Analysis of Traffic Sign Asset Management Scenarios

Minimum traffic sign retroreflectivity standards proposed for the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) will present numerous management challenges to state and local departments of transportation (DOTs) responsible for traffic sign assets. These DOTs are looking at how to comply with the standard while minimizing sign maintenance costs. This paper presents an analysis of several traffic sign retroreflectivity maintenance methods using a sign asset management simulation based on inspection and sign data gathered in the field. The simulation evaluated 30 sign asset management scenarios in terms of annual maintenance cost per sign and percent of traffic signs not compliant with the proposed FHWA standard. The simulation results found that higher costs for sign maintenance generally resulted in a lower percentage of non-compliant signs. However, for some scenarios using the visual nighttime inspection method, lower percentages of non-compliant signs were found even with relatively low maintenance costs per sign. Increasing the maintenance cost per sign by 10