Road Work Ahead

Ask Greg Ranft for the overarching concern when his team reconstructed the most heavily traveled radial freeway in Texas--Houston's US 59-Southwest Freeway--while replacing its four bridges. The Texas Department of Transportation area engineer doesn't hesitate. "Safety. It was the number one issue from when we started designing. We said, 'Let's do this the safest way possible during construction and make it the safest result afterwards.' High intensity reflective sheeting for overhead signs, REACT 350 crash cushions for the front end of concrete barrier strings, work zone pavement markings at every phase, dynamic message signs, low profile safety barriers for pedestrian walkways: these and the range of safety and traffic control features dominated the earliest plans and entire project."

Suzette Peplinski had a similar experience when her team tackled the reconstruction of the M-11 at M-37 intersection, one of the most congested surface trunkline intersections in West Michigan. She manages the Michigan DOT's Transportation Service Center in Grand Rapids and explains, "The team worked out safety and traffic control during the design phase, along with tools to let the public know what to expect and when. Our specifications covered sheeting on signs, barrels, cones, signing sequences, and other traffic control setups. The Maintenance of Traffic Plan established how the project could be built and still maintain traffic and safety."

The Michigan team worked 24 hours a day in 2002 to widen the intersection and add dual left-turn lanes on all four approaches, a first for the state. Two adjacent regional shopping malls, a road with the highest volume of total retail sales of any road in the state, and a major commuter corridor made for high impacts on motorists and the economy.

"At least one lane was open in both directions on both roadways at all times," Peplinski recalls. "With retail and restaurant driveways every 200 feet, we created barrel channels through closed lanes to maintain access. Where we removed existing pavement, we used signs, barrels and markings to channel traffic through the work zone. Message boards at major crossroads let trucks know wide loads couldn’t pass through the intersection.

"The state and contractor team partnered with local police for speed enforcement in the work zone and for traffic control when temporary traffic signals changed. We also partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to let motorists and the community know what to expect and when. In the end, there were no accidents in the work zone.
" By the time we opened 12 days ahead of schedule," she continues, "feedback from businesses was pleasantly positive. Measurements two months after completion showed a 67% reduction in delays for left turn movements and a 57% reduction in the average delay for all drivers at the intersection. We expect the congestion mitigation to drive down the number of rear-end collisions too."

The Michigan and Texas projects spotlight the fact that safety is a defining element of a quality-managed highway project. Bob Templeton is the Executive Director of the National Partnership for Highway Quality (NPHQ), an eleven-year-old, ground-breaking coalition of federal and state highway officials and the leading roadway construction industry groups. He points out that "Quality processes for safety ranked high in NPHQ's decision to recognize the Texas and Michigan Departments of Transportation and their design and construction teams as part of our 2003 National Achievement Awards. The safety of the public and road workers was also a signature of the eight other award winning projects in New Jersey, Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon."

Work in Progress

The American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) partners with NPHQ because it has a significant stake in the results delivered by quality-driven highway projects. To be sure, it's gratifying to see efforts underway across the nation to raise the bar on roadway construction and traffic safety. But there's still a great deal of road work ahead.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's 2002 statistics on highway fatalities show them at the highest level since 1990: 42,815 deaths last year, up 1.5% from 2001. According to the U.S. DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the death toll in highway work zones for 2002 reached 1,181—1029 of whom were drivers and their passengers. As work zone fatalities continue to climb each year, so, of course, do traffic volumes. Recent FHWA estimates show that vehicle miles traveled in 2002 increased to 2.83 trillion, up from 2.78 trillion in 2001. It’s not rocket science: the need for integration of roadway safety solutions at every stage of roadway project management has never been clearer.

I should also note two bright spots in this picture: although overall fatalities have increased, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled remained at 1.51; and the number of injured dropped from 3.03 million in 2001 to 2.92 million in 2002. I’m proud of the people in my industry. We’re getting somewhere.

But how can we further brighten the safety landscape? How do we elevate safety at every stage of a roadway project? We encourage state roadway quality partnerships and advocate for a greater emphasis on quality management in all highway construction projects. Along the way, we will remain vigilant, every hour of every day, about the safety of our own workers and the roadway users they serve.

Elevating Quality

Kathi Holst, ATSSA’s president, is also president of ACCI/NES, a traffic safety company in Romeoville, IL. She talks with conviction and from experience about practices that elevate quality in work zones, and emphasizes four themes: continual retraining and recertification; context-sensitive solutions for individual work zones; public awareness campaigns; and the use of technology for injury prevention. "We're talking about safety programs that go well beyond subcontractor-prime agreements for hardhats, steel-toed shoes and reflective gear," she observes.

Training and certification programs for those who design, install, and adjust traffic control in work zones and safety provisions for all roadway workers are crucial; and they shouldn't stop when one gets trained. The fact is, when people spend their days in a work zone with traffic whizzing by at 75 miles per hour, they become desensitized. Training and certification are good starts, but retraining and recertification on a continual basis elevate training to a new status: that of a hallmark of quality.

Context-sensitive solutions are a similar quality indicator. Every work zone is different; training and planning differ accordingly and should be based on field analysis. A good plan asks not only "are safety devices in the traffic control plan?" but also "is the plan sufficient for the conditions of the project?" There's more involved than safety vests or evacuation plans. And you won't necessarily find work zone safety for every condition in safety manuals.

It's up to traffic control managers to evaluate and address the differences in work zones from one location to another, and devise training programs accordingly. Adjustments for nighttime work are an example. The public often prefers for us to work at night, but drug and alcohol abuse, tired drivers, and impaired vision hit us hard on the safety side.

A quality-managed project also includes road rage mitigation, often in the form of public awareness. As Holst notes, "Large, multi-season rehabilitation projects, like the reconstruction of expressways, require constant recharging in terms of public information, in order to keep customers positive. And the campaigns must start early. When the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, for instance, decided to widen to four lanes one of its expressways around the city of Chicago, public awareness campaigns began months before the project started. The toll authority let people envision what the road would look like when it was done in an effort to get them on board and prepared for the inconvenience."

A recurring challenge, she points out, is asset allocation: "Dollars have to be swapped from concrete and asphalt to public awareness, always a dilemma in this budget climate. Do we spend the dollars on safety and public awareness, which are intangibles? Do we spend what's needed to warn drivers, businesses and residents of what's coming, publicize detours, hold town meetings, and gain community feedback? It's not as if we can sneak expressway reconstruction by and no one will notice!

"The theory and practice of 'get in; get out; stay out' works on a one-year project," Holst says. "But multi-year efforts can be a different animal. Getting the media involved and reminding motorists of future benefits are vital quality management tools."
These public information programs take many forms, and can be quite creative. For instance, just before its award-winning intersection reconstruction project ended, the Michigan DOT co-sponsored a "barrel bash.” In a unique take on customer-focused decision-making – and road rage mitigation – commuters were invited to a party for a chance to swing a baseball bat at those orange construction barrels they'd been staring at through the windshield for six months.

Here's a different aspect of context-sensitive solutions: a quality managed highway project recognizes categories of drivers and demographics other than the "normal" driver. Dr. Gene Hawkins, who heads the Operations and Design Division at the Texas Transportation Institute, notes that "The selection of traffic control devices on a given project needs to consider different user populations, each of which may have a different set of demands.

"On a signalized roadway, for instance, bicyclists can have a tough time activating detectors. For passenger cars, a typical loop detector may work fine. There won't necessarily be one traffic control product that meets the needs of all groups, and a series of compromises can be part of the right overall strategy. It might not be possible to put the best possible product out there; it may be the second choice for one constituency, rather than the first choice. The process starts with knowing the customer."

Older drivers, as an example, may need to recognize messages sooner, and benefit from large signs. They benefit from wider edge lines too. Florida is a leader in these areas, which makes sense, given the state's large older population. It’s worth highlighting that safety features are equal opportunity providers: the state's larger signs and wider edge lines better serve the entire driving population, not just older drivers.
The spectrum of other driver categories is also important: inexperienced drivers who may have limited exposure to work zones, cautious drivers, truckers, and motorcyclists. In quality-managed safety and traffic control plans, motorists other than the 35 year-old-male in a four-door sedan are considered.

Another flag of quality is the development and use of technologies that prevent injury and loss of life when crashes do occur. "The idea is that even if you damage your vehicle, you have a better chance of walking away," says Holst. "In the past we've focused most of our energies on preventing crashes. Wider edge lines, bigger, brighter signs, and greater public awareness are examples. More and more, we're seeing solutions for injury prevention too, like gating devices, water-filled barrier walls, and impact attenuation devices. Other safety boosts for the roadway workers are intrusion alarms that alert when a motorist is coming; these can be audio or visual, like flashing strobe lights."

Reflecting on work zone safety and quality, Hawkins concludes, "Work zones must get smarter, as should communications with road users about the effects of the work zone on their systems. The development of overarching traffic management plans for control inside, outside, around, and in the corridor deserves more attention and earlier review in project plans. Fortunately, these areas, along with performance measures and technology innovations, are benefiting from an increasing number of cooperative research programs in safety and operations."

The Affordability Factor

A continual juggling act is adding to the state of the practice while balancing affordability and performance. On the one hand, agencies don't always have up-front funding for advances like impact attenuators, vehicle redirect devices, micro-prismatic sheeting for signs, or the latest Intelligent Transportation Systems. On the other hand, the economic impact of highway deaths and injuries on the nation is staggering. When over 42,000 people a year lose their lives on the road and about 3,000,000 are injured in motor vehicle crashes, the cost to taxpayers is nearly $21 billion. Societal costs exceed $230 billion.

These facts underscore ATSSA's support of robust federal funding for a highway program that includes a core roadway safety program targeting roadway hazards and improving infrastructure. According to the Federal Highway Administration, roadway conditions contribute to one-third of all motor vehicle fatalities. High-risk areas that would benefit from a core roadway safety program are run-off-the-road crashes, intersections, pedestrian and bicycle traffic, older drivers, speed management, work zones, safety management systems, emergency management, and roadway safety research.

A Commitment to Quality

Given the competing demands for funding in the nation's roadway program, stemming loss of life on America's roadways is not cheap. But it’s doable. And it is our moral imperative. Reaching the state of the art in roadway construction safety practice takes a sustained commitment to roadway safety, fueled by a growing emphasis on quality management. Nothing short of a full commitment to safety at every planning, process, training, teamwork, innovation, performance, operation and maintenance opportunity will do.

As Hawkins points out, "We've long since gotten the farmer out of the mud. A couple of generations ago, that was the point of roads. This generation is maintaining the system that's in place. The size of the system remains essentially static at this point; although travel has increased dramatically in the last twenty years, lane capacity has not kept up.

"Years ago, the premise was build, build, build. Now we're building very few new roads. Instead, we're primarily rebuilding the roads that are out there now, rehabilitating so the pavement has additional years of life. So the focus is on how to best operate the existing system and how to design for operating as well as constructability."

Enter the quality imperative. Fortunately, and to come full circle, under the umbrella of the National Partnership for Highway Quality, ATSSA and its 1800 private and public sector members are teamed with twelve world-class organizations that advocate quality practices to improve operations and safety for highway users. NPHQ is composed of the Federal Highway Administration, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the American Concrete Pavement Association, the American Council of Engineering Companies, the American Public Works Association, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the American Traffic Safety Services Association, the Asphalt Institute, the Associated General Contractors of America, the Foundation for Pavement Preservation, the National Asphalt Pavement Association, the National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies, and the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association.

Therein lies a wealth of energy, vision and expertise. These heavy hitters of America's roadway program are leading us into a new era of performance and safety for the roadway customer. All understand the business and opportunity riding on our roads, and the benefits riding on quality- managed improvements to our roadway system. All are invested in quality for the long haul – as each of us must be. In the race for highway quality, to borrow an axiom, there is no finish line.

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