On planning highway maintenance considering the impact on traffic flow due to different work zone configurations

Highway maintenance is key to achieve high transportation network performance. However, the presence of work zones represents a disruptive event for the traffic flow. In particular, different work zone configurations have different impacts on traffic. Hence, providing a decision support tool to optimize the maintenance planning process on the highways is necessary to mitigate the impacts of work zones on traffic flow. In this paper, a novel approach is presented which considers the maintenance efficiency, the work zone configurations and the transport demand. The proposed approach applied traffic simulation to investigate traffic impacts of different work zone configurations along the network. Then the microscopic fundamental traffic characteristics, obtained from the simulation, are used as an input for the Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to optimize and prioritize the maintenance operations. The proposed approach is applied to a real case study in an Italian highway network. Results indicate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach.