Development of New Performance Measure for Winter Maintenance by Using Vehicle Speed Data

The study investigated vehicle speed changes during winter weather events. A total of 954 winter maintenance logs in 24 counties over three winter seasons were analyzed. Several variables of interest were developed, such as storm duration, maintenance operation hour, crew delayed, maximum speed reduction, and the storm start and end times. Also, t1, which represents the start of vehicle speed reduction, and t3, the time at which vehicle speeds recover to normal winter driving speeds, were measured from automatic traffic recorder data. The study confirms that vehicle speed seems to be a good measure of representing driving conditions during winter weather events and winter maintenance performance alike. Speed recovery duration was found to be a dependent variable, defined as a possible evaluation of winter maintenance operations using vehicle speed data.