Road Weather Management Program
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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

County-Wide Variable Speed Limits?

Abstract:

In Finland several road sections, totalling approximately 350 km, have been equipped with variable speed limits. The aim of the study was to estimate the costs and the benefits of a weather-controlled variable speed limit system that would cover most of the Finnish main roads. The building costs and annual maintenance costs were evaluated based on a quality, up-to-date system. It seems likely that a weather and road condition controlled system of variable speed limits would be profitable in Finland. The benefit-cost ratio calculated with the most likely starting values was 1.1?1.9. As a conclusion, it can be said that it is probably not advisable to build variable speed limit systems very extensively but more of them should be built on highly trafficked road segments.

Source(s):

13th Standing International Road WEather Conference (SIRWEC), VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265878424_County-wide_variable_speed_limits

Date: 2006

Author:

Schirokoff, Rama, Tuomainen

Keywords:


Speed
Benefit/cost
Benefits
Costs
Crashes
Safety
Mobility

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