Managing transportation during highway reconstruction: A recommended process

Major highway reconstruction can cause significant disruptions to existing travel patterns and economic activity. Reducing these impacts on travelers, shippers, businesses and residents requires that innovative and effective transportation management actions be developed and implemented. This paper reports the major findings and recommendations of a research study on managing transportation during highway, reconstruction. The primary objectives of the study were

–	to investigate and document the critical interrelationships among state-of-the-art reconstruction and scheduling techniques, traffic accommodation strategies, construction quality control measures, and project planning and evaluation processes, and
–	to formulate and recommend a corridor transportation management process that can be used to develop, implement and evaluate a transportation management plan of strategies to mitigate the corridor-wide impacts of major highway reconstruction.

The recommended process consists of five chronological phases, each composed of many tasks having related focuses within the overall process. Each task is designed to contribute to the common objective of seeing that an effective transportation management plan for mitigating travel impacts throughout the project corridor is successfully realized. This process was formulated on the basis of information collected on 25 highway reconstruction projects throughout the United States by way of site visits, direct meetings with project personnel, requests for documentation, and phone interviews.