2.1
Partnerships to Improve Safety and Mobility on the Nation's Highways
Paul A. Pisano, Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC
The effects of weather on the highway system are huge. For example, the 10-year average of lives lost and people injured in highway crashes that occurred under adverse weather conditions is 7,400 and 690,000, respectively. About 24% of all crashes occur on slick pavement or during adverse weather events. In addition, trucking companies lose an estimated $3.5 billion dollars annually due to weather-related congestion in the nation's larger metropolitan areas. Overall, weather accounts for about 15% of the nation's congestion delays – the third largest causal factor. While it's easy to see that these figures are too high, it's also easy to see that these problems are not easily solved. Nonetheless, concerted efforts are underway to develop solutions that focus on providing targeted, tailored road weather information to road users and operators via intelligent transportation systems. There are many challenges associated with these efforts, first and foremost is that these solutions require both public and private entities across both the surface transportation and weather communities to be involved as each has a role to play. Given this very disparate conglomeration, along with an end market of road users and operators that is very distributed, it is immediately apparent that new partnerships must be forged to develop these new solutions and address the safety and mobility problems.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Road Weather Management program is leading efforts to improve highway safety and mobility by developing such solutions. This includes forging partnerships that range from a new Memorandum of Understanding between the FHWA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to multi-party research projects such as the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) and the Clarus initiative. This presentation will describe these initiatives and the collaborative arrangements and partnerships that serve as the basis for achieving the program goals.
Recorded presentationSession 2, Public Sector
Tuesday, 31 January 2006, 8:45 AM-9:45 AM, A404
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