Considerations for the Development of Work Zone Mobility Performance Measures and Thresholds for Virginia Freeways

The Federal Highway Administration has been encouraging states to improve their monitoring and tracking of the mobility impacts of work zones. The use of mobility performance measures will enable agencies to assess better the contribution of work zones to network congestion; to identify specific projects that are in need of remedial action; and potentially to assess penalties to contractors creating excessive, avoidable negative impacts. Although the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has defined allowable lane closure hours for the interstate system, VDOT has not defined specific performance measures and thresholds for what constitutes “unacceptable” work zone mobility impacts. Performance measures and thresholds have been developed by a number of other states, so there is a need to determine whether these could be adapted for use by VDOT. This study explored issues related to a potential work zone mobility performance measurement program for Virginia. The issues investigated included identification of potential performance measures, definition of performance thresholds, and recommendations for data sources for performance measurement calculations. This information was synthesized from information regarding the experiences of selected states and experiences from a series of case studies that used data from Virginia work zones. The review of experiences in selected other states found that delay and queue length were the performance measures used most often by the states studied. The Virginia case studies focused on the use of private sector data to generate mobility performance measures and found that the level of spatial aggregation in rural areas could inhibit the ability to generate accurate performance measures, although granularity was better on urban roads. The level of temporal aggregation was also found to influence performance measures. The research identified a number of key issues that VDOT should consider as a work zone mobility performance measures program is developed. The report recommends that VDOT develop a pilot program that focuses on urban interstates initially and convene a task group to develop formal policies and procedures for use in the state.

• Record URL:
  http://www.virginiadot.org/vtrc/main/online_reports/pdf/14-r6.pdf
• 
• Record URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/27470
• Corporate Authors:

  Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research

  530 Edgemont Road
  Charlottesville, VA  United States  22903

  Virginia Department of Transportation

  1401 East Broad Street
  Richmond, VA  United States  23219

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Fontaine, Michael D
  • Cottrell Jr, Benjamin H
  • Chun, PilJin
• Publication Date: 2014-2

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 39p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Mobility; Performance measurement; Work zone traffic control; Work zones
• Geographic Terms: Virginia
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I73: Traffic Control;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01518799
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: VCTIR 14-R6
• Contract Numbers: RC00047
• Files: NTL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Mar 21 2014 11:27AM