Citation

Cypra T. Transp. Res. Circular 2008; (E-C126): 127-139.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, U.S. National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Board)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Major goals of road operations are safety, environmental protection, economics, and the necessary optimization of these issues in delivering quality winter maintenance services. For increasing road safety, the needs are high-quality prediction and sensor technologies as well as appropriate winter service treatments at the right time. Next to road safety, mobility is an important factor in local economies; uninterrupted traffic is a basic requirement. As a consequence, the standards of winter maintenance have become very high. Traffic flow and capacity on roadways under wintry road conditions were analyzed in actual research. With weather–road condition data and traffic data, the methodology of traffic flow analysis under defined wintry road conditions could be verified. Furthermore first results of capacity losses under defined wintry road conditions could be quantified. It was shown that with heavy snowfall, the capacity decreases more than 50%. These results clearly show the need for maintenance decision support systems (MDSS) to efficiently and safely manage infrastructure systems in wintertime. A solution to this is the management system BORRMA-web MDSS (Boschung Road and Runway Management). This system clearly displays all important elements in one view, such as dynamic maps, road weather stations, fixed automated spray technology, vehicle operation data and location of winter service vehicles, road conditions etc. for real-time, future, and past events. Especially useful is the combination of local measurements (roadway weather information system stations) and weather forecasts allowing detailed predictions and alerts for each forecasted road weather segment (road section with similar microclimatic conditions).