1. Status Update AASHTO RAC
Accelerating solutions for highway safety, renewal, reliability, and capacity
Status Update
AASHTO RAC
July 27, 2010

2. SHRP 2 Authorized by Congress in 2005 highway legislation
$230 million, 7 years ( )
Administered by TRB under MOU with FHWA and AASHTO
Four Research Focus Areas:
Safety Reliability
Renewal Capacity
Stakeholder Governance: 400+ volunteers

3. “Pre-Implementation”
Additional funding expected from SAFETEA-LU extensions
SHRP 2 Oversight Committee wants to focus funds on moving toward implementation
Cooperative effort with FHWA, AASHTO, NHTSA, individual states, other organizations
Hear more in Wednesday session

4. “Year 1 Plan” Begin detailed planning
Get word out on early products: webinars, speakers bureau, marketing, CEO-level communication, conferences
Training, manuals, guidelines
Pilot testing, “hardening” research
Plan demonstration/lead state projects
Plan for long-term stewardship

5. Projects and Contracts
81 active or pending contracts
10 completed contracts
5 projects currently advertised; proposals due in September
These are all research contracts; no pre-implementation projects have gotten to the RFP stage yet.

6. GAO Review Required by SAFETEA-LU Conducted over summer of 2009
Assess the degree to which projects address topics in Special Report 260
Identify topics not yet addressed
Recommend improvements
Conducted over summer of 2009
Delivered to Congress Feb 2010
Report due to Congress Feb 2010
Reported evolution of program
No recommendations

7. Safety
Naturalistic driving study to begin in 6 states this Fall: New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, Washington
Partnerships with transportation agencies in these states for acquiring roadway and other relevant data

8. Data Acquisition System (DAS)
Antenna

9. Camera Views 9

10. Renewal Field testing of the following products:
Risk workshop: NC, WA
PCC smoothness measurement: GA
Composite pavements: MN
Performance specs for rapid renewal: 3 states
Existing pavements in place: 7 states
Additional pilots being planned for modular pavements, continuous deflection devices, identification/solutions for utility conflicts, geotechnical solutions, accelerated bridge design/construction
10 states helping in development of guidelines and draft specifications

11. Renewal: Example Products
Survey of European Composite Pavements
Preservation Approaches for Highway Volume Roadways
Railroad-DOT Institutional Mitigation Strategies

12. Reliability: Early Results
Institutional Maturity Framework—guide to becoming an operations-oriented agency
Analytical models to quantify and predict the affect of various strategies on travel time reliability
Guidance for integration of operations into business practices

13. Reliability
Pilot tests of incident responder training in Indiana and Georgia.
Bullet 1- develop the methods and systems to monitor, measure and report reliability, the analytical procedures and technical relationships to determine the effects of available mitigation strategies and the insertion of performance measures in planning and operations models.
Bullet 2- how to incorporate reliability into core business processes and the institutional architecture. What resources are required, core competencies, training needs, etc. Make travel time reliability an explicit component of congestion management within responsible agencies.
Also explore if we can determine how driver behavior in response to the primary factors causing unreliability contribute to unreliability and identify measures to modify the behavior? How do we disseminate reliability through traveler information systems?
Bullet 3- insert reliability performance into planning , programming and design processes, develop reliability estimation methods for inclusion in Highway capacity manual , evaluate costs/effectiveness of various design features on reliability( preparation of materials for inclusion in AASHTO Policy on Design)
Bullet 4- identify future agency concepts of operations that would advance reliability as well fund a portfolio of unproven concept ideas to demonstrate their validity and/or projects to develop and test prototypes of proven concepts.

14. Capacity
Partnerships with state and local agencies in Jacksonville, FL, and Sacramento, CA, to develop and test advanced travel demand models.
Pilots of collaborative decision making tool in 4 states (chosen but not awarded yet).
Pilots of ecological tools in 4 states (to be advertised in July).

15. Beta Testing of Web Tools
Collaborative decision making
Economic impacts
Performance measures
Visit SHRP 2 exhibit booth to see these tools in action

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