Feasibility of Using Traffic Data for Winter Road Maintenance Performance Measurement

Feasibility of Using Traffic Data for Winter Road Maintenance Performance Measurement PDF Author: Luchao Cao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Winter road maintenance (WRM) operations, such as plowing, salting and sanding, are significant to maintain both safety and mobility of highways, especially in countries like Canada. Traditionally, WRM performance is measured using bare pavement regain time and snow depth/coverage, which are reported by maintenance or quality assurance personnel based on periodic visual inspection during and after snow events. However, the increasing costs associated with WRM and the lack of objectivity and repeatability of traditional performance monitoring methods have stimulated significant interest in developing alternative performance measures. This research is motivated by the need to develop an outcome based WRM performance measurement system with a specific focus on investigating the feasibility of inferring WRM performance from traffic state. The research studies the impact of winter weather and road surface conditions (RSC) on the average traffic speed of rural highways with the intention of examining the feasibility of using traffic speed from traffic sensors as an indicator of WRM performance. Detailed data on weather, RSC, and traffic over three winter seasons from 2008 to 2011 on rural highway sites in Iowa, US is used for this investigation. Three modeling techniques are applied and compared for modeling the relationship between traffic speed and various road weather and surface condition factors, including multivariate linear regression, artificial neural network (ANN), and time series analysis. Multivariate linear regression models are compared by temporal aggregation (15 minutes vs. 60 minutes), types of highways (two-lane vs. four-lane), and model types (separated vs. combined). The research also examines the feasibility of estimating/classifying RSC based on traffic speed and winter weather factors using multi-layer logistic regression classification trees. The modeling results have shown the expected effects of weather variables including precipitation, temperature and wind speed, and verified the statistically strong relationship between traffic speed and RSC. The findings suggest that speed could potentially be used as an indicator of bare pavement conditions and thus the performance of WRM operations. It is also confirmed that the time series model could be a valuable tool for predicting real-time traffic conditions based on weather forecast and planned maintenance operations, and the multi-layer logistic regression classification tree model could be applied for estimating RSC on highways based on average traffic speed and weather conditions.

Feasibility of Using Traffic Data for Winter Road Maintenance Performance Measurement

Feasibility of Using Traffic Data for Winter Road Maintenance Performance Measurement PDF Author: Luchao Cao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Winter road maintenance (WRM) operations, such as plowing, salting and sanding, are significant to maintain both safety and mobility of highways, especially in countries like Canada. Traditionally, WRM performance is measured using bare pavement regain time and snow depth/coverage, which are reported by maintenance or quality assurance personnel based on periodic visual inspection during and after snow events. However, the increasing costs associated with WRM and the lack of objectivity and repeatability of traditional performance monitoring methods have stimulated significant interest in developing alternative performance measures. This research is motivated by the need to develop an outcome based WRM performance measurement system with a specific focus on investigating the feasibility of inferring WRM performance from traffic state. The research studies the impact of winter weather and road surface conditions (RSC) on the average traffic speed of rural highways with the intention of examining the feasibility of using traffic speed from traffic sensors as an indicator of WRM performance. Detailed data on weather, RSC, and traffic over three winter seasons from 2008 to 2011 on rural highway sites in Iowa, US is used for this investigation. Three modeling techniques are applied and compared for modeling the relationship between traffic speed and various road weather and surface condition factors, including multivariate linear regression, artificial neural network (ANN), and time series analysis. Multivariate linear regression models are compared by temporal aggregation (15 minutes vs. 60 minutes), types of highways (two-lane vs. four-lane), and model types (separated vs. combined). The research also examines the feasibility of estimating/classifying RSC based on traffic speed and winter weather factors using multi-layer logistic regression classification trees. The modeling results have shown the expected effects of weather variables including precipitation, temperature and wind speed, and verified the statistically strong relationship between traffic speed and RSC. The findings suggest that speed could potentially be used as an indicator of bare pavement conditions and thus the performance of WRM operations. It is also confirmed that the time series model could be a valuable tool for predicting real-time traffic conditions based on weather forecast and planned maintenance operations, and the multi-layer logistic regression classification tree model could be applied for estimating RSC on highways based on average traffic speed and weather conditions.

Performance Measurement for Highway Winter Maintenance Operations

Performance Measurement for Highway Winter Maintenance Operations PDF Author: Lin Qiu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Roads
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
The goal of this research project was to develop a method to measure the performance of a winter maintenance program with respect to the task of providing safety and mobility to the traveling public. Developing these measures required a number of steps, each of which was accomplished. First, the impact of winter weather on safety (crash rates) and mobility (average vehicle speeds) were measured by a combination of literature reviews and analysis of Iowa Department of Transportation traffic and Road Weather Information System data. Second, because not all winter storms are the same in their effects on safety and mobility, a method had to be developed to determine how much the various factors that describe a winter storm actually change safety and mobility. As part of this effort a storm severity index was developed, which ranks each winter storm on a scale between 0 (a very benign storm) and I (the worst imaginable storm). Additionally a number of methods of modeling the relationships between weather, winter maintenance actions and road surface conditions were developed and tested. The end result of this study was a performance measure based on average vehicle speed. For a given class of road, a maximum expected average speed reduction has been identified. For a given storm, this maximum expected average speed reduction is modified by the storm severity index to give a target average speed reduction. Thus, if for a given road the maximum expected average speed reduction is 20 mph, and the storm severity for a particular storm is 0.6, then the target average speed reduction for that road in that storm is 0.6 x 20 mph or 12 mph. If the average speed on that road during and after the storm is only 12 mph or less than the average speed on that road in good weather conditions, then the winter maintenance performance goal has been met.

Performance Measures for Snow and Ice Control Operations

Performance Measures for Snow and Ice Control Operations PDF Author: T. H. Maze
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Roads
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Under the NCHRP 06-17 project, the research team surveyed snow and ice control organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia to determine the current trends in performance measurement. The team also inquired about the methods used in developing these programs in order to determine a practical, user friendly method to assist snow and ice control managers in developing a performance measurement system that uses traditional and nontraditional performance indicators and measurement issues. To achieve the project objectives, the researchers issued a survey to snow and ice control agencies throughout North America, Europe, and Asia to obtain data of the performance indicators and measures used, if any, by these agencies. The identified performance indicators and measures were then categorized, defined, and assessed for their usefulness. A process was then developed to assist snow and ice control operations managers in preparing a customer-focused, environmentally friendly performance measurement program.

Quantifying Uncertainty in Real Time Performance Measurement for Highway Winter Maintenance Operations

Quantifying Uncertainty in Real Time Performance Measurement for Highway Winter Maintenance Operations PDF Author: Jillian Lyon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Adair County (Iowa)
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
Winter weather in Iowa is often unpredictable and can have an adverse impact on traffic flow. The Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT) attempts to lessen the impact of winter weather events on traffic speeds with various proactive maintenance operations. In order to assess the performance of these maintenance operations, it would be beneficial to develop a model for expected speed reduction based on weather variables and normal maintenance schedules. Such a model would allow the Iowa DOT to identify situations in which speed reductions were much greater than or less than would be expected for a given set of storm conditions, and make modifications to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The objective of this work was to predict speed changes relative to baseline speed under normal conditions, based on nominal maintenance schedules and winter weather covariates (snow type, temperature, and wind speed), as measured by roadside weather stations. This allows for an assessment of the impact of winter weather covariates on traffic speed changes, and estimation of the effect of regular maintenance passes. The researchers chose events from Adair County, Iowa and fit a linear model incorporating the covariates mentioned previously. A Bayesian analysis was conducted to estimate the values of the parameters of this model. Specifically, the analysis produces a distribution for the parameter value that represents the impact of maintenance on traffic speeds. The effect of maintenance is not a constant, but rather a value that the researchers have some uncertainty about and this distribution represents what they know about the effects of maintenance. Similarly, examinations of the distributions for the effects of winter weather covariates are possible. Plots of observed and expected traffic speed changes allow a visual assessment of the model fit. Future work involves expanding this model to incorporate many events at multiple locations. This would allow for assessment of the impact of winter weather maintenance across various situations, and eventually identify locations and times in which maintenance could be improved.

Feasibility of Using Friction Indicators to Improve Winter Maintenance Operations and Mobility

Feasibility of Using Friction Indicators to Improve Winter Maintenance Operations and Mobility PDF Author: Imad L. Al-Qadi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Roads
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Snow Engineering V

Snow Engineering V PDF Author: P. Bartelt
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9789058096340
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Specialists in building and civil engineering, architecture, traffic and transport engineering, urban planning and avalanche science came together at the Fifth International Conference on Snow Engineering, organized by the Federal Swiss Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos 2004. This event belongs to a series of Snow Engineering Conferences held every four years since 1988. These conferences have become an important event for the international exchange of information on recent developments in snow engineering. The following thematic areas were discussed in the technical sessions and are here presented in this volume: - Transportation - Housing and Residential Planning - Snow Loads - Ski Mechanics - Hazard Mitigation - Snow Technology and Science - Avalanche Engineering

Estimation of Winter Snow Operation Performance Measures with Traffic Data

Estimation of Winter Snow Operation Performance Measures with Traffic Data PDF Author: Eil Kwon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Roads
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
This research produced an automatic process to identify the road condition recovered times during snow events from the traffic-flow data. For this study, the traffic data from the past snow events were analyzed and the speed variation patterns indicating the road condition recovery states during the recovery periods were identified. The prototype process developed in this study finds the speed change point indicating the recovery of the road condition by analyzing the speed variations for a given location. The process was then applied to a set of the past snow events and the estimated recovered times were compared with the reported lane-regain time data.

Quantifying the Mobility Benefits of Winter Road Maintenance - a Simulation Based Approach

Quantifying the Mobility Benefits of Winter Road Maintenance - a Simulation Based Approach PDF Author: Usama Elrawy Shahdah
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
A good understanding of the relationship between highway performance, such as crash rates and travel delays, and winter road maintenance activities under different winter weather and traffic conditions is essential to the development of cost-effective winter road maintenance policies and standards, operation strategies and technologies. This research is specifically concerned about the mobility benefit of winter road maintenance.

Terraqué

Terraqué PDF Author: Eugène Guillevic
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782070167548
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description


Winter Maintenance Performance Measurement Using Friction Testing

Winter Maintenance Performance Measurement Using Friction Testing PDF Author: Sany Zein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781551872735
Category : Friction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description