FY 2009 Scan Program

Planning is currently underway on the following scans that will be undertaken during fiscal year 2009:

• Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety
• Assuring Bridge Safety and Serviceability
• Linking Transportation Performance and Accountability
• Reducing Congestion and Funding Transportation Using Road Pricing

Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety

In 2007, there were 4,654 pedestrian and 698 bicyclist deaths in the U.S., accounting for 13 percent of all U.S. highway fatalities. The Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Office of Safety has established pedestrian and bicyclist safety as one of its top priorities. Two other priorities, intersection safety and speed management, are issues that also significantly affect pedestrians and bicyclists.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), a member association of state transportation departments, has identified two of the top ten goals in its Strategic Highway Safety Plan as "Making Walking and Street Crossing Safer" and "Ensuring Safer Bicycle Travel".

It has become increasingly important to both the FHWA and AASHTO to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety and mobility. The purpose of this international scan is to visit those countries that are leaders in improving pedestrian and bicyclist safety. This will provide an opportunity for U.S. transportation professionals to investigate the work being done in those countries and to identify approaches, techniques and policies that can be transferred and adopted in the U.S.

The scan will focus on the following topic areas:

• Improving Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety: Approaches (engineering, education, and enforcement) that have been successful in improving pedestrian and bicyclist safety. These approaches can include both infrastructure as well as policy.
• Safe Routes to School Programs: Approaches and policies for improving safety for child pedestrians and bicyclists, especially those that support programs like "Safe Routes to School."
• Monitoring Usage Levels and Exposure: Quantitative methods of monitoring pedestrian and bicyclist usage levels (for example, counts and surveys) and exposure to crashes.
• Safety Research and Evaluation: Recently completed or ongoing research and collaboration opportunities in pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

Assuring Bridge Safety and Serviceability

May 29 - June 14, 2009
Finland, Austria, Germany, France, UK

U.S. engineers are in need of new, advanced tools and protocols to better assess and assure safety and serviceability of highway bridges. These tools include an overall, integrated approach to bridge analysis, design, evaluation and load carrying capacity (load rating). Present-day design specifications (LRFD) have assured safety by analyzing the effect of heavy, legal trucks throughout the United States, and applying calibration protocol utilizing limited Canadian site statistics. However, the calibration does not include serviceability calibration to assure bridge serviceability and performance, and does not utilize comprehensive statistics available in the U.S. Therefore, it is desirable to identify design practices, design truck assessments, and detailed code calibration procedures utilized in other countries to assure the safety and serviceability of newly design bridges.

Further, the new AASHTO Manual for Bridge Evaluation was developed to assist bridge owners by establishing inspection, evaluation, load rating and posting practices and procedures. The Load and Resistance Factor (LRFR) load rating section of the manual is based on reliability theories to assure a certain level of safety for members and systems against truck traffic. However, certain serviceability checks were left optional as they are perceived to restrict the movement of goods. It is unclear as to whether or not making these checks optional would have an effect of the service life of the aging U.S. bridge infrastructure. Therefore, it is desirable to identify evaluation (load carrying assessment) practices and quantify the required level of safety and performance utilized in other countries to avoid failures, serviceability concerns, unnecessary expenditures and traffic restrictions.

Finally, knowledge and software have evolved to enable moving away from girder-by-girder approximate procedures to a system analysis utilizing advanced finite elements analyses. However, current U.S. specifications and practice still rely heavily on simplified, approximate analyses to determine the structural effects of vehicular loading on bridge girders. Problems contributing to impeding the utilization of advanced analysis in design and evaluation include the lack of software, lack of training, lack of specifications, complexity, and perceived high cost-to-benefit ratio. A growing number of bridge owners and experienced engineers in the U.S. are seeking to expand and mainstream the use of more rigorous design and evaluation approaches in everyday practice for both simple and complex bridges to achieve more economical use of materials, better understand the structural reliability, and assure the traveling public a quantifiable level of safety and serviceability.

The purpose of this international scan is to identify best practices and processes for consideration by U.S. engineers to put these approaches into practice in the U.S. The scan will focus on the following areas:

• Safety and Serviceability - Design and Construction
• Safety and Serviceability - Operations
• Refined Analysis - Design, Construction, and Operations

Linking Transportation Performance and Accountability

July 15- August 8, 2009
Australia, New Zealand, UK and Sweden

The combined investment by all levels of government in transportation in the United States has increased significantly over the past decade and has had a positive effect on the overall physical condition of the transportation infrastructure and equipment. Despite the historic investment, operational performance has steadily deteriorated over the past decade. Additional increases in transportation investment from all levels of government would be needed to maintain the current conditions and performance levels of the highways and transit services. (USDOT 2004 Conditions and Performance Report to Congress).

As most states are under pressure to demonstrate good governance and accountability with their legislators and the public, a common theme, "Accountability and Performance-The Link to State Funding," emerged during the Board of Directors' Retreat Session at the 2006 AASHTO Spring Meeting.

This international scan will look at how other countries are perceived as being very transparent and accountable with published sets of measures and how these measures tie to national level or state/provincial/metropolitan budgets for consideration by their legislatures/parliaments. Specifically, the objective of this scan is to examine how other countries effectively manage, explain, deliver and increase their transportation program through:

• Identifying, evaluating and understanding performance expectations, goals, and targets from the public, legislatures and parliaments;
• proposing funding levels that the public, legislatures and parliaments are willing to support to meet the established or proposed goals, targets, and performance expectations;
• setting performance targets and measuring performance;
• effectively managing their program to meet established performance targets;
• demonstrating to the legislatures/parliaments and public that they have achieved the best possible return on taxpayers investment;
• tying accountability, performance and transparency to national and state/provincial/metropolitan budgets, and;
• gaining commitments from their legislatures/parliaments to support revenue increases that will meet or exceed expected performance targets.

Reducing Congestion and Funding Transportation Using Road Pricing

August 30 - September 14, 2009
Countries to be identified

The purpose of the scan is to identify new ideas and practical, workable models for integrating variable road pricing approaches into State, local and regional policies, programs, and practices. This scan will involve a review of urban and nation-wide road pricing, so that U.S. participants can develop an understanding of the political, institutional, and technical factors that contributed to their successful implementation, and in some cases to their rejection. This insight will help scan participants to develop and apply new strategies for building support and overcoming obstacles to implementing broader forms of variable road pricing in U.S. jurisdictions. Finally, the scan will help focus attention on the potential for road pricing as an effective part of 21st Century transportation operations policies, programs, and practices.

The scan will focus on the following topics:

• Urban and nation-wide pricing, with particular emphasis on toll-based applications
• Strategies for addressing political history, and regulatory and legal barriers, particularly those related to public acceptance
• Institutional arrangements and inter-agency collaboration to enable effective applications of pricing techniques
• Implementation strategies and costs
• Experience with quantifying projected and actual benefits (e.g., reduction of congestion, safety, and environmental) and developing performance metrics
• Relationship between variable road pricing as a revenue stream and an operational strategy to reduce congestion, improve safety, or enhance the environment
• Equity concerns, particularly re-distributional issues and strategies related to the toll revenues
• Relevance and importance of including supporting strategies such as transit enhancements, system operations strategies and technologies, and travel demand management.