Agile Work Zone Management Based on Probe Traffic Data

Peak period lane closures can result in significant queueing on major interstates. As a result, many state agencies have a lane closure policy in place based upon historical time of day and day of week traffic volumes. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a significant reduction in traffic volumes in Indiana during the March-May 2020 period. In some periods, traffic volume reductions were over 35%. During this period, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) implemented an agile lane closure policy based upon observed volumes and monitored those exceptions using commercial probe data. This paper reports on the analysis of 11 lane closure exceptions on 4 interstate roadways (I-65, I-69, I-70 and I-265) across Indiana, lasting from 36 days to 41 days. Congestion comparisons have been made for each of the 11 exceptions for the same time period in 2020 and 2019. Even with the lane closures exceptions, the study found 10 of 11 sections actually had fewer mile-hours of congestion and the total mile-hours of congestion for all 11 sections was reduced from 1281 mile-hours in 2019 to 244 mile-hours in 2020. Overall, crashes decreased from 127 in 2019 to 70 in 2020. Year-over-year congestion statistics and crash counts for these exceptions demonstrated significant opportunities for agile work zone lane closure practices when they are coupled with close monitoring of crash and congestion data.