Model to Analyze the Effectiveness of Highway Rest Area Performance

The number of highway travelers in the United States has significantly increased in the past decade. In light of this increase, proper maintenance of highway rest areas is very critical. This research examined the development of a rest area evaluation model that was created for the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) in response to its strategic plan for gauging rest area performance and allocating maintenance funds appropriately. To measure rest area performance, a customer-evaluation card was prepared for dissemination at Maryland's 14 rest areas. The card contained 14 questions, 13 of which had 5 grading options: A through D and N/A. In the 14th question, the rest area visitors were asked to provide written comments. SHA established as a strategic planning goal that a minimum of 80% of responses show a customer-satisfaction rating of B or above on each of the first 13 questions. The evaluated cards were routinely gathered and manually entered into a Microsoft Access database, which was then imported to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program for further evaluation. A number of array formulas were developed in Excel to automate the analyses. The model has been in place since 2000, and the data set has grown from over 1,000 initially in 2000 to over 6,000 as of July 2003. The model has been performing satisfactorily; however, manual entry of the data has been slow and error prone. Installation of touch screen information kiosks and increased sophistication in analyses were suggested as some future enhancement measures.