Evaluation of Utah Department of Transportation's Weather Operations/RWIS Program: Phase I

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) Weather Operations/RWIS program is unique among state departments of transportation nationally, as it assists the DOT operations, maintenance, and construction functions by providing detailed, often customized, area-specific weather forecasts. Staff meteorologists are stationed in the Traffic Operations Center (TOC), providing easily accessible weather information and quality control of weather forecasts. A national survey confirmed the benefits of such customized forecasts, including more accurate forecasts; timely forecasts and access to a forecaster; advanced warning of storm conditions; better response time and improved planning and scheduling of staff; and better use of chemical products. By examining the labor and materials cost for winter maintenance in the 04-05 season for 77 UDOT sheds, an artificial neural network model was trained and tested to establish the shed winter maintenance cost as a function of UDOT weather service usage, evaluation of UDOT weather service, level-of-maintenance, seasonal vehicle-miles traveled, anti-icing level, and winter severity index. The model estimated the value and additional saving potential of the UDOT weather service to be 11-25 percent and 4-10 percent of the UDOT labor and materials cost for winter maintenance, respectively. It was also estimated that the risk of using the worst weather service providers to be 58-131 percent of the UDOT labor and materials cost for winter maintenance. Further evaluation of other benefits of UDOT weather service are not included in this phase, such as better traveler information, accident reduction, value added to UDOT training and risk management, and benefits to programs outside UDOT. The research findings are expected to provide planners cost-benefit information to consider integrating weather service into their TOC or Transportation Management Center (TMC), and to provide maintenance engineers useful information about the value of customized weather service.