Weather-Responsive Transportation Management

This paper describes how nearly twenty five percent of non-recurring delays and congestion on freeways are because of adverse weather conditions. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Road Weather Management Program has been focusing its efforts to better understand the impacts of weather on traffic flow and for developing tools to alleviate those impacts. Information about weather and its impacts on the transportation system are currently not well integrated into the operational framework of most transportation agencies. This paper describes three efforts by the FHWA Road Weather Management program to advance the state-of-the practice in weather-responsive transportation management. The first is a prototype weather response system (WRS) for transportation management that was developed in partnership with the Missouri Department of Transportation. The WRS takes advantage of weather data and products from the National Weather Service (NWS) and other sources to support the application of traffic management, maintenance, and operations activities within the agency. The paper also describes how the system can be deployed in statewide Transportation Management Centers (TMCs), Traffic Operations Centers, and District Maintenance Facilities. The second effort consisted of a study on the integration of weather into TMCs. This paper summarizes how weather information is being integrated into the TMC operations of several agencies in the country. The third effort involves an empirical study on weather and traffic data to model traffic flow under varying weather conditions. Such information is vital for accurate traffic flow analysis and modeling, and determination of appropriate traffic management strategies to mitigate the impacts of weather.