1. Background
This report presents the results of the 2004 Work Zone Mobility and Safety Self-Assessment (WZ SA). The goal of the 2004 WZ SA was to evaluate progress made since the 2003 baseline assessment. The WZ SA fulfills these important goals:
- It raises an agency's level of awareness of practices and strategies used in mitigating work zone congestion and crashes.
- It facilitates communication and sharing of best practices among transportation professionals.
- It identifies gaps in existing efforts to mitigate work zone-related congestion and crashes.
- It provides an opportunity to benchmark progress.
- It provides information to FHWA helpful in measuring the effectiveness of the National Work Zone Program and also for shaping that program.
In 2004, each Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Division Office re-examined and updated the results of the 2003 WZ SA.[1] This survey contained 46 questions divided into the following six sections:
- Section 1: Leadership and Policy
- Section 2: Project Planning and Programming
- Section 3: Project Design
- Section 4: Project Construction and Operation
- Section 5: Communications and Education
- Section 6: Program Evaluation.
Each FHWA Division Office was asked to complete the survey with assistance from the appropriate transportation agency staff. The completion of the survey was envisioned to be a group exercise. In many cases, several meetings between the State transportation agency and Division Office staff were conducted to arrive at responses that best reflected transportation agency policies, practices and procedures.
While the wording of each question remained the same from 2003 to 2004, two questions were moved from Section 4 (Project Construction and Operation) to Section 5 (Communications and Education) prior to implementation of the 2004 WZ SA. The 2003 WZ SA scores were adjusted to account for this shift in order to establish a baseline for comparison between 2003 and 2004 results.
The self-assessment survey asked respondents to evaluate the extent to which a particular policy, process, product, or practice has been incorporated into an agency's way of doing business. The adoption process consisted of five progressive levels based on the quality improvement process model used by industry, namely: 1) initiation, 2) development, 3) execution, 4) assessment, and 5) integration.
Respondents were asked to rate the agency in each of the 46 questions that are spread out over the 6 categories using a 0 to 15 scale as shown in Table 1 below.
| Adoption Phase | Scoring Range | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Initiation | (0–3) | Agency has acknowledged a need for this item and supports further development of the requirements of this item |
| Development | (4–6) | Agency has developed a plan or approach to address requirements of this item |
| Execution | (7–9) | Agency has executed an approach to meet requirements of this item |
| Assessment | (10–12) | Agency has assessed the performance of this item |
| Integration | (13–15) | Agency has integrated the requirements of this item into agency culture and practices |
Several questions in the WZ SA are based on the magnitude of impact that a project may have on a particular area. The following work impact types are referenced in the WZ SA and throughout this document.
Type I – Work impacts the traveling public at the metropolitan, regional, intrastate, and possibly at the interstate level. It has a very high level of public interest. It will directly impact a very large number of travelers. It will have significant user cost impacts and the duration is usually very long.
Type II – Work impacts the traveling public predominately at the metropolitan, and regional level. It has a moderate to high level of public interest. It will directly impact a moderate to high number of travelers. It will have moderate to high user cost impacts and the duration is usually moderate to long.
Type III – Work impacts the traveling public at the metropolitan or regional level. Has a low to moderate level of public interest. It will directly impact a low to moderate level of travelers. It will have low to moderate user cost impacts, and can include lane closures for a moderate duration.
Type IV – Work impacts the traveling public to a small degree. Public interest is low. Duration of work is short to moderate. Work zones are usually mobile, and typically this work is reoccurring.
