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Investigating the Necessity of and Prioritizing Pavement Markings on Low-Volume Roads

Project Details
STATUS

Completed

START DATE

04/01/16

END DATE

04/30/18

FOCUS AREAS

Infrastructure

RESEARCH CENTERS InTrans, CTRE, Iowa LTAP
SPONSORS

Minnesota Department of Transportation

Researchers
Principal Investigator
David Veneziano

Safety Circuit Rider, LTAP

Co-Principal Investigator
Omar Smadi

Director, CTRE

About the research

The installation and maintenance of pavement markings represents a significant financial investment for local agencies. Local agencies need a mechanism to better understand the value, cost, and need for markings along their roadways to make the best use of available budgets. This project developed a prioritization approach and spreadsheet tool (link provided in box 15) to assist local agencies in meeting this need. Multicriterion decision analysis using the simple additive weighting method was employed to assess the multiple factors/criteria that affect pavement marking decisions. An Excel spreadsheet tool was developed to implement this approach using different pavement marking alternatives, including centerlines, edgelines, centerlines and edgelines, high-visibility markings, and enhanceddurability markings. The criteria considered by the process include project type, County Roadway Safety Plan (CRSP) rating, functional classification, pavement condition, traffic volume, age of current markings, pavement width, preferences for marking costs, desired marking durability, and crash reduction potential. This tool is posted on the Local Road and Research Board (LRRB) website in the “Resources” section at the following URL: https://lrrb.org/ resources/. Factor weights are used to assign a relative importance to each of these criteria for a respective alternative compared to other alternatives. The result is a performance rating score for each marking alternative relative to all model criteria and factors that provide users with information on the relative performance of different marking alternatives in comparison to one another and an estimated project cost for the highest ranking alternative for a site. The highest scoring alternative represents the marking that should be considered for use. Additionally, the tool ranks all sites being evaluated compared to one another based on the highest rating scores from each individual site.

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