Work Zone Designer Series – Work Zone Analysis in the Design Process

Most State and many other transportation departments in the U.S. maintain roadway and/or work zone design manuals containing State specific regulations, policies, and design guidance for their designers and consultants to prepare project work zone transportation management plans. However, those manuals vary widely in the depth of coverage and the work zone design topics offered. This series of publications are for work zone design manual decision makers, editors, and subject matter experts to develop or enhance their own guidance materials.

“Information for Work Zone Designers – Work Zone Analysis in the Design Process” is part of a series on various work zone design topics. This publication focuses on how capacity and queue analysis can be considered in designing safe work zones. The first aspect is the impact of lane width in attaining safe speeds one of the elements of the Safe System approach. The second aspect is work zone road user costs for time-related incentive/disincentive to reduce the duration of work zones.

This publication is not a stand-alone document for designing work zone traffic control plans. State, county, local, and tribal transportation agency subject matter experts can use this material as a reference to augment their own work zone transportation management planning manuals and guidance materials, and work zone design policies and procedures.

The publication material has been primarily obtained through a literature search including State design manuals, noteworthy state-of-the-practices both published and unpublished, and based on the authors’ previous research findings and experiences.