The American Road & Transportation Builders Association's (ARTBA) Foundation and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have worked together for the past 10 months to significantly expand services aimed at improving roadway work zone safety in preparation for the additional project sites to come as recently-enacted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding flows to the states.

ARTBA and FHWA April 13 announced the launch of an all-new National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse website: www.workzonesafety.org in conjunction with the 22nd Annual National Work Zone Awareness Week.

Established in 1998, the Clearinghouse has become the world's largest online resource of free information, handling more than 250,000 requests annually. More than half of Clearinghouse users are public agency officials. The Texas A&M Transportation Institute manages the facility's day-to-day operations and led the website redesign.

More than 850 people were killed and 44,000 injured during 2020 in roadway work zone accidents — the highest in two decades.

On average, federal funds support 15,300 construction projects annually, according to FHWA data.

ARTBA's Chief Economist Alison Premo Black estimates there will be an additional 4,000 new work sites over the next two years as IIJA-related projects ramp up, underscoring the need for greater awareness of this public health issue, and ongoing public and private sector commitment to significantly reducing the number of safety incidents.

The new website features a modern interface, easier navigability, improved search function capability and expanded user-demanded content, including:

• Centralized crash, injury, fatality and congestion data so users have a complete picture of the issues affecting safety.
• Dashboards and info-graphs to illustrate trends over the past six years.
• Interactive maps with national and state traffic data, laws, training and policies, crash information and statistics, and worker fatalities and injuries — including charts showing how workers are killed.

"Comprehensive data is now easy to locate and understand and users can search through thousands of records to find relevant material typically in less than a minute," said Brad Sant, the association's senior vice president for safety and education.

"We urge public and private sector professionals to use the Clearinghouse often. Together, we can save lives."

For more information, visit www.artba.org.

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