Workshops

Workshop 1: Connected and Autonomous Vehicles and Highway Design

Workshop hosts:

Ravi Chaurdhary, MSc (Royal HaskoningDHV, Netherlands)
Marco van der Linde (Royal HaskoningDHV, Netherlands)
David McDonald (Hanson Professional Services Inc., US)

Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) are expected to transform drastically our way of transportation in the future. Expected benefits include a safer, less polluting, more efficient, and inclusive way of transportation. However, a few questions from the Road Authority’s (RAs) perspective, around CAVs, remain:

How should Road Authorities, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Tech Industry, etc. prepare for this future?

• What role do they have to play? What do they need from the other stakeholders?
• How can they facilitate the transition towards fully connected and automated driving?
• Which geometric design choices should they make (or not make) now to facilitate this onset of CAVs?

This workshop, therefore, aims at assessing the impact of connected and automated driving on highway design. By means of a design hackathon, specific highway design cases will be studied, and alternative solutions presented and discussed. Participants of the workshop will actively participate in group case studies and will present and motivate their choices to the other participants. The workshop will lead to a more detailed insight and knowledge base for each stakeholder about the measures they are able to take and what they need from other stakeholders.

Workshop 2: Innovative Intersection and Interchange Design

Workshop hosts
Jonathan Reid (Arcadis, US)
René Walhout (Rijkswaterstaat, The Netherlands)

The first edition of FHWA’s Alternative Intersection and Interchange Guide was published in 2010, and since that time, many countries have developed, refined and installed alternative intersections in locations where conventional intersection improvements have been either too costly or impactful. In 2014, FHWA released four guides on the Median U-turn, Restricted Crossing U-turn and continuous flow intersections and the Diverging Dimond interchange, and other Guides and research are continually being developed and updated.

The main purpose of the FHWA Guides and other national publications on Alternative Intersection and Interchange Design (AIID) are to provide planning and design guidance and construction and user experience on a wide variety of AIID’s. Practitioners are also encouraged to understand the operational and safety principles of AIID’s and apply them in unique and complex contexts in order to improve intersection efficiency and safety. This workshop will review current knowledge, state-of-practice and challenges and opportunities for AIID’s to become more commonplace when considering intersection improvement alternatives.

The format of this workshop will be composed of three parts:

1. An introduction of common AIID principles;
2. A series of short presentations (10-15 minutes) on current research, implementations and experience with various AIID’s introduced by selected speakers from different countries;
3. Participants will receive a case project, inclusive of maps, aerials, traffic data and improvement objectives and work in groups to prepare and present an alternative design solution.

Workshop 3: Access Management

Workshop hosts
Chris Huffman P.E. (Huffman Corridor Consulting, NHI Instructor)
Kristine Connolly, P.E. (Kittelson & Associates, Inc.)
Prof. Basil Psarianos (Technical University of Athens, Greece)

Connection (Access) Management should be viewed through three distinct lenses: 1) connection of private property and public transport in ways that are safe and efficient, 2) connection of activity centers in ways that are reliable and resilient, and 3) connection of people to place in ways that are equitable and sustainable. This workshop focuses primarily upon connection of private property to public roadways through the synergy of: access (the physical connection between private property and public way), median (safe and efficient flow of traffic, but also non-motorized user refuge and beautification), intersection (how many intersections, but also their geometric design and control), and curbside management (reservation of transit stops and pick-up/drop-off zones). The often misunderstood or overlooked benefits of thoughtful connection management translate into economic value to the public and to private equity investors are explored. These decisions must be socially accepted and not to the expense of traffic operation, road safety, environmental and livability values. The interactions of sometimes competing regulatory and social priorities are a key point of discussion. This workshop will demonstrate the policy, geometric, and economic value of good connection management by applying research developed in the Access Management Communication Toolkit developed for NCHRP Project 25-47: How to Measure and Communicate the Benefits of Access Management. Together, we will compare and contrast diverse contributors to connectivity, examining prioritization of different elements such as: prioritizing transit service over on-street parking, prioritizing freight transport over walkability, or prioritizing safety features over landscaping features. Participants will engage in hands-on exercises and discussions to understand and develop an intuition for the interaction and sensitivity of both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Learning objectives
• Explain the concept of connection management through the lenses of safety, mobility, economy, and livability.
• Understand how connection management is integrated into transportation and land-use.
• Explain the true costs of poor connection management decisions using quantitative and qualitative performance metrics and how to avoid planning and design deficiencies with negative societal impacts.
• Compare and contrast differences in practice around the world and explain best practices.

Workshop 4: AASHTO Highway Safety Manual and PIARC Road Safety Manual

Workshop hosts
John Milton (Washington DOT, US)

Fatal and serious injury road crashes continue to be a significant concern worldwide as these crashes continues to rise in many countries, and particularly in lower and middle income countries where crashes involving vulnerable road users are particularly high. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials developed the Highway Safety Manual, while in the same timeframe the World Road Association (PIARC) developed the Road Safety Manual. The intent of these manuals were similar: to provide the necessary safety fundamentals and knowledge base to increase the reliability and outcome of safety programs. However, the basis of these manuals is somewhat different. The AASHTO Highway Safety Manual relies primarily upon use of statistical methods to develop reliable estimates of crash potential. Using these tools provide for a more reliable approach to program and project level decision-making. On the other hand, the PIARC RSM provides for the knowledge necessary to deliver a thorough Safety Program based on the Safe System Approach where risk based assessments using tools such as iRAP are more prevalent.

This workshop is well timed as the HSM 2nd edition is intended for delivery in late 2020, and the update PIARC manual was released in October 2019. This workshop will cover key concepts of both manuals, highlighting the Safe Systems approach, the predictive methods of the HSM and the value of application in planning, design, and operations. The workshop will present practical examples and case studies demonstrating how nominal and substantive safety work; and participants will learn how safety has advanced the past twenty years.

Workshop 5: Connected and Autonomous Vehicles and Urban Street Design

Workshop host
Maaike Snelder (TNO, The Netherlands)

Automated driving might change the future of mobility drastically. The fully automated future is often envisioned with exciting possibilities, yet a smooth transition period is the key to a successful automated future. This workshop focuses on the transition period with a mix of different levels of automation in urban regions. We aim to shed light on the following questions:

1. On which roads and intersections can level 3-4 automated vehicles safely operate in urban regions?
2. What are the requirements for physical infrastructure?
3. Can we generalize selection rules based on road and intersection attributes?

We will have a structured discussion based on a large set of systematically chosen pictures of different types of situations (i.e., based on road and intersection types) in the Netherlands and in the United States and categorized based on several criteria (e.g., road type, road function, intersection type, etc.). Participants will be asked to judge whether it is possible and safe to facilitate automated driving in each situation. Also the reasons behind these choices will be discussed. At the end the results will be analyzed and generalized in order to answer the three questions mentioned above.

Workshop 6: Cycle Facilities

Workshop hosts
Rico Andriesse (Goudappel Coffeng, Netherlands)
Jeremy Chrzan (Toole Design, US)

The Netherlands are famous for the extensive use of the bicycle in cities all over the country. The bicycle network of safe cycle routes and low-speed residential streets plays an important role in this success. This network was not built overnight. Step by step the Dutch developed their mobility strategy, based on an equal role for all modes. This workshop will give insights on the basics of Dutch bicycle planning and design and new developments in the Netherlands and internationally. The main focus is on situations with mixed traffic. What’s the Dutch secret there of cycling safely and happily with so many?

The session will have four short introductions on the following topics:

1. Mixed traffic and bicycle streets
2. Shared Space
3. Effects on car congestion: case of San Francisco Bay Area
4. Cycling Happiness and Travel Time Perception: Netherlands versus Denmark

After the four presentations, participants can discuss in smaller groups and bring their own cases.

Workshop 7: Roadside Safety

Workshop hosts
Govert Schermers (SWOV, The Netherlands)
Tracy Borchardt (AECOM)

PROGReSS is a project being carried out as part of the 2016 CEDR Safety call. In fact, in Europe a high proportion of crashes remain associated with (unsafe) road sides and verges, namely single vehicle crashes (crashes with objects in the verge or roll-overs) and loss-of-control crashes resulting in head-on and other crash types.

The PROGReSS (Provision of Guidelines for Road Side Safety) project combines the results of a status quo review of available EU roadside safety standards and guidelines with the experiences of National Road Authorities (NRA) in applying these in the design, operation and maintenance phases of EU roads with speed limits higher than 70km/h. PROGReSS brings together state of the art (theoretical) requirements as defined by current national and international standards regulating the safe design and operation of road sides along higher order EU roads with the practice of applying these requirements and dealing with the difficulties of making compromises and design concessions driven by the reality of project constraints. PROGReSS has developed a tool to assess and evaluate roadside design and management policies. It provides recommendations to improve both the quality and use of roadside safety design, operations and maintenance thereby increasing the effectiveness of the road infrastructure safety management.

At the workshop a short presentation, summarising the project and introducing the roadside policy assessment tool, will be given. This will be followed by a hands-on demonstration in which participants will be able to apply the tool to real life situations (cases) dealing with roadside safety improvement projects.

Workshop 8: Road Design and Human Factors

Workshop hosts
Haneen Farah (Delft University, The Netherlands)
Sue Chrysler (Texas A&M Transportation Institute, US)

The first edition of the American road design guidelines, ‘A policy on geometric design of rural highways’ was released on 1954, and the Dutch design guidelines in 1975. Since then updated versions of these guidelines based on new findings from scientific research were released every couple of years.

The main purpose of the design guidelines is to guide designers in their design work and assure consistency in road design by referencing a recommended range of values for critical dimensions. Sufficient flexibility is permitted to encourage independent designs tailored to particular situations. The ultimate aim is to assure recognizable road design to road users and to build the correct road users’ expectations about the road course so as to increase the chance that they make safe and correct decisions and therefore less errors in traffic.

However, the main question is how can we take into account human factors in road design? Design guidelines are merely based on a technical world while human factors are merely based on the psychological world. How can we make them work together in order to gain better and safer road design?

Two guidelines documents exist to assist practitioners in considering human factors in roadway design. In the United States, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program Report 600 Human Factors Guidelines for Road Systems, Second Edition was published in 2012 and third edition is currently being prepared. In 2016, PIARC published Human Factors Guidelines for a Safer Man-Road Interface. Both of these documents will be featured in this workshop.

The format of this workshop will be composed of four parts:

• Firstly, an introduction to the workshop will be given;
• Secondly, a series of short presentations on the current status of human factors incorporation in road design guidelines in different countries will be given by top experts and speakers;
• Thirdly, participants will work in groups on different case studies, identifying the gaps in incorporating human factors in road design, and proposing approaches to fill these gaps;
• Fourthly, the participants will set the targets and future actions to close the gap between human factors and road design guidelines future editions by discussing how human factors can be better incorporated in road design guidelines.