With many new roadway construction opportunities becoming available through IIJA-related grant funding, effective and responsible work zone planning and management will increasingly play a key role in project deployment.

Iteris is revolutionizing work zone planning and maintenance of traffic (MOT) with ClearGuide® mobility analytics software.

During roadway construction projects:

• Traditional MOT is based on working hours and requires temporary traffic sensor installation.
• With ClearGuide, traffic conditions on construction projects are continuously monitored 24/7 for vehicle delay during construction on both the roadway and its adjacent detour streets to provide expected vehicle delay estimates.
• This monitoring occurs entirely from a single, simple UI.
• The ClearGuide platform can serve multiple departments within an agency, or outside contractors working for that agency.
• Using ClearGuide, maintenance of traffic does not require the installation of temporary traffic sensors, unlike traditional maintenance of traffic operations.

The ClearGuide way of managing work zones is:

• More efficient—By avoiding field equipment deployment to capture pre-project baseline data; real-time and historic data are readily available. 24/7 monitoring offers tens of thousands of person hours of operational support. After any new issue is identified, skip the field staff observations step, as ClearGuide has already captured the issue and travel time impact in order for mitigation steps to begin.
• More effective—Real-time traffic measurements are complete and accurate, rather than limited. There are no “educated guesses” based on outdated traffic-volume forecasts for lane takes. Monitoring-area coverage is network-wide and 24/7. ClearGuide enables simultaneous mainline and detour-route monitoring.
• Safer—Keeps construction workers safe by reducing field staffing needs and overall work time in the field: ClearGuide eliminates the need for workers to install, maintain and move temporary detection systems; workers also spend less time onsite identifying problems because ClearGuide detects traffic issues immediately; it can also identify where the project schedule can be accelerated with minimal traffic impact. Traffic conditions are updated every five minutes.
• More accurate—Unlike manual documentation of delay and queue, or field observations that may not occur during the same traffic conditions as the initial identified issue or public complaint, ClearGuide verifies public complaints with pristine accuracy and then lets you prioritize your mitigation efforts.
• Less costly—The software monitors traffic everywhere within the network simultaneously, without expensive hardware installation. This also reduces full-time equivalents in the work zone, as more workers would be needed to install that hardware. Additionally, the software monitors 24/7, alerting human personnel automatically when needed. It’s like having a person at each field device all day and night.

ClearGuide is the most powerful transportation analytics solution available. The software was designed to help agencies make smart, data-driven operations and planning decisions.

ClearGuide:

• Leverages a wide variety of historical and real-time data sources, including:
  • Agency
  • Incident
  • Probe
  • Weather
  • CV
  • Traffic sensor
  • Social media
• Turns this large amount of complex data into key insights to improve real-time operations
• Displays these insights in digestible charts, maps and graphs
• Sends alerts when congestion or speeding reaches thresholds users can set
• Offers reporting on the efficacy of decisions to enable grant funding, justify city budgets, and assess completed projects for future project planning

ClearGuide in Action

The Caltrans I-405 Improvement Project
Orange County, CA

In this example, Iteris’ ClearGuide mobility analytics software was used to make data-driven decisions on closure hours during the Caltrans I-405 Improvement Project, one of the largest active design-build projects in the United States.

Upon completion, the project will provide additional general purpose lanes in each direction, and convert the existing HOV lanes to two express lanes per direction along the 16-mile corridor.

Caltrans allowed full freeway closure between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekend nights, in accordance with the contract. If the contractor adhered to these hours, accounting for the lost time in setting up the traffic control, mobilizing equipment and clean up, the demolition of the entire bridge would take three weekends to complete. However, if the contractor had two more hours per shift to work, the demolition could be completed not in three, but just two, sets of weekend nights.

The project required adherence to a city ordinance that the contractor not increase travel time by more than 30 minutes compared to historical data. Traditional MOT methods do not allow for this level of performance monitoring, but Iteris ClearGuide provides 24/7/365 traffic data, allowing for continuous monitoring in order to adhere to the project mandate.

But first, Iteris validated the proposal with ClearGuide travel-time projection modeling and access to historical traffic data. Iteris was able to evaluate and determine that construction hours could be extended for the bridge demolition without exceeding the delay threshold.

The state of California therefore granted the contractor a one-time variance for two extra hours of overnight closure at this location. Using ClearGuide, Iteris set up the detour routes and visualized travel time data in five-minute increments.

The maximum delay occurred at 8:50 a.m. on Sunday morning right before the closure was to be removed by 9:00 a.m. The data proved that during those two extra hours in the morning, congestion delays still stayed well within the 30-minute mandate. This allowed the contractor to save money and accelerate the schedule. Most importantly, it improved worker and public safety by avoiding two additional full freeway closures.

The cost savings from this one exception paid for ClearGuide for the entire four-year project, and Caltrans has since granted 30 additional exceptions.

By eliminating two nights of full freeway closures, the city saved on project cost, accelerated the schedule, and increased public safety and goodwill.

To schedule a free demo of ClearGuide, please click here.

About the Author:

Jeff Venables is marketing manager, smart mobility applications at Iteris.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.