Synthesis of Procedures to Forecast and Monitor Work Zone Safety and Mobility Impacts

Administrative Final Rule CFR Part 630 Subpart J "Work Zone Safety and Mobility" requires that state transportation agencies (STAs) develop policies to investigate the safety and mobility impacts as early as possible in the project development process. The rule provides some flexibility by allowing each state to set its own procedures and policies to comply with the rule and by allowing states to seek solutions which are commensurate with the severity of the potential impacts and require the most aggressive planning for "Significant Projects." This report provides a synthesis of what is currently being done by STAs across the country to plan, manage, operate, and evaluate work zone safety and mobility. The research to develop this synthesis was broken into three distinct steps. The first step was to review the literature regarding work zone safety and mobility strategies. The second was to conduct interviews with staff members at 30 STAs. The last step was to conduct more detailed case studies of three STAs. The authors found that only California and Ohio (there may be more states than this, but these were the two discovered) had really thought about work zone impacts throughout the life-cycle of project development and project delivery and had documented the roles and interactions between different offices. Most agencies interviewed lacked objective performance data, although many described processes where they have experts review and evaluate work zones on a periodic or continuous basis.