But in this early stage it's incumbent on the road building and maintenance industry to make sure that F-SHRP serves the "hard" research needs of the industry, and not become watered down with feel-good "soft" transportation research which is politically correct, but does little to physically improve the nation's soft-wheel transportation system.

This ongoing preliminary work on F-SHRP satisfies the requirement of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), Section 5112, which orders the Transportation Research Board to set priorities and design a program for a research and development undertaking to follow the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP). TRB began this work in January 1999, and it's scheduled to be finished in October 2001.
 

The first SHRP

The first SHRP was a five-year, $150 million research effort, funded in part by the states through an annual voluntary check-off from the federal gas tax funds due each state.

SHRP's purpose was to provide primary research which would improve the performance and durability of America's highways, and make them safer for users and highway workers. By far, the greatest proportion of funds under SHRP were devoted to asphalt research. Superpave -- a registered trademark of the National Academy of Sciences -- was the most significant outcome of the first SHRP.

In addition to the Superpave system of performance-related asphaltic concrete specifications, other SHRP study areas included alkali-silica reactivity in portland cement concrete; high-performance concrete and research in reinforced concrete structures; innovative pavement maintenance materials and preventive maintenance; and anti-icing and roadway weather information systems (RWIS).

Also launched under SHRP was a 20-year, long-term pavement performance (LTPP) study that is tracking real-world performance of some 2,200 SHRP-initiated pavement test sections throughout the U.S. and some foreign countries into the new century.
 

Committee guides F-SHRP genesis

Now, potential research areas for Future-SHRP (F-SHRP) are being articulated and studied. Under the authority of the "Study for a Future Strategic Highway Research Program", a blue-ribbon committee has been developing research topics and accepting critiques and comment from the field.

The committee first met in June 1999, in Washington, D.C., where it discussed its mission, considered topic areas, and developed an outreach methodology. As part of its outreach, by early December, about 750 letters had been sent to public, private and academic organizations requesting their input in identifying strategic highway needs and potential research areas.

In October 1999 the committee held its second meeting, hearing from seven panels of highway stakeholders, representing some 20 organizations, who cover environment, engineering and construction, materials, safety, users, university, and local and regional perspectives, said Ann M. Brach, study director at TRB.

At the end of 1999 the distinguished members of the blue-ribbon committee conducting the Study for a Future Strategic Highway Research Program were:

o C. Michael Walton, University of Texas at Austin, chair

o Bradley L. Mallory, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation,
vice chair

o Joel D. Anderson, California Trucking Association

o E. Dean Carlson, Kansas Department of Transportation

o Frank L. Danchetz, Georgia Department of Transportation

o Hank Dittmar, Great American Station Foundation

o Frank Francois, Consultant, and retired executive director of AASHTO

o David R. Gehr, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc.

o Susan Martinovich, Nevada Department of Transportation

o Herbert H. Richardson, Texas Transportation Institute

o Henry G. Schwartz, Jr., Sverdrup Civil, Inc.

o Thomas R. Warne, Utah Department of Transportation, and

o David K. Willis, AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

The committee was to again meet June 5-6 at Woods Hole, Mass. At the January 2000 Transportation Research Board annual meeting, Session 206: Perspectives on a Future Strategic Highway Research Program brought attendees up-to-date on the F-SHRP process.
 

Will 'soft' research lard F-SHRP?

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the direction of the first SHRP was bitterly criticized by the concrete pavement industry as being unfairly weighted toward asphalt. But proponents could point to the fact that over 90 percent of the nation's driving surfaces are asphalt. At least this was the kind of "hard" research that can pay dividends to the motoring public, which foot the bill.

In July 1999 the committee articulated the following draft F-SHRP research topic areas. "These topics are intended to spark thoughtful discussion about strategic research needs; they do not represent a commitment on the part of the committee to any particular course of study," the committee said. "The committee seeks the input of all stakeholders on the potential content of the future strategic highway research program."

But the research topics articulated by the F-SHRP committee may give cause for concern that they may be too "soft" in terms of real pavement and bridge materials and technique research. Here are the draft study areas as articulated last summer by the F-SHRP committee:

o Accelerating the Renewal of America's Highways. "Agencies need to streamline the entire project delivery process, including planning, environmental review, design, construction, and procurement procedures," the committee said. "They are also concerned about how to pay for this work. Despite these challenges, the need to renew aging highways also presents an opportunity to improve the facility safety, design and performance, its interaction with the environment, and its role in the community."

Possible research areas under this topic might include construction methods, innovative materials, non-destructive evaluation technologies, innovative contracting and finance, work zone safety, creative design, environmental mitigation design and techniques, life-cycle cost analysis, and development of performance measures for performance-related specifications.

o Making a Quantum Leap in Highway Safety. So much progress has been made in lowering traffic fatalities by mitigating the more obvious problems, that added progress will be much more incremental and through addressing more complex factors, such as human behavior, the role of enforcement, and the interaction among vehicle, driver and road; and investigating and applying more advanced technologies, such as intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications.

To this end, possible research areas include highway designs that communicate better with the driver and vehicle about safety, including the use of sensors and ITS-related technologies; safer designs that also meet environmental and aesthetic objectives; data collection and analysis regarding crash causes, and improvements to safety from specific changes in the roadway design; the impact of the aging driver population; and improved incident management.

o Environmental Quality. This topic is split into two concepts, how to better integrate the environmental review process with overall project planning, and how to better control highway runoff.

Possible research areas toward a better-integrated environmental review process might include development of technologies to support integrated environmental and planning analysis and decision-making, such as GIS, GPS, expert systems, and visualization technologies; and methods and performance measures for evaluating environment review process streamlining, and for assessing the implementation of resulting project designs.

Possible research areas toward better control of highway runoff being considered by the committee include monitoring and modeling the fate and transport of transportation-related runoff; assessment of the impact of stormwater runoff of various types; and development of best management practices and assessment of their performance, constraints and costs.

o Context-Sensitive Design. "We know a lot about designing roads for their basic functional performance: conveying vehicles safely and efficiently from one place to another," the committee reports. "But there is little clear guidance on how to achieve this along with safety, community and aesthetic criteria." Possible research areas could include design methodologies that integrate performance, safety, aesthetic and social criteria; innovative materials; and environmental (habitat) materials.

o Integrated Highway-Truck Design. "Potential increases in truck size and weight constantly contend with the limits placed on them by pavement design (to reduce pavement damage by trucks) and roadway geometry (to maintain safe operation of trucks)," the committee said. "Achieving the combined goals of more economical commercial vehicle technology and high quality and safe roadways requires a systems approach to the design of the vehicle and the highway."

Possible research areas here include pavement materials, construction methods and design methodologies, pavement-truck interaction models, truck suspensions, safety design for trucks, economic analyses, separate facilities or lanes for trucks, and use of ITS technologies, particularly to address the possible safety impacts of new truck designs.

o Effect of Communication Technology on Travel Demand. "Communication technologies, such as the World Wide Web, cellular phones, and portable computers, can have a significant impact on the amount, timing, and types of travel," the committee said. "For instance, with the growth of a web-based economy and the increase in people working at home, there are more commercial vehicles on suburban streets delivering goods ordered over the net and bringing professional mail, packages, and supplies directly to homes. Portable computers and cell phones do not seem to reduce travel so much as increase the ability to communicate while one travels."

Possible research areas in this theme may be the effects on the infrastructure of the increase in commercial vehicle deliveries to private homes, and commercial just-in-time deliveries; and development of travel models that address the impact of the increased use of portable communication technologies.

o 21st Century Transportation Agencies. "Transportation agencies must be better prepared to deal with an environment that challenges traditional ways of doing business," the committee said. This could indicate possible research areas such as how to address the need for a more varied and highly skilled workforce, including recruiting, training, and retaining personnel; how are universities preparing engineers and other professionals for this profession; the effects of outsourcing on the agency's responsiveness and ability to manage; and asset management.

If there is an F-SHRP, to be successful it will have to recognize the importance to Americans of the privacy and flexibility of personal auto travel, while balancing the auto's demands with the needs for improved safety, environmental and operational performance of highways.

The F-SHRP committee wants your response. To provide input into these or other future research topics, visit the F-SHRP web site.