SHRP 2 S-03 Roadway Measurement System Evaluation Rodeo

                                                                  
Skip Navigation LinksHome > S-03 Information  
Skip Navigation Links.  

S-03 Information

Background

Congress created the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) to address the challenges of moving people and goods efficiently and safely on the nation’s highways. SHRP 2 addresses four strategic focus areas.

  1. Safety:  The role of human behavior in highway safety.
  2. Renewal:  Rapid highway renewal.
  3. Reliability:  Congestion reduction through improved travel time reliability.
  4. Capacity:  Transportation planning that better integrates community, economic, and environmental considerations into new highway capacity.

The SHRP 2 safety research plan includes two tracks: a large field study of driving behavior using volunteer drivers and a sophisticated instrumentation package installed in the volunteers’ vehicles (in-vehicle study) and a video system to record movements of all vehicles at specific road sites such as an intersection (site-based study). The in-vehicle study consists of three areas: 1) study design & field data collection, 2) roadway data and 3) analysis. Project S-03, “Roadway Measurement System Evaluation”, fits under the roadway data area of the in-vehicle study.

The SHRP 2 Project S-03 will identify critical roadway feature characteristics and evaluate the ability of vendors to collect the data at specified accuracy levels. The rodeo itself will also be useful in identifying reasonable and technically possible accuracy levels. The selection of the data and associated accuracy levels depends heavily on the specific applications of the data.

To collect these critical roadway data elements, SHRP 2 will require the services of a commercial mobile data collection vendor as part of Project S-04, “Acquisition of Roadway Information.” Before procuring these services SHRP 2 must first evaluate the existing commercial data collection capabilities. The S-03 project will perform that evaluation.

Research Objectives

The objective of the SHRP 2 Project S-03 is to develop, organize, and conduct a roadway measurement system evaluation (rodeo). The goals of this research are as follows:

  1. Pre-qualify commercial data collection vendors for bidding on the SHRP 2 Project S-04:  Aquisition of Roadway Information.(See "S-04 Information" page)
  2. Evaluate the precision and accuracy of the mobile roadway and pavement inventory data collection services as relates to selected roadway safety data elements collected at highway speeds.