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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Alberta's Benchmark Model for Maintenance Winter Service Delivery

Abstract:

Starting in 1998, the provincial government of Alberta, Canada, began selling Alberta Transportation (AT) maintenance shops, and by 2000 most properties were no longer under government control. Then, in the fall of 2000, the government began to transfer road authority for secondary highways from the municipal governments (i.e. counties) and more than doubled the length of the network under provincial jurisdiction. Prospective contractors for contracts tendered after 2001 were required to propose new shop locations and the shop size and number of trucks to be provided in their new contract area. This paper gives details of the benchmarking process used by AT, including assumptions used, how highway topography and geometric characteristics were used to affect the length of highway each plow truck can be assigned before it was fully allocated, the business rules chosen to model actual work habits, calculations used to determine the time required to plow and spread sand or salt over each segment, and the improvements made over three successive rounds of tendering.

Source(s):

6th International Symposium on Snow Removal and Ice Control Technology, Transportation Research Circular, No. E-C063

http://trb.org/publications/circulars/ec063.pdf

Date: 2004

Author:

Otto

Keywords:


Maintenance vehicle
Productivity
Route choice
Winter maintenance

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