COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Highway designers often face complex trade-offs when developing projects. A "quality" design may be thought of as satisfying the needs of a wide variety of users while balancing the often competing interests of cost, safety, mobility, social and environmental impacts. Applying flexibility and risk management in highway design requires more than simply assembling geometric elements from the available tables, charts and equations of design criteria. This course provides participants with knowledge of the functional basis of critical design criteria to enable informed decisions when applying engineering judgment and flexibility. The course exercises and case studies provide practical applications of current knowledge from research and operational experience of human factors and safety effects for various design elements.

OUTCOMES:

Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:

• Define the relationship among design criteria, design guidelines and design standards
• Describe the concepts of design speed, target speed, posted speed and operating speed
• Describe the FHWA Policy for Design Standards and Design Exceptions
• List the 13 controlling geometric design criteria that require a formal written design exception from FHWA
• Evaluate the safety effects and qualitative risk of proposed design exceptions
• Evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of mitigation strategies for design exceptions
• Describe the relationship between safety and key geometric features of highway alignment and cross section
• Describe the applicability of a human-centered approach to geometric design considerations

TARGET AUDIENCE:

This course is targeted toward engineers that are involved in applying engineering judgment in the selection of design criteria and in the assessment of design exceptions. It is most practical for practicing engineers and highway decision makers from state highway agencies, local agencies, design consultants, and FHWA field offices.

If you have questions about this NHI training, please contact NHI at nhicustomerservice@dot.gov or 877.558.6873.