Road Weather Management Benefit Cost Analysis Compendium

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

The Road Weather Management Benefit Cost Analysis Compendium (RWM Compendium) is a companion to the broader Transportation Systems Management and Operations Benefit Cost Analysis Compendium (TSMO Compendium). Both documents are additions to the series of reference documents and tools developed by the Federal Highway Administration Office of Operations (HOP) to assist planners and operations professionals in evaluating the benefits and costs of TSMO strategies and technologies. The RWM Compendium expands the road weather management technologies and strategies covered in the TSMO Compendium to provide a more thorough and complete coverage of benefit cost analysis of road weather management projects. This body of work is part of a larger initiative in the Office of Operations referred to as Planning for Operations and is designed to better integrate planning and operations activities.

PROJECT BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Due to an increasingly competitive fiscal environment, State, regional, and local transportation planning organizations around the country are being asked more than ever to justify their programs and expenditures. Road weather projects as a subgroup of TSMO programs have not escaped this scrutiny, and road weather managers are routinely asked to rank their projects against traditional expansion and other TSMO projects as well as conduct other "value-related" exercises.

This requirement can put RWM projects at a disadvantage since many specialists in this arena have limited experience in performing benefit cost analyses (BCA), and often, many of the established tools and data available for conducting BCAs for traditional infrastructure projects are poorly suited to analyzing the specific performance measures, project timeliness, benefits, and life-cycle costs associated with operational improvements.

In response to the needs of system operators to conduct these analyses, a number of initiatives have been undertaken in recent years at the national, State, and regional levels to develop enhanced analysis tools, methodologies, and information sources to support BCAs for many specific RWM strategies. It often remains difficult, however, for practitioners to weed through the multiple information and guidance sources in order to understand and apply an appropriate methodology for meeting their specific analysis needs.

THE FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS AND ROAD WEATHER MANAGEMENT COMPENDIA

The Transportation Systems Management and Operations Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) Compendium (TSMO Compendium) is a collection of cases from across the country where benefit cost analysis have been applied to one or more TSMO technologies/strategies. The Road Weather Management (RWM) Benefit-Cost Analysis Compendium (RWM Compendium) follows this approach by providing information about BCAs conducted around the country for specific RWM technologies or operational strategies. The actual project evaluations involve the use of custom spreadsheets developed by the agency or its contractors, or the application of available software tools to the BCA. The Compendium also includes hypothetical cases designed to demonstrate how BCA can be used for a specific RWM technology or operational strategy. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has developed a sketch planning BCA tool —the Tool for Operations Benefit/Cost (TOPS-BC)—for application to TSMO projects, including RWM projects. For the hypothetical cases, TOPS-BC is used to assist in the measurement of benefits and costs and in the calculation of the benefit cost ratio. More information about TOPS-BC can be found at https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/plan4ops/topsbctool/index.htm.

Each case demonstrates how planners conducted, or could conduct, a BCA on one or more RWM technologies or strategies. There are 27 case studies presented in the RWM Compendium, and each addresses one or more specific BCA concepts or procedures. Readers should become familiar with the Operations Benefit/Cost Analysis Desk Reference (Desk Reference), which is described below, and use it in conjunction with the compendium. The technologies included in the compendium are discussed in the Desk Reference, and more detailed discussions can be found in FHWA's Road Weather Management Programs web page:  https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/mitigating_impacts/technology.htm

Each case demonstrates how planners conducted, or could conduct, a BCA on one or more RWM technologies or strategies. There are 27 cases studies presented in the RWM Compendium, and each addresses one or more specific BCA concepts or procedures. Readers should become familiar with the Operations Benefit/Cost Analysis Desk Reference (Desk Reference), which is described below, and use it in conjunction with the compendium. The technologies included in the compendium are discussed in the Desk Reference, and more detailed discussions can be found in FHWA's Road Weather Management Programs web page: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/mitigating_impacts/technology.htm

THE FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION OPERATIONS BENEFIT/COST ANALYSIS DESK REFERENCE

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Operations developed the Operations Benefit/Cost Analysis Desk Reference in recognition of practitioners' need for relevant and practical guidance on how to effectively conduct a BCA for a wide spectrum of transportation system management and operations strategies. The Desk Reference provides practitioners with relevant guidance on how to effectively and reliably estimate the benefits and costs of TSMO strategies

The Desk Reference meets the needs of a wide range of practitioners looking to conduct a BCA of operations strategies, including RWM strategies. The guidance provided in the Desk Reference includes basic background information on conducting a BCA, such as basic terminology and concepts intended to support the needs of practitioners just getting started with a BCA who may be unfamiliar with the general process. Building from this base, the Desk Reference also describes some of the more complex analytical concepts and latest research in order to support more advanced analyses. Some of the more advanced topics include capturing the impacts of travel time reliability; assessing the synergistic effects of combining different strategies; and capturing the benefits and costs of supporting infrastructure, such as traffic surveillance and communications.

ROAD WEATHER MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

Together, the Desk Reference and the RWM Compendium are intended to support the analysis of a wide range of RWM strategies. These "strategies" include the direct application of technologies and infrastructure to RWM (e.g., regional pre-deployment of assets), as well as many more difficult-to-define, nonphysical strategies (e.g., interagency coordination). While it is not possible to comprehensively provide guidance on applying every type and variation of diverse RWM strategies (especially in light of the fact that new strategies and technologies are constantly emerging), the strategies covered in the RWM Compendium, which are aligned with those strategies identified in the BCA Desk Reference, include strategies from the following categories:

1. Surveillance, Monitoring, and Prediction.
2. Information Dissemination.
3. Decision Support, Control, and Treatment.
4. Weather Response or Treatment.

The RWM Compendium provides brief summaries of the BCAs undertaken by transportation agencies, educational institutions, and firms to assess the value of these strategies. These examples evaluate the benefits and costs of some RWM deployments and identify the lessons that can be learned from the BCA. Hypothetical BCA examples were drawn from actual deployments, in part or whole, in order to demonstrate how the TOPS-BC model can be used and modified to support RWM BCA.

Following this introduction, Section 2 provides a brief summary of the fundamentals of the BCA as applied to transportation projects in general and to TSMO and RWM projects in particular. Section 3 introduces several BCA tools developed by FHWA and others for transportation applications and TSMO and RWM projects. The final four sections of this RWM Compendium contain several case studies including hypothetical examples and actual applications of BCA to RWM projects.