Work Zone Safety and Mobility and Temporary Traffic Control Devices

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Highway Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>23 CFR Part 630</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FHWA-2022-0017]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2125-AG05</RIN> <SUBJECT>Work Zone Safety and Mobility and Temporary Traffic Control Devices</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FHWA amends its regulations that govern traffic safety and mobility in highway and street work zones. The FHWA recognizes that increasing road construction activity on our highways can lead to travel disruptions which could potentially result in congestion and crashes, as well as loss in productivity and public frustration with work zones. The changes will facilitate consideration of the broader safety and mobility impacts of work zones in a more coordinated and comprehensive manner across project development stages. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective December 2, 2024. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of December 2, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. Jawad Paracha, Office of Transportation Operations (HOTO-1), (202) 366-4628, or via email at <E T="03">Jawad.Paracha@dot.gov,</E> or Mr. William Winne, Office of the Chief Counsel (HCC-30), (202) 366-1379, or via email at <E T="03">William.Winne@dot.gov</E> . Office hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., E.T., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access and Filing</HD> This document, the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), and all comments received may be viewed online through the Federal eRulemaking portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> using the docket number listed above. Electronic retrieval help and guidelines are also available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> An electronic copy of this document may also be downloaded from the Office of the Federal Register's website at <E T="03">www.FederalRegister.gov</E> and the U.S. Government Publishing Office's website at <E T="03">www.GovInfo.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The principal mission of DOT is to ensure America has the safest, most efficient, and modern transportation system in the world. This system boosts our economic productivity and global competitiveness and enhances the quality of life in communities both rural and urban. We depend on transportation for access to jobs, to enable us to conduct our business, to supply us with services and goods, and to facilitate our leisure and recreational activities. The Department's mission is accomplished through strategic goals pertaining to safety, economic strength and global competitiveness, equity, climate and sustainability, transformation, and organizational excellence. An efficient and well-maintained roadway network is a critical component of our overall transportation system. Our roadway network must be continuously monitored and repaired to keep it functioning. Periodically, roadways must also be rehabilitated, reconstructed, or otherwise improved. Work zones are a necessary part of maintaining and upgrading our aging roadway infrastructure. The FHWA strongly encourages that work zones be implemented and maintained as safely as possible, and with the least possible amount of travel disruption. Doing so directly supports DOT's safety strategic goal, facilitates the movement of people and goods while work occurs on our highways, and is essential for maintaining economic strength and global competitiveness. Similarly, effective work zone management also ensures that work zone impacts do not unduly burden any one user group, and that appropriate efforts are taken to mitigate the differential impacts caused by work zones. Congestion generated by work zones contributes to vehicular pollution; reducing congestion undoubtedly supports DOT goals pertaining to climate and sustainability. Continuous development and support of new technologies, strategies, and uses of new sources of data for work zone management relate directly to the Department's transformation and organizational excellence goals. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Subpart J—Work Zone Safety and Mobility Overview</HD> Over the last two decades, significant strides have been made in managing work zone safety and mobility, with States establishing overarching work zone safety and mobility policies and implementing processes to better understand and manage work zone impacts ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> implementing processes for significant projects, applying intelligent technologies for work zone operations, measuring work zone performance). However, opportunities still exist to improve the consistency and continuity of work zone management practices across States, including proactively monitoring and managing work zone impacts of projects during implementation and leveraging available data sources for data-driven work zone performance reviews. Work zones continue to have significant safety and mobility impacts on our transportation system, which are further expected to increase due to increased road construction and rehabilitation projects funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Further, Congress, through the BIL, required FHWA to update the process review and significant projects sections. In light of the above, FHWA published an NPRM on September 20, 2023, at 88 FR 64836, to update Subpart J to meet current and future work zone management needs while also making the subpart compliant with the BIL. The key changes proposed in the NPRM included: incorporating safety and mobility performance measures in States' work zone policies; increasing the reporting interval for work zone process reviews from 2 to 5 years (as per the BIL) and reframing process reviews to programmatic reviews; clarifying certain unclear terms; and clarifying the significant projects and associated Transportation Management Plan (TMP) criteria for Interstate and non-Interstate projects (as per the BIL). Several States, a few trade associations, and some private industry representatives provided responses to the NPRM. Most State department of transportation (State DOT) commenters agreed with the intent and concepts proposed in the NPRM but they recommended revisions to minimize regulatory burden, increase flexibility and scalability, and make the provisions more practical to apply in the field. States also noted that some of the terms used in the proposed rule were ambiguous and lent themselves to subjective interpretation, and asked for clarification on the compliance dates. In this final rule, FHWA has addressed the comments received in response to the NPRM that are within the scope of this rulemaking. The regulation addresses the comments related to flexibility and scalability of provisions; revises, eliminates, or clarifies ambiguous terms pointed out by the commenters; and clarifies compliance timeframes. The final rule revises §§ 630.1004, 630.1006, 630.1008, 630.1010, 630.1012, 630.1014, and 630.1016 of the existing rule published in 2004 to clarify certain aspects of the regulation and to update and provide additional emphasis on certain elements. The regulation will enhance the current state of practice in work zone management by promoting data-driven assessment of work zone performance, motivating agencies to conduct a thorough review of work zone management processes, and encouraging comprehensive assessment and management of work zone safety and mobility impacts. This final rule incorporates new definitions and clarifies some existing definitions; includes a requirement in States' Work Zone Safety and Mobility Policies to define the safety and mobility performance measures that States will monitor and report; reframes Work Zone Process Reviews to Work Zone Programmatic Reviews (WZPR), emphasizing the importance of reviewing all aspects of a State's work zone management program; changes the WZPR reporting timeframe from every 2 years to every 5 years to comply with the BIL; strengthens the requirement for States to develop and implement work zone assessment and management procedures with an added notion of addressing impacts to all anticipated road users and highway workers; and clarifies the significant project and TMP criteria for Interstate and Non-Interstate projects to comply with the BIL. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Subpart K—Temporary Traffic Control Devices Overview</HD> In 2007, at 72 FR 68489, FHWA added a new Subpart K to 23 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 630 to facilitate the appropriate use of, and expenditure of funds for, uniformed law enforcement officers, positive protective measures between workers and motorized traffic, and installation and maintenance of temporary traffic control devices during construction, utility, and maintenance operations. The intent of the regulation was to reduce both worker and motorist fatalities and injuries in work zones. Overall, work zone fatalities decreased significantly during the latter half of that decade, from a high of 1,068 work zone fatalities in 2004 to 590 fatalities in 2011. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Unfortunately, since then that trend has reversed, growing from 590 fatalities in 2011 to 891 fatalities in 2022 (the most recent year of available national work zone fatality data). Work zones continue to have significant safety and mobility impacts on our transportation system, which are further expected to increase due to increased road construction and rehabilitation projects funded by the BIL. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) maintained by NHTSA and is available at the follo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 120k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━