Transportation agencies in the United States are facing financial and staffing difficulties while the motoring public is asking for improved, year-round mobility and increased safety. At the same time, some agencies are facing extreme environmental problems caused by highway maintenance operations, especially from chemicals used in winter maintenance operations. Since the political outlook for increased taxes to fund highway maintenance is bleak, the only option available for public agencies to solve these problems is to use more efficient and effective methods to accomplish maintenance. Cutting edge improvements for surface transportation weather, now on the threshold of implementation, offer unlimited opportunities for safety, mobility, and operational improvements. This paper will summarize technological advances and report on the progress in three major areas of surface transportation weather and show how they are anticipated to improve the safety and mobility of the nation's roadways and the productivity of operating agencies. The following topics will be discussed: Improved Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS); Aurora Consortium Project 7.9, Temperature Sensor Accuracy; NCHRP Project 6-15, Testing and Calibration Methods for RWIS Standards; FHWA and AASHTO SICOP Project, Development of RWIS Environmental Sensor Station Siting Guidelines; Establishment of a national road weather information observation system; FHWA Project Clarus--the Nationwide Surface Transportation Weather Observing and Forecasting System; Recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences in their 2004 report, "Where the Weather Meets the Road: A Research Agenda for Improving Road Weather Services"; Implementation of a winter maintenance decision support system (MDSS); An FHWA MDSS Project that integrates state-of-the-art weather forecasting, data fusion, and optimizing techniques with computerized winter road maintenance rules-of-practice logic. The result is guidance aimed at maintenance managers that provides specific forecast of surface conditions and treatment recommendations customized for individual plow routes; Field evaluations showing that MDSS optimizes the use of snow and ice control chemicals and thus reduces their environmental impact and increases their effectiveness.
Abstract