Mitigating storm drainage impacts from litter and debris

Final report; Sponsoring agency: Ohio Department of Transportation; State Job Number 135966; "March 2020."; Additional author listed on Technical report documentation page: Steven Buchberger; Includes bibliographical references (pages 57-59 of final report)."; "FHWA/OH-2020-16"--Technical report documentation pageFinal report (59 pages) -- [Fact sheet] (2 unnumbered pages)The objective of this research is to analyze current best practices for collecting/removing litter and debris from the highways; and provide recommendations on efficient, more productive and cost-effective ways to keep litter/debris from clogging the urban highway drainage system. Currently, ODOT collects litter from the highways manually. The manual collection process is expensive, and labor intensive. Analysis of data provided by ODOT concluded that at current prices, the cost of collecting a litter bag is $31.38/bag. The research concluded that there are many challenges associated with roadside litter that prevents the use of a single general purpose litter removal machine. The roadside litter collection machines commercially available typically use vacuum action to lift the litter. The research evaluated several types of vacuum based machines and recommends that ODOT further evaluate the tractor-pulled Trilo S8. Although the S8 is not effective in all situations, it was found to be the machine that is more capable of dealing with the challenges associated with roadside litter. However, a conclusive evaluation of the cost effectiveness of the Trilo S8 will require additional research. The research also recommended that ODOT field tests various types of drain inlet screens to assess their performance at different locations in Ohio. Such screens have environmental and economic benefits. The preliminary cost benefit analysis has determined that the payback period of screen installation can be as low as 1.2 year