Document Library

This guide provides a structured roadmap for agencies seeking to implement performance-based contracting (PBC) to support proactive road asset management. Drawing on decades of international experience, it outlines how to design, scale, and manage PBC programs—from pilot projects to network-wide applications—across varying levels of agency maturity.

Practitioners will find guidance on using PBC to improve asset condition, enhance safety and resilience outcomes, and shift from reactive maintenance to performance-driven service delivery. The document also includes diagnostic approaches and implementation strategies that help agencies align contracting practices with broader TAM and performance management objectives.

The Guidelines How to Prepare and Execute Performance Based Contracts for Road Asset Management - Interactive PDF For Basic PBC & Advanced Users, offer a comprehensive tool to support the introduction of PBCs. Taking into consideration the wide range of sector maturity across regions, the Guidelines are organized into two workstreams—basic and advanced—so they can be easily adapted to a particular country’s or subregion’s level of preparedness. The present Guidance Note is intended to provide a roadmap for practitioners seeking to customize PBCs to local sector maturity.

This guide explains that safety is not just about the trains themselves, but also about how people get to and from stations . Problems often come from poor sidewalks, missing sign age, bad lighting, and busy roads near stations. Children, older adults, and people with disabilities are especially at risk. In some locations, crossings lack proper barriers or signals, increasing the chance of road crashes. Reliable data on crashes is also often missing, making it difficult to pinpoint where the greatest problems lie.

This synthesis examines how State DOTs fund, manage, and coordinate the maintenance of Complete Streets infrastructure, including bicycle, pedestrian, and other active transportation facilities. As agencies expand multimodal networks, the report highlights practical challenges such as equipment compatibility, staffing capacity, and ongoing maintenance funding.

Practitioners will find examples of maintenance policies, interagency cost-sharing agreements, and partnership models involving local and tribal governments. The report also identifies strategies for workforce training, equipment procurement, and operational coordination that can help agencies sustain Complete Streets investments over time.

This document supports implementation of system-level transportation asset valuation, helping agencies translate asset inventories and condition data into meaningful measures of asset value. The resource provides case studies, worksheets, and outreach materials that demonstrate how agencies can apply asset valuation methods to support financial reporting, communicate infrastructure needs, and evaluate investment strategies.

Practitioners will gain practical guidance on using asset valuation to track system condition trends, demonstrate the impact of funding decisions, and strengthen transportation asset management (TAM) programs. The materials complement the AASHTO Asset Valuation Guide and include tools that help agencies integrate asset valuation concepts into planning, performance management, and investment decision-making.

This resource provides methods and supporting research to help agencies evaluate the safety impacts of Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPMs). While ATSPMs are widely used to improve signal operations, this report enables practitioners to quantify their effects on crash frequency and severity using crash modification factors (CMFs).

Practitioners will gain guidance on applying CMFs to assess safety outcomes associated with signal timing and operational changes, supporting data-driven decision-making for signal optimization and safety performance management. The companion NCHRP web-only document 442 provides the underlying research and methodology used to develop these CMFs, offering additional detail for agencies seeking to replicate or adapt the approach.

Recommended Resource: NCHRP Synthesis 659: Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures: Management, Operation, and Maintenance examines how state departments of transportation are using high-resolution traffic signal controller data to monitor, manage, and improve signal performance.

This report documents the results and technical performance analysis of the distributed testing pilot test 2 (Pilot 2) for the FHWA Virtual Open Innovation Collaborative Environment for Safety (VOICES) project. This pilot connected multiple test sites over a secure network and demonstrated how different models and simulation platforms can cosimulate together. This testing showcased how distributed testing can potentially improve the technical maturity of different applications and help ensure that algorithms and software from a variety of sources can work together safely to answer research questions important to the government, industry, and academia.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the American Welding Society (AWS) provide extensive guidance documents that govern the welding of steel bridge members; however, none of the documents provide guidance regarding the number of times a welding nonconformance can be repaired without penalty or rejection, leading to uncertainty in the fabrication industry and potentially costly member rejections. While a few studies have investigated the effects of multiple weld repairs, none have studied the effects of multiple repair welds on members and practices common in the steel bridge industry. As such, there is currently insufficient data to determine whether multiple repair welds affect the material properties or the fatigue life of welded joints on bridge members. The goal of the current study is to investigate the effects of multiple repair welds on complete joint penetration (CJP) butt-splice welds and suggest an appropriate limit to GDOT and the steel bridge industry on the number of repair welds that can be performed at a single location. To accomplish this goal, the current study is comprised of three main research thrusts: (a) gather existing industry data and knowledge on welding nonconformances and repairs through a literature review and survey, (b) generate novel experimental data through a suite of material characterization tests on CJP joints with up to five weld repairs, and (c) generate novel experimental data through large-scale fatigue life tests on CJP butt-splice joints with up to five weld repairs. The results of this research show that up to five weld repairs can be performed at a joint without significant changes to the material properties or fatigue life of the CJP joint. The significance of these findings is that the data suggest: (a) there are no mechanistic or fatigue life indications that a CJP butt splice joint with up to five weld repairs will perform significantly differently than a CJP joint with no repairs, and (b) the repaired joint should still meet all applicable strength and fatigue design requirements.

Wrong-way crashes are rare but often severe events. This brief serves as an update to previous Foundation work examining these crashes from 2010 to 2018. Using FARS data, updated wrong-way crash numbers are provided, previously cited risk factors were examined in relation to the more recent crash data, and potential new risk factors were explored.

NCHRP Synthesis 659: Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures: Management, Operation, and Maintenance examines how state departments of transportation are using high-resolution traffic signal controller data to monitor, manage, and improve signal performance. Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPMs) enable continuous, data-driven oversight of traffic operations and maintenance, supporting more proactive and efficient decision-making. While the benefits of ATSPMs are well documented, adoption across state DOTs varies due to challenges such as funding constraints, equipment and technology upgrades, staffing capacity, and organizational readiness. The synthesis highlights current practices, including the use of both controller-based and crowdsourced signal performance measures. It also explores implementation barriers, funding strategies, staffing considerations, and examples of how agencies integrate ATSPMs into day-to-day operational and maintenance workflows.