Federal Highway Administration
400 Seventh Street, SW
Washington, DC 20590

Refer to: HOTO-1

Mr. Alan L. Colvin
Traffic Operations Engineer
North Dakota Department of Transportation
608 East Boulevard Avenue
Bismarck, ND 58505-0700

Dear Mr. Colvin:

Thank you for faxing a copy of your October 29 letter regarding your request to experiment with pedestrian countdown signals at eight intersections in the city of Bismarck. Your fax was received on November 27. Your original letter still has not been received due to mail quarantines here in Washington, DC. We have reviewed the material that was submitted in support of your request to experiment, and we concur with it, with the following exceptions:

• The modified pedestrian crossing sign (your Attachment C) is an excellent idea and we compliment you on proposing its use as a part of the experiment. However, we would like to have a slight modification made in your design of the sign. Since the "timer" will always be displayed when the flashing Don’t Walk is displayed, we believe the horizontal line on the sign that separates "flashing" and the "timer" portions of the legend should not extend across the entire width of the sign. That line should be similar to the line that separates the legends "DON’T START" and "FINISH CROSSING IF STARTED".
• Since your sites are being reconstructed and do not allow for collection of meaningful "before" data, we agree that only data for the "after" period will be collected. We would suggest that data collection be scheduled for several different occurrences over the course of the 2-year evaluation period, at the same times and on the same day of the week for each data collection period to evaluate whether the effectiveness of the countdown changed over the 2-year period.

Your experimentation request is approved, subject to the two modifications outlined above. For future reference purposes, we have assigned the following official experimentation number and title to your request: 4-241(Ex)--"Pedestrian Countdown Signals-NDDOT." Please refer to this number in future correspondence.

We look forward to receiving your semiannual progress reports and final report. If we can be of further assistance, please contact Mr. Scott Wainwright on 202-366-0857.

Sincerely yours,

Shelley J. Row, P.E.
Director, Office of Transportation
Operations