Road Weather Management Program
photos of lightning, trucks plowing snow, an empty road before a storm, and an evacuation
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Best Practices for Road Weather Management

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Citizen Reporting of Current Road Conditions

The Citizen Reporting of Current Road Conditions best practices document reviews, compares, and contrasts citizen reporting programs that capture current weather and road conditions at five state departments of transportation - Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Weather threatens surface transportation nationwide and impacts roadway safety, mobility, and productivity. There is a perception that transportation managers can do little about weather. However, three types of Road Weather Management strategies may be employed in response to environmental threats: Advisory Strategies, Control Strategies, and Treatment Strategies. Advisory strategies provide information on prevailing and predicted conditions to both transportation managers and motorists. Control strategies alter the state of roadway devices to permit or restrict traffic flow and regulate roadway capacity. Treatment strategies supply resources to roadways to minimize or eliminate weather impacts. Many treatment strategies involve coordination of traffic, maintenance, and emergency management agencies. These mitigation strategies are employed in response to various weather threats including fog, high winds, snow, rain, ice, flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, and avalanches.

  • Case Studies
    This report contains 27 case studies of systems in 22 states that improve roadway operations under inclement weather conditions. Each case study has six sections including a general description of the system, system components, operational procedures, resulting transportation outcomes, implementation issues, as well as contact information and references.

    At this point, solutions presented in Version 2.0 are either mainstreamed or have been surpassed by even better solutions. Version 3.0 captures the state-of-the-art, presenting 27 all-new practices that build upon these agencies' previous successes.
  • Best Practices for Road Weather Management, Version 3.0 (HTML, PDF 2.3MB)
  • Citizen Reporting of Current Road Conditions (HTML, PDF 399KB)
  • Share information on weather mitigation strategies in your state and/or provide feedback on Version 3.0

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