U.S. Agency Says Standards|Should Not Replace Judgment

WASHINGTON (CN) – The Federal Highway Administration plans to revise regulations to clarify that engineering judgment and studies should be used when making decisions on where to put traffic control devices, and which types of devices to use.      The standards are used to place traffic control devices for streets, highways, bikeways, and private roads open to public travel.     When the agency changed the traffic control standards to include the sentence, “Standard statements shall not be modified or compromised based on engineering judgment or engineering study,” it did not mean to that engineering judgment or studies should not be used to address unusual site-specific conditions at a particular location that make compliance with a standard impossible or impractical, according to the proposed regulation.     It meant that highway agencies are not authorized to “adopt or implement broad policies or practices that deviate from a standard on a blanket basis jurisdiction-wide, region-wide, on all highways of a particular class, or using similar criteria.”     Click the document icon for this regulation and others.