant portions of vehicle miles traveled in six major metropolitan areas, leading to increases in congestion. The analysis was conducted by transportation consultancy Fehr & Peers. It examines the impact of Uber and Lyft on Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) released a report on road congestion in the state along with recommendations for making road and transit more accessible, reliable, and predictable while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The report identifies the five more severe areas of weekday congestion as well as other corridors with segments that are congested for more than 10 hours per day.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced $206 million will be devoted to freight-related projects across the state. The funding will support the 1,200 highway miles the state has designated as part of the National Highway Freight Network. The projects bolstered by this funding will address infrastructure and operational improvements in order to reduce congestion, improve reliability and productivity, and decrease the cost of freight movement.

In cooperation with local transportation and business community partners, Placer County, California, has recently supported a series of public transit pilot projects and alternative transportation options aimed at reducing congestion and getting people out of their cars by encouraging alternative modes of transportation, such as local transit and biking. Some of the pilot projects have already demonstrated success in reducing on-road congestion.

Austin, TX is working to create an incentive pilot program to increase transit ridership. The pilot comes at the request of the city council, which in December passed a resolution declaring the city had to find creative ways to increase transit ridership to combat increases in traffic congestion and the cost of car ownership.

The Washington State Department of Transportation has awarded 16 public transit agencies $10 million for 420 vanpool fleet vehicles, including 10 vehicles largely powered by electricity. These new vehicles will bring the total number of hybrid-electric powered vehicles to 28. The funding announcement coincides with Governor Jay Inslee’s proclamation of declaring July as Vanpool Month. These grants will help people in the state by expanding or sustaining transportation services for commuters in urban and rural areas while also providing environmentally-sustainable solutions for the state’s transportation system.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (DOT) is installing 29 traffic cameras around Asheville to study traffic patterns and adjust traffic signals to improve traffic flow.

A new study of Philadelphia's traffic congestion revealed that commuters spend 9.7 million hours a year sitting in traffic, either in private vehicles or on buses. This costs $152 million a year in time value and transportation costs, the equivalent of a $260 tax for every person in the city. The congestion problem has led the city, SEPTA, and the Philadelphia Parking Authority to join together to try to find solutions. The report is the first effort to quantify the city's traffic.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) announced nine winners of the 2019 Rail Safety & Security Excellence Awards at the annual APTA Rail Conference in Toronto, ON, Canada on June 25. The APTA Rail Safety & Security Excellence Awards recognize public transportation organizations for their innovative and proactive safety and security programs. It also provides value to the industry by benchmarking successful programs so other public transit systems can adopt them and derive similar benefits.

This paper describes a framework for implementing livability into transportation asset management practices. The framework focuses on improving the quality of bikeway networks as an important factor to enhance livability.

The U.S. Department of Transportation granted Washington State University $7.5 million to lead a National university transportation center focused on improving the durability and extending the lifespan of the Nation's transportation infrastructure. The new center is the only one in the U.S. focused on the state of repair in infrastructure.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is working to reduce air pollution levels in El Paso, which qualifies as a "non-attainment" area under Environmental Protection Act standards. TxDOT is promoting several driving behavior changes that can help reduce pollution, including keeping tires full and vehicles well-maintained, not topping off the gas tank, braking slowly and obeying speed limits, and avoiding idling whenever possible.

A recent report from the American Lung Association ranks Houston the ninth worst U.S. metro area for ozone pollution and the 17th worst in the broad category of long-term particle pollution. However, according to a newly-published study in the journal Atmospheric Environment, replacing at least 35 percent of Houston's gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks with electric vehicles by 2040 could improve air quality by 50 percent. Additionally, if electric vehicles replaced 75 percent of traditional cars and trucks by 2040, air quality could improve by 75 percent, according to the study.

The Charleston Regional Development Alliance (CRDA) launched an initiative called Reboot the Commute that consists of traffic mitigation programs ranging from vanpools to bus rapid transit. The initiative intends to help ease congestion in Charleston in order to preserve quality of life while also attracting a strong knowledge-based workforce. Reboot the Commute was devised by roughly the top 20 employers in the region, which make up about 10 percent of the workforce. Studies showed 81 percent of the region’s workforce commutes alone by car, and 61 percent of these commuters are traveling during peak rush hour. This leaves a lot of room for new ideas to help reduce commuting time in Charleston.

A comprehensive new study published in the Journal of Transportation and Health found that protected bike lanes make cyclists as well as drivers more safe. Researchers at the University of Colorado, Denver and the University of New Mexico analyzed 13 years of crash and street design data from 12 large U.S. cities to understand what makes some streets more dangerous than others. Where cycle tracks were most abundant on a citywide basis, fatal crash rates dropped by 44 percent compared to the average city, and injury rates were halved.

The National Safety Council (NSC) recognized 16 Texas employers for their driver safety accomplishments. NSC gave out the Texas Employer Traffic Safety Awards at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute Traffic Safety Conference in San Antonio to employers that successfully modified their employees’ risky driving behaviors. Some of the accomplishments by this year's award recipients include the City of Austin Public Works Department's training program that trained all drivers in defensive driving methods, resulting in a 50% reduction in preventable collisions, and Star Shuttle & Charter’s safety training and safety challenges that resulted in an 80% reduction in preventable crashes during the first quarter of 2018 compared to the same time in 2017.

This report provides guidance to transportation agencies to help improve their use of data for performance management. The guidance is organized around six data life-cycle stages and includes a discussion of what is involved in implementing each step and some of the critical choices to be made, a synthesis of key points in the form of “Dos and Don’ts,” checklists that can be used to assess agency capabilities and identify opportunities for improvement, and illustrative examples.

The Pioneer Institute in Boston is focusing its 2019 Better Government Competition on collecting ideas for easing Boston's road congestion. Boston is the seventh most congested city in the U.S. The Pioneer Institute is looking for ways to help commuters get where they need to be quickly. The competition will award $10,000 to the winning entry and four $1,000 prizes to runners-up.

A study published in the journal Science Advances demonstrated that ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft contributed to more than half of the increase in congestion in San Francisco between 2010 (before ride-sharing went mainstream) and 2016. The study is a joint effort of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and the University of Kentucky. San Franciscans spent 62 percent more time sitting in traffic in 2016 than in 2010.

This paper recommends a simple practical approach for local governments to develop performance prediction models in the absence of reliable pavement age data. It also synthesizes best practices for data pre-processing and validation of the model prediction capability. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) kicked spring off with the relaunch of a $5.6 million public safety campaign aimed at eliminating traffic deaths at railroad crossings. The campaign reminds car drivers that they have to yield to trains when crossing railroad tracks because trains take far longer to stop.

A Northwestern University study calculated the differences in air pollution created by battery-powered electric vehicles versus internal combustion engines. The researchers discovered that even when their electricity is generated from combustion sources, electric vehicles have a net positive impact on air quality and climate change.

This paper reviews treatment of performance measures in state freight plans (SFPs) mandated under the FAST Act. This responds to the growing interest in freight performance measurement in government and industry, including concern for assuring supply chain performance to support the economy. A list of good practices is offered, including selecting measures that are easily understood by key stakeholders, supported by readily available data, responsive to state needs and conditions, covering the most important modes in the state, timely, and appropriately granular to support specific choices.

The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced the two finalists for the third and final stage of the Solving for Safety Visualization Challenge, which was launched in June last year to develop analytical visualization tools to gain insights or inform decisions to improve safety by finding solutions that could reduce serious crashes on the Nation’s road and rail systems. The finalist teams are from Ford Motor Company and the University of Central Florida.

A team of air quality and health researchers led by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) have created the first county-by-county interactive heat map and city-by-city table detailing the distribution of childhood asthma due to traffic-related air pollution across the United States. The effort found that asthma cases attributable to traffic-related air pollution dramatically decreased over between 2000 and 2010.

This report synthesizes the results of a survey administered to state departments of transportation (DOTs) to gauge their overall status in complying with rulemakings on transportation performance management, and to measure DOT interest in using new metrics and prioritization techniques to advance data-driven processes for decision making.

This presentation provides an overview of Minnesota DOT's risk-based scenario analysis approach.

The Michigan Department of Transportation launched a new online dashboard to give the public up-to-date information on bridge conditions across the state. Bridge conditions are rated on a 0-9 scale. Condition ratings are an important tool for transportation asset management, as they are used to identify preventative maintenance needs and to determine rehabilitation and replacement projects that require funding.

The City of Boston's Mayor Marty Walsh announced new transportation initiatives intended to reduce traffic congestion, emissions, and traffic injuries. These include installing adaptive traffic signals, assigning designated pick up and drop off areas for ridesharing companies, providing free transit passes to Boston Public Schools students in grades 7-12, and reducing speed limits to 20 mph on city streets.

Several California public agencies collaborated to host a demonstration of the potential of connected vehicle (CV) systems to improve air quality by reducing truck emissions. The demonstration used Volvo Group's Eco-Drive technology on two freight corridors in California. The demonstration marks the beginning of a year long technology assessment and design refinement period for Eco-Drive that also aims to improve health and quality of life in communities affected by heavy truck traffic.

Forward Pinellas, the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the Clearwater and St. Petersburg, Florida, area, has approved safety performance measures and targets to related to decreasing the number of traffic injuries and fatalities in the region. With this additional focus on improving safety, the group hopes to combat the steadily increasing number of traffic fatalities it has seen over the last several years.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his support for Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposal to toll vehicles entering the busiest parts of Manhattan in order to raise funds for the city's failing subway system. The toll would also reduce congestion in the crowded New York City streets. The proposal is currently being considered by the State legislature.

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 528: Analyzing Data for Measuring Transportation Performance by State DOTs and MPOs summarizes what data state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are using and how they are measuring transportation performance. Knowledge about transportation data already exists, but may be fragmented, scattered, and unevaluated. This report synthesizes current knowledge and practice about data management to help transportation organizations learn about effective practices. The report also identifies future research needs.

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 226: Data Visualization Methods for Transportation Agencies provides techniques for planners who have various levels of experience with displaying and reporting information in a visual format. The publication includes practices for developing visualization skills, enhancing transportation analysis, and improving public engagement. 

A study led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and published in the journal Nature Sustainability developed a model for predicting the impacts through 2050 of different environmental policies on human mortality rates and climate change. The study found that enforcing truck fleet maintenance is an effective way to reduce particulate emissions and reduce pollution-related illnesses.

A recent article in FleetOwner noted that the American Transportation Research Institute’s (ATRI) annual Top Truck Bottleneck List placed the New York City metro area at the top of the list of areas with the worst highway congestion in the United States. For the previous three years, Atlanta had been the worst congested area for trucks. The 2019 list examines truck congestion at 300 location on the national highway system using GPS data from approximately one million trucks.

This article from SmartCitiesDive.com describes the recent implementation by the City of Los Angeles of a Mobility Data Specification (MDS) to standardize data collected from mobility as a service (MaaS) companies. The MDS will allow the city to gather, analyze, and compare real-time data to understand users' transportation choices and behavior and to facilitate enforcement of regulations.

This article in Minnesota's online StarTribune newspaper describes a technology that the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is considering deploying this summer or fall to notify drivers of short-term (approximately one hour) lane closures. The new technology is the Smart Arrow Board. When the Smart Arrow Board displays a flashing arrow directing motorists to another lane, the board also sends information to MnDOT's Regional Transportation Management Center, where the information is posted to the state's 511 traveler information system. This is useful because usually these short-term lane closures aren't communicated through 511, Waze, or Google Maps, which causes unnecessary congestion on roadways. In addition to reducing congestion and driver frustration, this technology will also be useful in the future to communicate to autonomous vehicles changes to normal road configurations.

Six states are wrapping up Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)-sponsored projects examining weather resilience strategies for their highway infrastructure, with the agency expecting reporting on their research to be filed sometime in February. FHWA plans to publish the reports in a resilience guidebook later in 2019. Stephen Gaj, asset management team leader in FHWA's Office of Infrastructure, led a panel discussion on integrating extreme weather resilience into state transportation asset management plans during the 2019 annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Washington, DC.

This presentation from the 12th National Conference on Transportation Asset Management—held July 14-17, 2018 in San Diego, CA—details how King County Metro developed a Transit Management Program. The presentation describes King County's benchmarking analysis, stakeholder identification, risk and data analysis tools, and guidance.

This presentation from the 12th National Conference on Transportation Asset Management—held July 14-17, 2018 in San Diego, CA—provides an overview of Iowa DOT's governance and organizational change in the case of TAM development. The presentation provides examples of governance structures and emphasizes their importance in achieving change.

Online transport news website Transport Topics reported on a 2019 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board session on last mile freight delivery. The article notes that session panelists were hopeful about the potential for small robots to alleviate last mile delivery problems. Recent innovations in loading zone reservation technology, made possible through smart phone applications, could also help make freight delivery simpler.

This presentation from the 12th National Conference on Transportation Asset Management, held July 14 - 17, 2018 in San Diego, California, is an overview of New York DOT's development of a single, shared, authoritative destination for data and information. The presentation provides examples of data (and data visualization) tools used, project framework, and best practices.

The Ohio DOT is partnering with seven other states (Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) to implement a multi-state Truck Parking Information Management System (TPIMS). The system, which will be fully operational in January 2019, will provide real-time information about available parking spaces at nine Ohio rest areas. This will lead to fewer non-routine maintenance repairs on highway shoulders and ramps due to illegal parking, reduce CO2 emissions caused by trucks searching for parking, and generate more than $403 million in benefits through the life of the project.

This presentation from the 12th National Conference on Transportation Asset Management held July 14-17, 2018 in San Diego, California details the framework, data collection (through photos and LiDAR), and condition assessment for pavement and road asset condition in Hawaii. The presentation provides examples of the data collected, programs used, and best practices.

This article by the Minnesota Star Tribune details how the Minnesota DOT will be deploying a new invention—lighted bars at the ends of snow plow blades—in the 2018-2019 winter season with the hope of decreasing snow plow and motorist collisions. The lighted bars were invented by a member of the Minnesota DOT's Safety Innovation Team. The Minnesota DOT expects that the lights will not only aid motorists but also assist snow plow operators in better seeing the edges of their plows so they can make more precise and accurate maneuvers.

This presentation on Illinois All-Hazards Transportation System was delivered to the Technical Subcommittee on Risk Management by Christopher Schmidt, Air Quality Manager at the Illinois DOT, on November 13, 2018. It provides an overview of updates to the 2003 All-Hazards System and describes the current system's capabilities.

According to data released November 1, 2018, by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), highway crashes accounted for 95 percent of all transportation-related fatalities in 2017. There were 673 fewer highway fatalities in 2017 than in 2016. According to the Chairman of NTSB, Robert Sumwalt, NTSB has identified 22 highway safety recommendations that have the potential to prevent crashes and save lives. The NTSB data is discussed in this article by Safety and Health Magazine, the official magazine of the National Safety Council and Expo.

This report examines how a number of state DOTs have used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications to fulfill MAP-21 requirements as part of their TPM programs and efforts, and was developed in response to the requests of participants at an FHWA-sponsored peer exchange on the same topic, held June 30-July 2, 2015 in Spokane, WA. The report supports geographic information system (GIS) practitioners and decision-makers by identifying examples of noteworthy practices, considering the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches in using GIS solutions for TPM and related efforts, and determining how to best use GIS to communicate the impacts of performance-based operations and planning at the State DOT level.

According to an article by Roads and Bridges magazine, in recent years there has been an increased focus on implementing preservation techniques to extend the useful life of pavement. Researchers at Mississippi State University and the Mississippi Department of Transportation tested the “Mississippi permeameter” device as part of a study whose results were presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). The article summarizes the results of their findings and adds information about additional research that has been conducted since presenting at TRB.

This report by the Caltrans Division of Research, Innovation, and System Information describes Caltrans’ preliminary investigation of techniques for sealing highway pavement cracks and longitudinal joints. The goal of the preliminary investigation was to develop a comprehensive perspective of state-of-the-art crack cleaning methods and equipment to assist Caltrans’ identification and implementation of the most beneficial tools to enhance their highway crack sealing operations.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and SharedStreets announced a partnership to pilot a comprehensive standard and analysis tool for mobility data on dockless scooters and bicycles. The resulting data standards and open source tools will allow other cities and private sector mobility operators to collaboratively manage streets and achieve key mobility, safety, and equity goals, while protecting privacy.

This article in Roads and Bridges online magazine examines how state DOTs can achieve a working priority scheme for the maintenance of their highway and road infrastructure. It describes how the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) balances its highway maintenance obligations through various transfers to local governments as well as other negotiations.

This example MPO Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) update from the Missouri Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) includes coordinated safety and transit targets. The update includes federal transit asset management measures (Equipment, Rolling Stock, Infrastructure, and Facilities measures) and federal safety measures (Fatalities, Fatality Rate, Serious Injuries, Serious Injury Rate, and Non-Motorized Fatalities and Serious Injuries measures).

The new TPM Timeline Tool created by The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) is a web-based interactive tool intended to help State DOTs, MPOs, and transit agencies understand and plan for their federally-required performance management activities. The TPM Timeline Tool is located on AASHTO’s TPM Portal, an online repository of TPM-related tools, documents, and information. By interactively displaying all the applicable requirements on either a timeline or table, agencies can quickly visualize the requirements that are of interest to them and delve into them more deeply.

The Boston Region MPO manages an interactive dashboard that tells the story of how the Boston region’s transportation system has changed over time. Explore data on crashes, bridge and pavement condition, bicycle and pedestrian facilities, congestion, and characteristics of people who use the system.

Ford, Uber, Lyft and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) are teaming up with SharedStreets to better understand how city streets are being used and to find ways to make them safer, smarter, and more efficient. The end goal is to reduce traffic collisions and improve efficiency, both in terms of vehicle emissions and in terms of traffic density.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)’s online magazine, Spectrum, notes that researchers at the University of Maryland’s School of Engineering built an AI and big data-based travel app that nudges users to make smarter travel decisions—ones that benefit the environment, the user, and other travelers. incenTrip is part of a $4.5 million project funded by the Department of Energy to reduce energy consumption in personal transportation. It awards points based on how a user chooses to get around, giving more points for taking public transportation or for commuting outside peak travel times, for example.

Forbes magazine reports that in July 2018 Michigan passed Act 323 to create the Michigan Infrastructure Council which, among other responsibilities, drew from the Regional Asset Management Pilot to develop an integrated asset management process which will help the state, regions, local governments and utilities make more informed, strategic decisions and coordinated investments.

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) has released a pre-publication, non-edited version of Research Report 898: A Guide to Developing Financial Plans and Performance Measures for Transportation Asset Management. The report presents guidance for state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other agencies conducting financial analyses and developing financial plans to support efficient and effective management of the agency’s transportation assets. The guide addresses fiscal and programmatic constraints associated with federal and state legislation; methodologies for valuing assets, forecasting and allocating financial resources; financial performance measures and targets; and practical concerns related to financial markets and accounting requirements.

The American Transportation Research Institute released the findings of its 2018 update to An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking.  Using financial data provided directly by motor carriers throughout the country, this research documents and analyzes trucking costs from 2008 through 2017 – providing trucking industry stakeholders with a high-level benchmarking tool, and government agencies with a baseline for future transportation infrastructure improvement analyses.

Developed as part of NCHRP Report 20-118, this platform supports comparative benchmarking among state DOTs. It enables users to quickly evaluate their agency’s performance relative to peers on pre-determined measures. The platform will provide a centralized and standardized way of viewing performance on multiple transportation performance measures.

This fact sheet from Arkansas DOT (ARDOT) collects a variety of information on ARDOT's performance measure target setting for safety, per 23 CFR 490.207. The fact sheet includes information about ARDOT’s methodology, and also compares 2019 targets to trends in previous years.

This presentation from the 12th National Conference on Transportation Asset Management is an account of Rural County Pavement Preservation Planning in Minnesota. The presentation lists challenges usually encountered by local rural counties in pavement preservation, and ways to overcome them using management strategies, data tools, prioritization planning, and specific funding sources.

The North Dakota DOT Transportation Innovations Program, or TRIP, is a new program to identify and implement innovative ideas in transportation projects, processes and products. The homepage includes a summary listing of such innovations and contains links for users to submit new ideas.

Collin Castle of the Michigan Department of Transportation and Alison Ragan of the Wyoming Department of Transportation were named the winners of the 2018 Transportation Vanguard Award during the annual meeting of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in Atlanta Sept. 20-24, 2018. This award recognizes State DOT professionals at the forefront of new developments and technologies. Both Mr. Castle and Ms. Ragan are heavily involved in bolstering their respective state’s ITS programs through performance management and other innovative techniques.