This report presents the results of a study to assess the benefits and costs of Highway Safety Rest Areas. The research included a survey of State and Provincial highway agencies; a comprehensive literature search; interviews with rest area users and field data collection at 13 rest areas in five states; and analyses of accident data. The results derived from this study delineated current rest area practices; provided an updated profile of rest area users; and served to define and quantify rest area benefits to the extent possible. It was determined that the major benefits accrued to the highway user consist of increased comfort and convenience and enhancement of highway safety. It was also found that many of the benefits identified were intangible to the extent that they could not readily be expressed in monetary terms. Therefore, a proposed Rest Area Analysis Methodology was developed based on utility and decision theory approaches which can explicitly account for intangible factors. The proposed methodology was then applied to a case study. (A)
Abstract