Utah DOT Weather Responsive Traveler Information System

Over the past decade, the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Road Weather Management Program (RWMP) \nhas championed the cause of improving traffic operations and safety during weather events. The program’s current \nemphasis is to encourage agencies to be more proactive in the way that they manage traffic operations during bad \nweather. Weather Responsive Traffic Management (WRTM) is a component major element of the program. WRTM \ninvolves the implementation of traffic advisory, control, and treatment strategies in direct response to or in anticipation \nof developing roadway and atmospheric problems that result from deteriorating or forecasted weather conditions. \nWRTM also includes using weather forecasting to provide proactive advisory and control strategies based on forecasts \nof weather conditions, and not just traffic responses to those conditions.\nIn 2011, the RWMP initiated a project to collate recent developments and best practices in WRTM, identify \nimprovements to the strategies, and develop implementable Concepts of Operations. As a follow-on task, three \nconcepts were selected for further implementation and real-world deployment. This report documents the \nimplementation of one of those concepts relating to weather responsive traveler information. This concept focused on \nan initial implementation of a citizens reporting system and was conducted in partnership with Utah DOT. This report \ndocuments the system design, operation, evaluation, findings and lessons learned from the implementation.\nConsidering this was the first opportunity to implement a limited citizen reporting program, the results are encouraging. \nFifty-six UDOT employees were trained, 89 of 143 road segments were covered, and 607 reports were submitted \nduring the 2012/2013 winter season. Report accuracy was very high (over 99%), and they provided increased \nsituational awareness for TOC meteorologists and operators. Public response to this program was quite positive. \nLessons from this initial implementation will help UDOT further develop and move this program forward and serve as a \nvaluable model for other state DOTs that seek to implement similar improvements.\n