Midwest Smart Work-Zone Initiative Focuses on Work-Zone Safety

Moving traffic safely and efficiently through work zones is a major national issue. This past year, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska decided to create the Mid-America Smart Work-Zone Deployment Initiative. This initiative is guided by the FHWA Midwest Smart Work-Zone Consortium, State highway agencies, and the Mid-America Transportation Center (MATC) located at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Iowa State University. Twenty private work-zone technology providers are participating in this effort. Several technologies will be deployed in State work zones throughout the 1999 construction season.
Three workshops were conducted to generate work-zone safety suggestions, build partnerships, and assign technologies to work-zone projects. The first workshop was entitled “Establishing the Requirements.” The American Automobile Association, senior citizens, law enforcement, emergency services, highway contractors, and State highway agency construction personnel were included in the target group. In the second workshop, “Defining the Solutions,” the audience of private sector technology providers were asked to develop innovative ideas or technologies, to meet the needs identified in the first workshop. The third workshop was titled “Selecting the Technologies.” It matched technology providers with individual States and, in many cases, specific projects.