Tools and Technology for Roadside Vegetation Asset Management: A Guide (2025)
Chapter: Summary
SUMMARY
Tools and Technology for Roadside Vegetation Asset Management: A Guide
Vegetation assets and roadside safety features directly affect structural assets—such effects can be positive or negative. For example, when vegetation or roadside safety features fail, this failure can contribute to erosion that can lead to pavement or bridge failure as the ground supporting the overall structure erodes. Many state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) maintenance staff have stated they spend much of their time working on vegetation assets and roadside safety features, which are numerous, while the state DOT overall focuses on high-cost assets such as bridges. During the conduct of NCHRP Research Project 14-47, the research team found that state DOTs spent more money on labor than equipment to assist with planning and completing roadside vegetation asset management (RVAM) tasks. Maintenance staff often work on the right-of-way throughout the year to maintain vegetation and roadside safety features by mowing grasses and other vegetation, trimming or removing trees that are hazardous or obstruct driver sight distance, applying herbicide to noxious plant species, and repairing structural assets damaged by errant vehicles. The vegetation and safety feature asset class includes guardrails, cable rails, sound walls, jersey walls, culverts, pollinator habitats, native restoration sites, wetlands, formally landscaped areas, and turfgrass. These assets are affected by construction as well as snow-and-ice-removal activities. In 2018, FHWA defined a Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP) as “an essential management tool which brings together all related business processes and stakeholders, internal and external, to achieve a common understanding and commitment to improve performance.” Most state DOTs only include structural assets in their state TAMP and leave out vegetation and roadside safety features. Using the FHWA definition of a TAMP, state DOTs will want to include all assets within state TAMPs, not just the two required legacy assets (i.e., bridges and pavements).
Some state DOTs have begun developing asset management plans encompassing vegetation assets and roadside safety features. Of these state DOTs, some are finding success in planning for and managing these features by making use of existing tools and technology for managing related assets that have a vegetative component (e.g., culverts). Given that culvert systems are used for stormwater, historically, more regulations and funding have been made available for them. States (e.g., California) use their culvert condition rating and mapping systems as the foundation for new or modified software systems for vegetation and roadside safety features. Many other states have successfully used existing software, hardware, and terminology for managing structural assets to develop and maintain asset plans for vegetation and roadside safety features.
