Speaking

Cities, counties, and MPOs are often challenged by changing modes of transportation, shrinking budgets, and meeting the needs of an increasingly multimodal public. To help agencies in this dilemma, planners and engineers must have a practical mindset and focus on options that meet the community’s most basic goals and needs, while shaving excess costs to help a community stretch their money. This focus should start in the planning phase of a project where a wide range of innovative and practical solutions that avoid major reconstruction and minimize costs can be considered, evaluated, and discussed with local stakeholders and the public.

This session will:

• Explain the benefits of incorporating a practical mindset into the planning process  
• Exhibit lessons learned on recent planning projects to provide cost-effective solutions by repurposing existing roadway width to create multi-modal corridors 
• Discuss funding alternatives for planners to share with clients
• Show how to identify potential red flags during planning and include in implementable plans 

While roundabouts continue to be a popular intersection choice to improve traffic flow and safety at many locations, much has been learned in the U.S. in the past decade related to the advantages and disadvantages of roundabouts and their evaluation. This presentation will give transportation planners a solid overview of current planning and analysis practices related to roundabouts.

Topics to be discussed: 

• Current go-to U.S. planning and design guidance resources.
• Recent and ongoing research that will influence roundabout policy and practices.
• Current and Draft ADA policies and federal rule-making that must be considered in roundabout planning and design.
• Lessons learned at complex roundabouts related to crash patterns and driver understanding and behavior.
• Current roundabout capacity analysis options and the strengths/weaknesses of each.
• Important considerations when conducting studies that compare the potential benefits, impacts, and costs of roundabouts to other intersection options, including life-cycle cost evaluation.

The presentation will consist of a mix of basic information and personal experiences from constructed projects. 

The Highway Safety Manual (HSM) provides quantitative methods to evaluate improvement alternatives that result in safer, more efficient roadway transportation systems. The HSM has typically been used on Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) projects when safety is included in the purpose and need, or a safety concern has been previously identified. However, ODOT has implemented changes to the project development process for planners that involves safety considerations on all projects – big and small.

This addition is called data-driven safety analysis (DDSA). By 2019, planners will need to incorporate safety analysis as part of their alternatives evaluation and decision-making process on major transportation projects due to changes in ODOT’s manuals and guidelines. This includes the Project Development Process (PDP) and the Location and Design Manual. This session, presented by B&N’s Kendra Schenk, PE, PTOE and ODOT’s Derek Troyer, PE, will:

• Explain details of the DDSA changes 
• Discuss how these changes affect planners and their process for completing ODOT projects
• Provide examples of how the newly required analysis has been completed on previous projects