A good understanding of the relationship between highway performance, such as crash rates andtravel delays, and winter road maintenance activities under different winter weather and trafficconditions is essential to the development of cost-effective winter road maintenance policies andstandards, operation strategies and technologies. This research is specifically concerned about themobility benefit of winter road maintenance. A microscopic traffic simulation model is used toinvestigate the traffic patterns under adverse weather and road surface conditions. A segment of theQueen Elizabeth Way (QEW) located in the Great Toronto Area, Ontario is used in the simulationstudy. Observed field traffic data from the study segment was used in the calibration of thesimulation model. Different scenarios of traffic characteristics and road surface conditions as a resultof weather events and maintenance operations are simulated and travel time is used as a performancemeasure for quantifying the effects of winter snow storms on the mobility of a highway section. Themodeling results indicate that winter road maintenance aimed at achieving bare pavement conditionsduring heavy snowfall could reduce the total delay by 5 to 36 percent, depending on the level ofcongestion of the highway. The simulation results are then applied in a case study for assessing twomaintenance policy decisions at a maintenance route level.
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Quantifying the Mobility Benefits of Winter Road Maintenance – A Simulation Based Approach
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