Engineering at Illinois

Work Zone Traffic Management Analysis Using Analytical Methods

Course Description

This course has been developed and is being delivered under FHWA Work Zone Safety Grant program.   The course provides hands-on training on basic analytical methods (sketch planning methods) to compute work zone performance measures (WZPM). The WZPM includes to the following factors: capacity, speed, queue length, delay, and users’ costs. The capabilities and limitations of the analytical tools are discussed and basic guidance on how to use them is presented. The course is composed of 5 main modules. It covers stopped and moving queues in work zones(WZ).  Module 1 briefly reviews the necessary background material for this course. It presents basic principles of traffic flow in work zones, transportation management plans (The Rule), and other topics. Module 3 discuss the WZ capacity estimation procedures in the recently published Highway Capacity Manual (HCM 2016). Module 2 and 4 cover two (or three) different analytical methods and step-by-step procedure for computing WZPM.  These modules complement each other enabling the participants to analyze more complex WZ conditions. Module 5 discusses how to select and use the appropriate methods to evaluate various traffic management strategies in their impacts WZPM.

The course is offered free (no instructional fee).

Course Objectives:

To learn:

  1. Work zone traffic management analysis using analytical methods.
  2. Work zone performance measures computations (capacity, speed, queue length, delay, and users’ costs).
  3. Hands-on experience on solving examples problems that demonstrate how the tools can be used for evaluation of traffic management strategies or implementation of ITS in managing back-of-queue and delay.

Additional Details:

  • PRIMARY AUDIENCE:
    Technical personnel who make decisions about planning, design, operation, or management of traffic in work zones.
  • FORMAT:
    Hands-on classroom training with example problems.
  • DURATION:
    1.5 days
  • WHAT TO BRING:
    We suggest you bring your laptop if a PC Lab is not available.
  • ACCOMMODATIONS:
    You’ll need to arrange for lodging and travel on your own.

Facilities Covered:

  • Freeway (WorkZoneQ, HCM, QDAT and MODOT (or Freeval-WZ instead of the two))
  • Arterial midblock (WorkZoneQ)
  • One-lane operation on two-lane highway (HCM, WorkZoneQ)
  • Intersections (HCM, WorkZoneQ uses HCS and gives user cost).

Download:

  • to download the programs/spreadsheets ,please see the instruction at the end of Course Contents page.