The National Highway Institute (NHI)

The Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Office of Operations and National Highway Institute (NHI) collaborated to create a variety of courses dealing with freight, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and work zone safety.

Training Courses in Freight and Transportation Logistics

The efficient movement of goods is dependent, in large part, on the people who build, maintain, and operate the freight transportation system. Educating and training a skilled and knowledgeable workforce is crucial to improving freight transportation productivity, safety, and security. Consequently, FHWA's Office of Freight Management and Operations and the Office of Planning within the Office of Planning, Environment, and Realty are offering the following freight and transportation logistics courses through NHI.

Integrating Freight in the Transportation Planning Process (#139001A). This course provides public sector transportation planners with an improved understanding of freight transportation, the stakeholders, and the issues to help them incorporate freight into their transportation planning processes and programs.

Multimodal Freight Forecasting in Transportation Planning (#139002A). This course provides participants with improved methods for forecasting freight traffic at metropolitan and State levels, a basic understanding of freight transportation practices, knowledge of parameters influencing growth and distribution of freight traffic, and available tools and data to forecast future freight traffic.

Sixty-minute versions of both courses are available for transportation decisionmakers through the Planning Team, one of several technical service teams at FHWA's Resource Center. For more information on these seminars, visit www.fhwa.dot.gov/resourcecenter.

Training Courses in Design And Traffic Operations

To ensure that transportation practitioners are operating their systems efficiently, certain knowledge, skills, and abilities are required. The following courses are provided through NHI to improve the knowledge base for practitioners who do not have the essentials needed to implement effective management operations and strategies in the areas of freeway management, arterial management and signal systems, access management, and traffic analysis.

Freeway Traffic Operations (#133075A). Modules for this course—aimed at those involved in freeway improvement projects and freeway traffic control—include system engineering, traffic flow theory and concepts, and impacts of design on operations.

High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Facilities (#133072A). This course provides HOV specialists with an understanding of the key policies, technical issues, and other issues to consider when planning, designing, implementing, managing, operating, and marketing HOV facilities.

Computerized Traffic Signal Systems (#133010A). This course presents traffic engineering personnel with current technology and control options available for computerized traffic control, including microcomputer applications. In addition, the course uses the systems engineering process to develop steps—including establishing system requirements and combining system elements—to manage a traffic signal system successfully.

Traffic Control Signalization and Software (#133028A). This course helps public sector engineers and technicians involved with traffic control to apply the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices to intersection displays, signal timing, computerized traffic signal systems, control strategies, integrated systems, traffic control simulation and optimization software.

Access Management, Location and Design (#133078A). This course provides planners and engineers involved in accessing existing or new sites with an examination of the general benefits, as well as the social, economic, political, and legal implications of access control. Management practices and policies from several States and jurisdictions are used in the course as examples of various program types and levels of effectiveness. In addition, instructors discuss access management techniques, warrants for their use, and guidelines for their design and application. The course also presents several "before" and "after" case studies to show the impacts of retrofit programs on local businesses.

Highway Capacity and Quality of Flow (#133005A). This course provides basic instruction on the 2000 version of the Highway Capacity Manual (LP-608) to contractors and metropolitan planning organizations that design and analyze intersections, interface with freeways, deal with signal time issues, design and manage urban street operations, plan for future intersection needs, monitor and manage arterial systems; or who conduct operational analyses to determine the needs of highway facilities, estimate the level of service for new, proposed, and existing operations, and manage freeway systems. Approximately half of the course is dedicated to sessions on interrupted flow facilities—signalized intersections, unsignalized intersections, and arterials—and the remainder deals with freeways, weaving sections, ramps, multilane, and two-lane rural facilities.

Managing Traffic Incidents and Roadway Emergencies (#133048). This course addresses institutional and technical aspects of safely and efficiently resolving traffic incidents and other roadway emergencies, focusing on practices to obtain understanding and cooperation among transportation agencies and disciplines. During the course, transportation managers who direct the resources of their agencies during traffic incidents can attend workshops that include guidelines for agencies in law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency communications, and transportation.

Advancing Transportation Systems Management and Operations—A Regional Approach (#133098). This is a 1-day course on advancing regional transportation systems management and operations through institutional avenues, such as collaborating regionally on operations activities, increasing emphasis on operations considerations in the regional transportation planning process, and improving linkages between planning and operations. A pilot is expected in the summer 2004, with full delivery anticipated in fiscal year 2005.

Training Courses in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Since the early 1990s, FHWA has advocated the use of ITS technologies as a means of achieving greater operational efficiency within the Nation's transportation system. Accordingly, FHWA's Office of Operations has developed several training courses and workshops to support the implementation and integration of ITS projects at State and local transportation agencies.

ITS Awareness Seminar (#137001A). This seminar helps transportation planners and traffic engineers at all levels to gain an understanding of ITS and ITS infrastructure. The course illustrates various ITS components by showcasing multimodal systems that are deployed around the country.

Deploying Integrated ITS—Metropolitan (#137002A). This course supports integrated deployment of ITS with consideration of the National ITS Architecture. Geared for agency employees who implement ITS deployment schedules as part of planning processes and ITS managers and specialists who oversee and coordinate projects and programs while reviewing and developing specifications, the course helps participants understand the regional context in which the public components of ITS infrastructure will be implemented and integrated.

ITS Public/Private Partnerships (#137003A). The focus in this course is on various types of cooperative, public/private partnerships available to transportation program managers involved in ITS planning, implementation, operations, or maintenance. Specifically, the coursework focuses on public/private partnership models for cost sharing, shared deployment, and franchising, along with institutional barriers and case studies.

ITS Telecommunications Overview (#137005A). This course provides transportation professionals involved in ITS transportation planning and deployment with a broad introduction to telecommunications technologies, issues associated with those technologies, and practical lessons learned from previous and existing applications.

Rural ITS Toolbox (#137007A). This course describes ITS-related practices and techniques that have been applied successfully to rural transportation problems. As a result, the course can benefit a wide range of participants, including county, municipal, and town executives; traffic engineers; State, Federal, and local transportation planners; transit and highway operators at metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs); public safety responders; transportation management center operators; motor carrier managers; environmental groups; information technology personnel; college and university faculty and students; and consultants and contractors.

Deploying the National Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Architecture (#137013A). This interactive workshop—aimed at public sector employees involved in ITS planning and deployment, and systems integrators and private sector professionals who develop ITS solutions—demonstrates how to apply the National ITS Architecture tools and methodologies to regional and project-based ITS architecture.

ITS Software Acquisition (#137019A). For transportation professionals involved in the planning, decisionmaking, implementation, or coordination of ITS projects that have a significant software component, this course provides a general understanding of the many issues involved in ITS software development and acquisition processes.

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Procurement (#137020A). This seminar is intended to heighten awareness of the challenges involved in procuring ITS within the traditional construction project environment. Aimed at personnel responsible for developing and reviewing statements of work for ITS procurement—including program managers, contracting officers, and attorneys—the course combines lectures with presentations of case studies to highlight the lessons learned from past ITS projects and to help ensure successful ITS procurement.

Introduction to Systems Engineering for Advanced Transportation (#137024A). This course is an introducetion to the basic concepts of systems engineering for ITS project managers and project staff, including transportation engineers, technical team members, and contractors.

Managing High Technology Projects in Transportation (#137026A). Designed for current and prospective project managers from State and local transportation agencies, and private agency employees involved in the implementation of advanced transportation projects, this course aims to improve the project management skills of all personnel responsible for managing the implementation of technology-intensive transportation projects.

Turbo Architecture Software Training (#137029A). This course provides training on the Turbo Architecture tool—a high-level, interactive software training program to assist transportation planners and systems integrators in the development of regional and project architectures using the National ITS Architecture as a starting point. This course will benefit State department of transportation (DOT) and local agency staff from MPOs and local transportation agencies, as well as private sector consultants who are developing regionally based and projectspecific architectures.

Fundamentals of Road Weather Management (#137030). This 1-day course helps safety managers and traffic, emergency, and maintenance engineers to tackle the road weather problem by teaching them about tools such as basic meteorology and traveler information. Course delivery is anticipated in 2005.

CORSIM Traffic Simulation Model Training (#137022A). This course provides traffic engineers who plan and deploy ITS technologies with an understanding of CORSIM—a tool that simulates traffic and traffic control conditions on combined-surface street and freeway networks. CORSIM determines how traffic engineering and control strategies affect a traffic network's measures of effectiveness—factors such as speed, travel time, volume, and delay that provide insight into the effects of an applied strategy on traffic operations and provide the basis for optimizing that strategy.

ITS Deployment Analysis System (IDAS) (#137041A). This hands-on computer training session for the newly developed IDAS software is aimed at FHWA, State DOT, MPO, and local government transportation planning staff, along with ITS program managers and specialists. IDAS provides ITS sketch planning capability to calculate the relative costs and benefits of ITS investments.

Training Course on Work Zones

Advanced Work Zone Management and Design (#380072). This course helps participants obtain both technical and nontechnical skills for controlling traffic in work zones. Intended for participants with engineering and management experience and an understanding of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the course includes best practices for work zone planning, design, project management, and contract issues. Delivery is anticipated in mid-2005.