Accelerating solutions for highway safety, renewal, reliability, and capacity
Innovation in Lean Times
AASHTO Research Advisory Committee
July 24, 2012
A Brief History of SHRP 2
• Role of special-purpose research programs:
focused, large-scale program of limited
duration
• Success of first SHRP: Superpave, winter
maintenance
• SHRP 2 proposed 2001; NCHRP with
matching funds from FHWA develop detailed
research plans
• SAFETEA-LU authorized the program
• $218 million, 9 years, ends 3/31/15
SHRP 2 Origin & Philosophy
• Needs identified by State DOT and industry
leaders—driven by customer-oriented goals:
– Make highways safer: revolutionary change
– Fix highways: address epidemic of aging
infrastructure
– Reduce congestion: increase physical and
operational capacity
• Success requires non-traditional approach:
– Multiple disciplines
– Collaboration with non-DOT stakeholders
– Portfolio: from new knowledge to practical tools to
allow existing innovations to be more widely used
Four Focus Areas
• Safety: fielding the largest-ever naturalistic
driving study to reduce crashes and save lives
through understanding driver behavior
• Renewal: making rapid, innovative
construction possible for “ordinary” projects
• Reliability: Providing management and
technical tools to reduce congestion through
operations
• Capacity: Systematizing collaborative decision
making to achieve better, faster project
decisions
Program Governance
• 50+ committees; 500+ members
• Oversight Committee
– Chair: Kirk Steudle, Michigan DOT
– Majority of members from state DOTs
• 4 Technical Coordinating Committees:
–
–
–
–
–
–
46% current and recent state DOT employees
11% other transportation agencies
17% consultants, contractors, suppliers, auto mfrs, etc.
10% federal, police, fire, other non-transportation
16% researchers
Plus FHWA, AASHTO, and other liaisons
• ETGs/TETGs
– Transportation and non-transportation expertise
Status of Research Program:
The Numbers
• 106 contracts to date, 37 complete, 10-12 new
contracts by end of 2012
• Nearly all of the $218 million is committed
• More than 500 expert committee members
• More than 300 research contractors
• 49 reports published or in production/review
• 30+ web tools, databases, software apps
• 24+ pilots conducted with state DOTs
Safety: Strategic Rationale
• Driver behavior is key:
– Primary factor in two-thirds of crashes
– Contributing factor in more than 90% of crashes
– Hardest to study; the thing we know the least about
• Opportunity: Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS):
– Miniaturized sensor technologies & increased
computing capacity: can observe real-world driving
– Method proven with 100 car study at VA Tech
– Crash, pre-crash, near-crash, and “normal” driving data
• SHRP 2 scales up NDS for more robust results
– 3000 drivers, 6 sites, all ages
– Data to be available for other researchers for decades
Camera Image Samples
Source: VTTI
8
Safety Highlights
• Progress on data collection:
–
–
–
–
2,122 participants so far
384,000 trips; 5 veh-yrs of data per day
3,100 center-line miles of roadway data
Approval to collect cell phone records and
“supplemental” data
• First four analysis projects begun
• Interest in using data from outside of SHRP
2 (FHWA, NHTSA, auto mfrs, academics,
IIHS, AAA FTS, etc.)
Initial Analysis Projects
• Rural 2-lane curves – Iowa State University
– Ex. App : more cost-effective roadway measures to
prevent crashes
• Offset left-turn bays – MRI Global
– Ex. App: cost-effective intersection design
• Driver inattention – SAFER, Chalmers Univ.
– Ex. App: vehicle technology to track driver attention,
warn distracted drivers
• Crashes on congested freeways – U. of MN
– Ex. App: effective methods to warn drivers of
downstream congestion
10
Renewal: Strategic Rationale
• Facilities are aging, users depend on them:
– Renew infrastructure quickly
– Have minimal impact on users
– Produce long-lasting facilities
• We know how to do this—on special projects
• What keeps us from doing it consistently
across the system?
– Lack of standard methods, specs
– Lack of reliable performance/usage information
– Human/institutional challenges
• SHRP 2 seeks to overcome these obstacles
Renewal Highlights
• Vermont Transportation Agency piloting ABC
tools in repair of bridges damaged in Tropical
Storm Irene—building local expertise
• Illinois Tollway saving $350,000 using a modular
pavement technology & guidelines from SHRP 2
• WSDOT used SHRP 2 interactive design guide
to select rehab strategy for segment of I-5:
saved 30% on agency costs, 50% on user costs
• DOT/RR Community of Interest to share/update
model agreements & best practices (7 SDOTs, 4
Class I RRs, AASHTO, Rail America, FHWA, FRA,
and Manitoba Infrastructure Transportation)
Reliability & Capacity
Capacity tackles
recurring congestion
Reliability tackles
nonrecurring congestion
Reliability Strategic Rationale
• Non-recurring events account for more
than half of congestion
– Impact of these events on users is reduced
travel time reliability (TTR)
– TTR is valuable to users
– TTR is a good tool to measure performance and
develop and target improvements
• What do we need to effectively use TTR?
– Ways to measure and monitor TTR
– Integration of TTR into modeling, planning,
programming, and design.
– Ops-oriented business practices, training
Reliability Highlights
• Multi-agency incident response training very wellreceived; FHWA using SHRP 2 material in an effort
to train 1 million responders
• Assessment tool and guide to becoming an
operation-oriented agency has been incorporated
into AASHTO SSOM web tool.
• Special session at AASHTO Board of Directors on
benefits of operations and availability of
resources for states
• Easy-to-use spreadsheet to assess effect of
design on delay and TTR, including benefit/cost
Capacity Strategic Rationale
• Sometimes you just need more highway
• Why don’t we get it when we need it?
– Multiple independent decision points that must
collectively satisfy a range of goals: engineering,
economic, environmental, community
– Decisions to be “lost” or revisited, which can
cause opposition and delay
• Facilitate and expedite key decisions: get
the right information to the right people at
the right time, avoid re-do loops
Capacity Highlights
• 8 pilot tests of tools in real projects:
– Web tool-guide for collaborative decision-making
– Integrated approach to resource conservation,
impact mitigation, expedited project delivery
• Building foundation in freight area:
– Demand modeling & data improvement strategic
plan
– Workshop on potential uses of private supply
chain data
– 2 modeling & data innovations symposia, awards
Research to Implementation
Research
Research
responds to
known
transportation
challenges
Development
A research
product
emerges and is
refined through
pilots and other
activities
Potential
implementation
explored
through
knowledge
transfer
Implementation
Partner
agencies select,
prioritize, and
prepare product
for
implementation
Product is
marketed to
users and
integrated into
standard
practice
18
Development requires close collaboration
with users to ensure that innovations work in
real-world situations.