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

Title:

Development of New Performance Measure for Winter Maintenance Using Vehicle Speed Data

Abstract:

The study investigated vehicle speed changes during winter weather events. A total of 954 winter maintenance logs in 24 counties over three winter seasons were analyzed. Several variables of interest were developed such as "Storm Duration", "Maintenance Operation Hour", "Crew Delayed", "Maximum Speed Reduction (MSR)" and the storm start and end times. Also, "t1" which represents the start of vehicle speed reduction, and "t3" the time when vehicle speeds recover to normal winter driving speeds, were measured from ATR data. The study confirms that vehicle speed appears to be a good measure of representing both driving conditions during winter weather events and winter maintenance performance. Speed Recovery Duration (SRD) was found to be a dependent variable, defined as a possible evaluation of winter maintenance operations using vehicle speed data.

Source(s):

87th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting; University of South Florida, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Wisconsin DOT. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2007

Author:

Lee, Loh, Qin, Sproul

Keywords:


Winter storm
Winter maintenance

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