Book Description

Weather can have a profound, negative impact on mobility and traveler safety. Nationally, adverse weather is a factor in 1.5 million car and truck crashes and costs society nearly $42 billion annually. Through intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and better road weather information, winter maintenance managers, traffic managers, and travelers now have the opportunity to manage traffic and travel to more effectively ameliorate weather's safety and productivity challenges. In the past few years, weather-related transportation issues have become a priority for the national research agenda. On June 14, 2004, the Iowa Department of Transportation hosted a regional, multi-disciplined forum. The purpose of the forum was to identify Midwest regional research and technology transfer priorities in weather-related transportation research and to discuss the possibility of establishing a regional research program to support the national road weather research agenda. The June 14 Weather Issues in Transportation focus group forum provided an opportunity for transportation agency professionals, professionals representing transportation users, commercial weather data and forecast providers, and members of the meteorology community to express their priorities for weather-related transportation research and technology transfer. Focus groups were organized into the following eight initiatives: (1) Weather Providers, (2) Weather Users, (3) Maintenance Equipment & Technologies, (4) Maintenance Management, (5) Maintenance Operations, (6) Traffic Operations & Safety, (7) Intermodal Traffic, and (8) Design & Construction. The focus groups identified and ranked 25 research problem statements that would require over $20 million for first-year funding if all projects were started in the same year.