The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) has over 400,000 traffic signs in its inventory. These signs vary widely by their sheeting grade, age, color, orientation, and proximity to the roadway edge. In a typical year the DOTD replaces about 60,000 of these signs because they are beyond their service life or have been damaged. Currently, the DOTD does not have a systemat...

The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Indiana Department of Transportation or the Federal Highway Administration at the time of publication This report does not constitute a standard, specification, or regulation. An A...

19 Incentive/disincentive clauses (I/D) are designed to award payments to contractors if they 20 complete work ahead of schedule and to deduct payments if they exceed the completion time. A 21 previously unanswered question is, “Did the costs of the actual work zone impacts that were 22 avoided justify the incentives paid?” This paper answers that question affirmatively based on an 23 evaluatio...

In the 1990s, federal legislation was passed requiring transportation planning to incorporate the interests of all stakeholder groups. One urban transportation mode that is often ignored is pedestrian movement. A group particularly susceptible to difficulties in this mode is the elderly. This study surveys the attitudes of senior citizens in regard to pedestrian safety and motorist interactions...

Pedestrian volume information is critical to study traffic safety as well as to plan for pedestrian friendly design. We present a model used to estimate the pedestrian volumes for street intersections in the city of San Francisco, California. Through regression analysis at multiple geographical scales, a set of socioeconomic variables and built-environment characteristics were examined. Three f...

Mechanistic pavement design procedures based on elastic layer theory require characterization of all pavement layer materials including subgrade soil. This paper discusses the subgrade stiffness obtained from a new compaction device called the Intelligent Compaction (IC) roller on highway embankment projects in Kansas. Three test sections on two routes were compacted using a single, smooth stee...

Traffic noise (and in more detail rolling noise) affects the health of thousands of citizens. Consequently a number of silent technologies (quiet surfaces) are available, with different weaknesses, noise performance, and expected life. This notwithstanding, addressing noise impacts from a Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) perspective is still an issue. Indeed, characterization factors, inventory ...

Travel time and speed measures on road networks provide key information to identify critical spots of congestion and evaluate the scale of this phenomenon across an urban area. Many technologies are currently available to measure travel time and speed, but each has its limitations. As part of a wider project aiming to develop travel time reliability indicators, this paper presents a comparison ...

Many state or regional transportation agencies have an interest in implementing operations performance measures. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) recently sponsored research performed by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) to identify performance measures that are sensitive to operational treatments and to test a methodology for quantifying these measures statewide. Operation...

Bottlenecks are key features of any freeway system. Their impacts are of increasing importance as congestion worsens in major urban areas. In the U.S., the FHWA has been working to identify and monitor key bottlenecks in each state. In Oregon, a freeway data archive known as PORTAL records count, occupancy, and speed measurements from over 600 freeway locations. This archive has enabled develop...