Road safety award for Idaho Transportation Department and Vaisala

Vaisala's collaboration with the Idaho Transportation Department has been recognised by the US Road Safety Foundation and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as winners of the biennial National Roadway Safety Awards. The award winners were chosen for reducing fatalities and injuries on roadways through excellence and innovation in operations, planning, and design. The Idaho Transportation Department, using Vaisala's pavement sensors that calculate grip or friction values, found that this value can als
December 3, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
144 Vaisala's collaboration with the 7477 Idaho Transportation Department has been recognised by the US 776 Road Safety Foundation and 831 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as winners of the biennial National Roadway Safety Awards. The award winners were chosen for reducing fatalities and injuries on roadways through excellence and innovation in operations, planning, and design.
 
The Idaho Transportation Department, using Vaisala's pavement sensors that calculate grip or friction values, found that this value can also be used to measure the success of the department's winter road maintenance operations.  Idaho personnel developed several benchmark indexes that calculated operational performance, and were able to normalise any variance caused by storms and seasons.

Vaisala supported the development by integrating the indexes into their RoadDSS Navigator software which allows for quick review of the indexes alongside other decision-making tools.
 
Paul Bridge, offering manager and meteorologist for Vaisala Roads, says: "We are very proud to hear that our technology has been acknowledged as the most innovative in the industry. This is very much our goal with regards to providing information services; working with our client to develop additional value from our sensing technology. You know it's a winner when our client refers to us as their partner."
 
Vaisala's road weather system provides real value to winter maintenance operations in Idaho. "We had a pretty significant year, this year (2012-13) and preliminary estimates show that we have had a 10-20 per cent reduction in our US$7million dollar chemical usage budget," says Dennis Jensen, mobility services-winter maintenance coordinator, Idaho Transportation Department.
Air Quality & Weather Systems

Related Content

  • Colorado congestion cure from Daktronics
    June 14, 2016
    Daktronics is here at ITS America 2016 San Jose to highlight an impressive array of dynamic message signs (DMS) and an equally impressive recent deployment. Ski traffic congestion in Colorado had become extremely challenging for Colorado DoT with traffic rushing out to the slopes on Fridays and hurrying home on Sundays. Rather than the time and cost of building a whole new road to keep travellers moving, CDoT brought an economical solution to life: the I-70 Mountain Express Lane.
    Read More
  • Cost benefit: just $25 boosts pedestrian safety in Florida
    April 29, 2019
    A relatively straightforward change to the way that pedestrians cross the street in a Florida city has made a significant safety improvement. And what’s more, it was cheap, finds David Crawford Installing a lead pedestrian interval (LPI) system at 25 central business district signalised intersections in the Florida city of Lakeland has cut numbers of incidents involving pedestrians by some 60% - at a cost of US$25 for 30 minutes' work, according to traffic operations manager Angelo Rao.
    Read More
  • USDOT launches EAR workshop on vehicle noise
    August 2, 2013
    The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is to convene a two-day n Exploratory Advanced Research (EAR) Program workshop on the use of vehicle noise for roadway, bridge, and infrastructure monitoring. To be held at FHWA's Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in McLean, Virginia from 12:30 pm on 20n August to 12:30 pm on 21 August 2013, the workshop will provide participants from academia, the private sector, and government with an opportunity to discuss recent research and methodologies for measuring int
    Read More
  • Turning information into stories
    April 16, 2018
    IBTTA says its TollMiner tool can transform transportation planning. Here, the tolling organisation explains how it works – and what part it might play in Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan. Imagine being able to turn the black-and-white numbers in a spreadsheet into graphics and visualisations that tell a compelling story about essential transportation infrastructure. Having easy access to the solid, reliable data you need to plan surface transportation projects and assign project resources based on
    Read More

Highlighted Content