Managed Lanes and HOV Facilities

Use of Freeway Shoulders for Travel — Guide for Planning, Evaluating, and Designing Part-Time Shoulder Use as a Traffic Management Strategy
This report (HTML, PDF 5.9MB) assists agencies in planning, designing, implementing, and operating part-time shoulder use strategies that can be used to relieve congested bottlenecks and improve traffic flow and congestion-related crashes. The definition of "part time" herein is for short durations, say, during peak hours, as a bottleneck congestion relief strategy, and NOT to use shoulders in a semi-permanent work zone, or as a permanent full-time (extra) travel lane. Other stipulations are included in the guide. The guide was developed based on interviews with agencies that have deployed shoulder use treatments, interviews with various FHWA subject matter experts, and research on relevant safety and operations effects and analytical techniques. This guide outlines a process and covers a range of topics that will help agencies evaluate or advance shoulder use concepts in their states or regions in a more consistent manner. (FHWA-HOP-15-023)

Managed Lanes are defined as highway facilities or a set of lanes where operational strategies are proactively implemented and managed in response to changing conditions. Conceptually, Managed Lanes are based upon flexible operating strategies and active management of the transportation system and provide the perspective needed for integrated operations leading to improved performance.

The Managed Lane Facilities and Strategies theme focuses on providing research, tools, and professional capacity building on how to design and operate individual managed lane strategies/components (access control, vehicle eligibility and pricing) as well as the overall system. It provides a leading role on overall managed lane operations and issues related to access control and pricing. It collaborates closely with the HOV Pooled Fund Study and Federal Transit Administration vehicle eligibility issues related to High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV) and Bus Rapid Transit.

Program Initiatives

Resources

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