Efficient Use of Highway Capacity Summary Report to Congress

Overview

This report was developed to summarize the implementation of safety shoulders as travel lanes as a method to increase the efficient use of highway capacity. Its purpose is to provide a succinct overview of efforts to use left or right shoulder lanes as temporary or interim travel lanes. As part of this summary, information related to the impact of that shoulder usage on highway safety and/or accidents during operations was reviewed as well. The intent of the report is to provide critical information that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) can use to formulate guidance for agencies on providing temporary shoulder use as a means of increasing roadway capacity. The study that generated this product was conducted at the request of Congress through the 2008 Technical Corrections Act. Those issues that need to be considered include design, traffic control devices, performance measures, potential safety benefits, maintenance concerns, enforcement roles and processes, incident response, training for personnel, costs, liability and legal issues, and public outreach and education. Careful consideration of these issues can help ensure a shoulder use deployment is effective without having negative impacts on safety and operations.

Source Organization Location

Washington
,
DC

Operations Area of Practice

    Corridor and Arterial Traffic Management
    Active Traffic Management (ATM)
    Roadway Geometric Design
    Freeway Management
    Communicating Reliability Information
    Cost / Benefit Analysis
    Roadway Safety Services / Roadway Safety Patrol
    Traffic Incident Management

Organizational Capability Element

    Freeway Operations
    Traffic Incident Management
    Active Traffic Management/Travel Demand Management/Pricing
    Outreach & Marketing

Content Type

State-of-the Practice

Role in Organization

Senior Engineer
Principal Engineer
Manager / First Line Supervisor
Director / Program Manager
Engineer
Senior Manager

Publishing Organization

FHWA

Document Downloads

Prime Contractor
Texas A&M Transportation Institute
Author
Beverly Kuhn
TOM Chapters
24.1
20.1
15.4
6.5
View Related
Issue Date
Publication Number
FHWA-HOP-10-023