This course discusses the use of safety shoulders as travel lanes to increase the capacity of existing highways. A succinct overview of efforts to use left or right shoulder lanes as temporary or interim travel lanes is presented. The impact on highway performance, operations, safety, maintenance, enforcement, incident response, and costs is discussed. Detailed case studies are presented for four U.S. states and three European countries. This course is based on the U.S. Federal Highway Administration Report No. FHWA-HOP-10-023, “Efficient Use of Highway Capacity Summary,” by Beverly Kuhn, November, 2010.

Learning Objectives

• Traffic control devices
• Performance measures
• Potential safety benefits
• Maintenance concerns
• Enforcement roles and processes
• Incident response
• Training for personnel
• Costs
• Liability and legal issues
• Public outreach and education