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https://www.nationalacademies.org/trb/events

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Preemptive Weather-Related Road Closures

The decision to close a road and disrupt the flow of commerce and the traveling public results in significant costs. While maintaining roadway access is always the most preferred option, there may be scenarios, such as a multi-vehicle weather-related crashes, that induce a closure regardless of best efforts. Further, these crash scenarios place additional risk on the safety of transportation personnel, law enforcement, and emergency first responders. The resultant crash clean-up and recovery of damaged vehicles may further impede maintenance operations for a far longer duration than that of a proactive closure. The Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) and the transportation community as a whole presently face unprecedented challenges with staffing shortages, financial uncertainty, and increasingly variable weather conditions. As such, the ability to determine when, where, and for how long to strategically close a road to maximize safety, minimize cost, and promote overall efficiency and reliability across the transportation network is paramount. The proposed project seeks to provide NDOT with quantitative metrics for meteorological trigger thresholds for road closures and a cost-benefit analysis of such decisions. This will allow NDOT to make consistent, justifiable decisions about when to close (and re-open) roads during extreme weather conditions.