Preserving and Maintaining the Highway System: New Tools and Strategies

State highway agencies established the highway operations component of the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP). The highway operations research focused on three key areas: snow and ice control, traveler and work crew safety in temporary work zones, and pavement maintenance techniques. This article focuses on the accomplishments in each of these three areas. Four key snow and ice control products emerged from SHRP: strategies for effective anti-icing operations, enhanced road- weather information systems, new snow fence designs, and improved snowplow designs. SHRP’s focus on the safety of workers and motorists in temporary work zones produced many ideas for new work-zone safety devices, eight of which are now commercially available: a flashing Stop/Slow paddle, a portable rumble strip, an opposing-traffic-lane divider, a direction-indicator barricade, a portable all-terrain sign and stand, an intrusion alarm, a queue detector, and a mounting bracket for the truck-mounted attenuator behind a chemical spreader. To date SHRP’s pavement maintenance research has yielded several findings concerning preventive maintenance treatments and corrective maintenance procedures. More than 800 test sections at 22 test sites in the United States and Canada continue to be monitored under the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program.