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Highways of the Future – A Strategic Plan for Highway Infrastructure Research and Development

Highways are the backbone of the American transportation system, moving the vast majority of the Nation?s products and goods, and providing the vital link between all modes of transportation. As the foundation of the Nation?s economy, highways have made it possible for the American people to enjoy, benefit from, and essentially take for granted, the ability to safely and efficiently travel wherever and whenever they wish.

As the Nation moves into the heart of the 21st century, the highway system is largely a victim of its own success. The economic growth made possible by the highway system has fueled tremendous increases in the demands placed on it. At the same time, the Nation?s investment in highway infrastructure has not kept pace with these growing demands. These circumstances present highway agencies with many critical challenges, including:
?The need to extend the service life of existing highway infrastructure.
?The need to build, rehabilitate, and rebuild infrastructure in ways that:
?Minimizes the impact of construction activities on already congested highways.
?Optimizes the overall cost/benefit for the improved infrastructure.
?Facilitates future adaptation to accommodate changing demands.
?The need to effectively address the mobility challenges posed by natural or man-made extreme events and hazards?including earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, collisions, and acts of terrorism?by designing and constructing less vulnerable infrastructure to minimize loss, and employing rapid restoration techniques to restore functionality after a disaster occurs.

Effectively addressing these challenges will require a multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and collaborative approach. Success will require active involvement on the part of highway stakeholders from all levels of government; the highway design, materials, and construction communities; and academia. Success also will require work spanning the full technology continuum?from fundamental sciences and advanced research to create new knowledge, materials, and systems; through applied R&D; to effective technology transfer and deployment?as well as policy and program management initiatives.

This strategic plan addresses one facet of the required approach?the work that needs to be pursued by the FHWA Office of Infrastructure R&D. In addition to guiding FHWA?s infrastructure R&D, it will serve as a foundation for collaboration with other FHWA units and offices, and stakeholders throughout the highway community.

The approach articulated in this plan is founded on the ideal that FHWA?s emphasis should be on a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and crosscutting approach to highway infrastructure research. This approach recognizes the following principles.
?Pavements and bridges function as an integrated system, instead of independent elements within a highway
? Although the fundamental structure and components of pavements and bridges are quite distinct, some R&D needs are common to both.
? Only by using all facilities and assets available within FHWA?s Office of Infrastructure R&D, and working collaboratively with counterparts in other FHWA offices and stakeholders throughout the highway community, will we be able to leverage our resources with the other resources required to address the wide range of needs and issues in the near and long terms

Mulityear Plan for Bridge and Tunnel Security Research, Development, and Deployment

Protecting critical infrastructure against terrorist events is a need imposed on us by the events of September 11, 2001.

Although the transportation community has always responded to natural hazards, and there are procedures in place to design for and handle these, managing for terrorist events presents a new challenge. Transportation is essential for mobility and commerce, and it plays a critical role in times of crisis. Our highways are essential for evacuation, and in the response and recovery effort. However, our highways are also vulnerable, and can be used by terrorists as a means to carry out an attack. Because the challenge is tremendous, the Federal Highway Administration has been proactive by reaching out to stakeholders to identify critical gaps and needs. This has been accomplished through several forums as presented in this report. The input provided by experts in the field of bridge engineering and others has been evaluated and a program proposed to design highway bridges and tunnels for security.

Strategic Plan for Environmental Research

Development of a world-class transportation system means achieving our Nation?s mobility goals while ensuring that transportation decisions protect and enhance the natural environment and our communities. The transportation system is vital to our economy and quality of life, provides worldwide access to products and markets, and supports our Nation?s productivity. It also provides valued mobility for people, including access to jobs, services and recreational opportunities.
Yet transportation also creates unintended consequences on the natural environment and communities. Construction, maintenance, and operation of the transportation system affect air, water, soil, and biological resources, as well as neighborhoods and communities. This reality has imposed tremendous responsibilities on the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that go far beyond its traditional role of enhancing mobility. Transportation agencies must comply with various federal environmental statutes and regulations as they
carry out transportation planning and project development.
However, compliance with the law is only part of FHWA?s obligation to the environment. FHWA is committed to environmental stewardship, striving to ensure that all of its programs and activities preserve and enhance the natural environment, the built environment, and the social environment of our Nation?s communities. This commitment requires a vigorous program of research, technology transfer, and training. FHWA?s Environmental Research Program is designed to meet this need.

Grand Challenges: A Research Plan for Winter Maintenance

The impacts of winter weather on both safety and mobility are substantial and well known. Accordingly, the need to perform winter maintenance activities on roadways is readily apparent. However, changing social needs, combined with often increasing environmental awareness mean that the methods used to perform winter maintenance are and have been changing. A number of obvious factors, such as climate change, sustainability, environmental stewardship, and changes in how goods are delivered by way of the surface transportation system, are all impacting how winter operations are conducted. These changes are also creating novel constraints on the methods that are available for winter maintenance–the ?tools in the toolbox.? There is thus a need to identify the grand challenges that face winter highway maintenance operations, and to determine the research needed to address these challenges.

This study was requested by AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) and specifically by the Standing Committee on Highways (SCOH) on behalf of Subcommittee on Maintenance. The members of the task group that guided this study are listed in the Acknowledgements. The study took as a starting point the various research that has been conducted in the field of winter maintenance, together with various research needs statements developed by certain pooled fund groups (e.g., Clear Roads, Aurora, and the Peer Exchange meetings). Appendix B includes a bibliography of reports and other technical documents that helped to inform the discussions in the workshop. The objective of the study was to identify the grand challenges which must be met to allow winter maintenance operations to successfully adapt to the changing constraints that these operations face. The order in which the research areas within the grand challenges should be addressed has not been considered in great detail, primarily because such ordering will depend on the availability of research funds going forward. Some research areas must obviously be addressed before others, simply because those other areas build upon the work that will be done.

The method used to develop the grand challenges and their respective components follows that used in similar projects for the AASHTO Highway Subcommittee on Bridges and Structures and the AASHTO Joint Technical Committee on Pavements. A workshop was convened to review the recent research findings and to develop and refine the grand challenges in winter maintenance. The workshop was conducted on August 2-3, 2010 at the National Academies? Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, California. Participants included members from the AASHTO Highway Subcommittee on Maintenance (SCOM), i.e., individuals from state departments of transportation), personnel from public agencies that conduct winter maintenance, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), academia, and consultants. A list of participants is provided in Appendix A. The information resulting from the workshop is a set of critical issues in winter maintenance (termed ?grand challenges?) that would, if solved, lead to significant advances in winter highway maintenance operations. The grand challenges will provide guidance to SCOM and others in identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing research problem suggestions to ensure that the various research efforts being undertaken in the field of winter maintenance are focused in such a way as to provide a quality-based research program that will not only be closely aligned with the needs of the winter maintenance community but will also be as efficient as possible in developing new methods to meet those needs.

Pavement Management Roadmap

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sponsored the development of a Pavement Management Roadmap to help identify the steps needed to address current gaps in pavement management and to establish research and development initiatives and priorities. This document presents an overview of the 10-year Pavement Management Roadmap, which can be used to guide new research, development, and technology transfer opportunities that will lead to improved approaches to pavement management.

The roadmap was intented from the beginning to be a collaborative process that would involve representatives from each of the various stakeholder groups that either use pavement management data, support the use of pavement management concepts, or provide technical assistance or training to current or future pavement management practitioners. The contents of this roadmap were derived from a series of stakeholder workshops in which representatives from state and local agencies, academia, private industry (including data collection and software vendors), FHWA, and others met to discuss and prioritize the needs of pavement management
professionals. The resulting needs were organized and grouped into one of the following four themes that emerged from the process: Theme 1: Use of Existing Tools and Technology; Theme 2: Institutional and Organizational Issues; Theme 3: The Broad Role of Pavement Management; and Theme 4: New Tools, Methodologies, and Technology.

The executive summary to this report is published as a stand alone document, entitled Pavement Management Roadmap ? Executive Summary (FHWA-HIF-11-014).

2011 FHWA Infrastructure Research and Technology Strategic Plan

This 2011 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Infrastructure Research and Technology (R&T) Strategic Plan (April 2012) describes the direction and outcomes that will be pursued through FHWA?s Infrastructure R&T program for the next 5 or more years. It is founded on and informed by input
provided by a broad array of highway stakeholders assembled through formal and informal mechanisms.

Additional details concerning the specific work that will be undertaken by the FHWA Offices of Infrastructure, Infrastructure Research and Development, and Technical Services will be provided in a supporting FHWA Infrastructure R&T program roadmap that will be reviewed and updated on an annual basis. Comments concerning this strategic plan and other input for consideration in the roadmap development can be submitted to FHWA Office of Infrastructure at NT@dot.gov. Other mechanisms for obtaining stakeholder input will also be used.

This report supersedes the earlier published version of the FHWA Infrastructure R&T Strategic Plan (FHWA-HRT-12-028); it contains editorial updates to both content and format.

Operations Data for Planning Applications: Identifying Needs, Opportunities, and Best Practices

On May 4, 2005, the Operations Data for Planning Applications: Identifying Needs, Opportunities, and Best Practices Peer Exchange was held in Washington, D.C. The goal of the peer exchange was to identify opportunities to improve the linkages between transportation planning and operations. Given recent technological advancements, operations data exist for the
development of system performance measures, improvements to travel models, and a greater understanding of traffic condition dynamics (e.g., characteristics on nonrecurring congestion).

Invitations to the peer exchange were extended to state departments of transportation (DOT), metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), and the private sector. Participants were
selected from across the county to discuss their utilization of operations data in the transportation planning process. Appendix A contains the list of peer exchange participants.

Before the meeting, participants were also asked to respond to a set of questions about the relationship between operations data and planning processes to create the foundation for the
meeting and facilitate discussion. The section on peer exchange material contains a summary of these responses (complete responses are located in Appendix B). The section entitled Summary Concerns summarizes the meeting discussions including some ideas on linking operations data
and transportation planning, additional observations from recent experiences, potential next steps, and existing resources.

Peer exchanges offer a unique opportunity to not only engage in discussion and share experiences and lessons learned but also to identify potential solutions and prioritize areas for
additional advancement through research, technical assistance, and other activities. This report serves to document and further distribute the issues and insights raised during the meeting.