Overview
The purpose of the Winter Maintenance Scanning Tour was to seek out and observe the progress that State and local highway agencies are making in advancing today’s technology in the area of winter roadway maintenance. While this was the first domestic tour in the USA, it was tailored after three previous scanning tours that had been conducted in European and Asian countries in 1994, 1998 and 2002. Much of what had been learned from these earlier international scans had become a new benchmark to several USA counterparts, inspiring them to pursue similar advances. Knowing this, NCHRP 20-68A, US Domestic Scan Program was developed under the auspices of AASHTO, FHWA and NCHRP to assess the state-of-the-practice of several transportation subject areas in the USA and to evaluate the extent to which the international scanning tours had an impact on domestic operations. One of the nine tours included in this program is Scan 07-03 Best Practices in Winter Maintenance.