| OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program |
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| Web Brief (Sep 07) |
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Bridge program mobility team wins industry excellence award
What if you could figure out a way to shrink your typical preparation time for Thanksgiving dinner from four hours to just a couple minutes?
Though they accomplished this hyper-efficiency on their computers rather than in the kitchen, that’s essentially what the mobility team on the OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program has done. The team developed a work-zone traffic analysis tool that combines historical data to create project work zone traffic scenarios in a matter of minutes. This helps staff identify periods of high- and low-traffic flow, greatly improving their ability to predict safe times to close lanes or shoulders during roadway construction.
Such analysis used to take as long as four hours. But the tool designed by the mobility team reduces that time to a matter of minutes, saving hundreds of work hours. The result is minimal delays for motorists and freight haulers traveling on Oregon’s major corridors.
ODOT’s collaboration with its bridge program management consultant, the Oregon Bridge Delivery Partners, on the Work Zone Traffic Analysis Program has earned an award from one of the most prestigious industry groups, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. AASHTO’s 2007 Team Excellence Award honors the mobility team for customizing an effective and efficient traffic analysis program.
“This program quickly gets us the information needed for the design and construction phases of bridge development so ODOT can preserve freight corridors and traffic flow,” said Irene Toews, traffic control plans quality assurance engineer with ODOT. “There are hundreds of projects in the bridge program, plus regional construction projects and highway maintenance, so we needed to develop an analysis method that could keep statewide traffic and freight moving efficiently and safely.”
ODOT’s Traffic Section developed the original work zone traffic analysis methodology on which the new program was based. The mobility team includes Toews, ODOT’s Statewide Traffic Mobility Manager Randal Thomas and ODOT’s Traffic Work Zone Analyst Tom Browning, plus team members from OBDP: Mobility Manager W.D. Baldwin, Mobility Coordinator Smith Siromaskul and Project Engineering Intern Jeremy Jackson. The 2007 Team Excellence Award is granted by AASHTO’s Standing Committee on Quality.
“This is a huge accomplishment and honor for everyone involved,” said Baldwin. “The management and support staff at ODOT and OBDP who have fostered continued improvements to this program deserve credit for having vision and allocating resources that will benefit Oregon motorists even after the bridge program is complete.”
The Work Zone Traffic Analysis Program has proved so valuable that ODOT will use the application to determine lane closure time frames and provide project coordination for construction, utility work on rights of way, surveying and routine roadway maintenance.
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