Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Str-999: Intelligent Monitoring System Reveals New Information About The Champlain Bridge, Ehsan Sobhani, Armineh Garabedian, Dominic Lavigne, Chakib Kassem, René Tinawi

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The Champlain Bridge, constructed in 1957, is one of Canada’s busiest and most economically critical bridges. This 3.4km-long bridge consists of as many as 50 simply supported spans, 50 to 53 m long, plus an elevated truss structure over the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Each span has a cross-section of seven precast post-tensioned girders supporting cast-in-place infill strips that constitute a deck with six traffic lanes. Like many other structures, Champlain Bridge is subjected to environmental, traffic or hydrological loads, which adversely affect the structural condition of the bridge. This structural degradation is further accelerated for the Champlain Bridge due to …

Tra-904: Road Mortality Hot Spots Of Turtles: A Three-Year Ministry Of Transportation Study In Brant County, Ontario, Will Van Hemessen, Julie Scott, Tisha Doucette, Kirstie Houston

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Road mortality has a significant depressive effect on turtle populations in southern Ontario and mitigation measures to reduce turtle road mortality are therefore increasingly being incorporated into road construction projects in the province. This has included the installation of “ecopassages” beneath roadways which enable turtles and other animals to safely move between habitats. These measures are most effective if they are installed at locations with frequent turtle movement and high road mortality rates. We conducted a detailed multi-seasonal survey of turtle road mortality in order to identify mortality “hot spots” along a 4.85 km stretch of highway in Brant County, …

Tra-910: Connected Vehicle V2i Communication Application To Enhance Driver Awareness At Signalized Intersections, Mostafa Mohammed, Yahui Ke, Jie Gao, Hui Zhang, Karim El-Basyouny, Tony Z. Qiu

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

This study introduces a Vehicle-To-Infrastructure (V2I) architecture to enhance driver awareness at signalized intersections. The main objectives are to (i) provide a proof-of-concept field experiment on the use of V2I communication architecture at a signalized intersection and (ii) evaluate the impact of V2I communication on improving driver performance while crossing the intersection. The proposed V2I communication application will relay an advisory auditory message to the driver regarding the status of the traffic signal. It is expected that driver behaviour is going to change as a result of the in-vehicle audible message. Consequently, the proposed application will collect additional driver performance …

Tra-912: Barn Swallow (Hirundo Rustica) Nesting Habitat, Use Of Bridges And Culverts And Other Structures, And Implications To Infrastructure Projects In Ontario, Sean Spisani, Matt Bruder

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Barn Swallow is a medium-sized song bird that is approximately 15 to 18 cm long, which feeds on flying insects. They are easily recognized by their blue glossy back and upper wings, rusty- orange forehead and throat, brownish underbelly, and their deeply forked tails. In Ontario, they are most common in southern and central Ontario but occur as far north as Hudson Bay (COSSARO 2011). Barn Swallows nest on walls or ledges of barns and on other human-made structures such as bridges, culverts or other buildings (Lepage 2007). Barn Swallow often nest in small colonies of 2 to 59 nests …

Tra-913: Bat Species At Risk And Implications To Infrastructure Projects In Ontario, Melissa Straus, Nicole Kopysh, Andrew Taylor

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The Ontario Endangered Species Act (ESA 2007) provides protection of listed bat species and their habitat, including Eastern Small-footed Myotis (Myotis leibii), Little Brown Myotis (Myotis lucifugus), and Northern Myotis (Myotis septentrionalis); all of which have been identified as Endangered. The Tri-coloured Bat (Perimyotis subflavus) is currently under review and may be identified at risk in the near future. Bats are listed as a result of the spread of White-nose Syndrome (WNS), a fungal pathogen that has resulted in mass mortality events within hibernation sites. Through the use of two case studies …

Tra-914: Tdm To Promote Sustainable Commuting – An Employer’S Perspective, Sarah Hanson, Kevin Phillips

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

There is a comprehensive transportation consulting industry across Canada that provides engineering services for highway and roadway design, environmental assessments, traffic engineering, etc. that all contribute to the development of our transportation infrastructure. However, as leaders in transportation planning and engineering, these transportation consultants must also strive to ‘practice what we preach’ in terms of promoting sustainable transportation solutions in our communities and in our daily lives. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the Travel Demand Management (TDM) initiatives that our AECOM Richmond Hill office has implemented to promote more sustainable work related commuting, and to present a …

Tra-919: A Survey-Based Approach To Understanding Resilience Implications Of Disruption To Transit Operation, Jenessa Man, Aarshabh Misra, Siva Srikukenthiran, Amer Shalaby

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Recent surge in academic and industry-related interest in transit resilience can be partly attributed to the occurrence and impact of disruptive events like Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina and the July 2005 London bombings. Such events have served not only to highlight the vulnerabilities of our public transit systems to natural disasters, targeted attacks and, broadly speaking, unexpected conditions, but also to garner interest in resilience-based approaches to mitigate and recover from the damage caused. In spite of recent gains in developing better understanding of transit resilience, substantial gaps remain in establishing a clear relationship between resilience and transit planning. This …

Tra-929: A Standard Lexicon To Measure The Level Of Service Of Public Transportation Services Through Online Transit-Oriented Discussions, Moein Hosseini, Tamer El-Diraby, Amer Shalaby

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Public involvement in operation and planning of transit services is becoming a major focus of public transportation agencies. With the growing population and diversification of ideas, distilling knowledge from public opinion to incorporate into decision support systems is a major challenge for transit agencies. The common practice is to collect information from customers via Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSat). Although such surveys provide useful insight for transit agencies, their design, data collection, and interpretation is expensive and time consuming. Because of the qualitative nature of the questions in these surveys, inconsistency in respondents’ perception of the survey questions is another challenge. …

Tra-928: Fish Barrier Mitigation Of An Oversteepened Culvert Within Saugeen First Nation Reserve, Robert A. Amos, Courtney Beneteau, Tisha Doucette, Dan Green, Kirstie Houston, Adele Mochrie, Valerie Nantais, Dave Penny, Doran Ritchie

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

A deteriorated concrete box culvert conveying a tributary of the Saugeen River under Highway 21 in Ontario had reached the end of its lifespan and was in need of replacement. The tributary supports a diverse range of coldwater fish species such as Rainbow Trout; however, fish passage, particularly upstream migration, has been cut off since the culvert and highway were constructed over seventy-five years ago. Specifically, fish passage has been hindered by shallow sheet flow along the sixty metre flat bottom, excessive velocities associated with the smooth, seven percent gradient, and a perched barrier at the downstream outlet. A key …

Tra-930: Transit User Behaviour In Response To Subway Service Disruption, Teddy Lin, Amer Shalaby, Eric Miller

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Disruption of transit service is a common occurrence in many cities around the world, and these incidents may have serious impacts on the transit user’s journey. Transit user behavioural response under disrupted service conditions, specifically how transit riders choose among available mode options to complete their trips, is not well understood. Mode choice studies often lack proper consideration of travel time variability and uncertainty in such situations, neither do they fully account for some options considered by users, such as waiting, taking a shuttle bus, or cancelling the trip. This study aims to investigate transit user mode choice in response …

Tra-927: The Evolution Of Reptile Mitigation Measures On Highway 69, Terri Rogers

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

MTO is actively expanding Highway 69 from a two-lane rural highway to a four-lane controlled access freeway. This is being completed through the eastern Georgian Bay area, some of the most pristine habitat for numerous species at risk reptiles. MTO obtained a permit under the Endangered Species Act for the project, prescribing extensive mitigation measures, including a requirement to prevent snakes and turtles from accessing the highway while still being able to access habitat on both sides.

To fulfill this condition, MTO is constructing one of the most permeable highways in Canada. At this stage, MTO has completed 13 passage …

Tra-932: Planning For Goods Movement: Ontario's Freight-Supportive Guidelines & Off Peak Deliveries Pilot, Robin Kortright, Lucy Kang

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

As communities grow and change it has become increasingly important to understand, plan and design for the movement of freight in order to maintain goods movement efficiency and the economic competitiveness of communities, while integrating and balancing the needs of other transportation system users and the compatibility of surrounding land uses. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation has developed Freight-Supportive Guidelines to assist municipalities, planners, engineers, developers and other practitioners in creating safe and efficient freight-supportive communities. The Guidelines provide land use planning, site design, road design and operational best practices, examples and implementation tools that are applicable to a wide …

Tra-931: Using Ground Penetrating Radar (Gpr) To Identify Turtle Nests, Richard Korczak, Matt Bruder, Sean Spisani

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Many turtle species are considered species at risk in Ontario and Canada. Legislation and policy protects individuals, habitats and nests. Turtles nest in areas with sand and gravel and other loose substrates, with suitable sunlight and good drainage, including roadsides, and other disturbed areas. The presence of nests may pose constraints to construction and operation of roads and other engineering projects in Ontario.

Throughout Ontario, turtles have been observed to nest in the embankments and gravel shoulders of roadways located near wetlands. The ease of access to these nests enables the use of non-destructive technologies, such as Ground Penetrating Radar …

Tra-934: Incorporation Of Roundabouts At Holt Rd Interchange, Michael Weldon, Christopher Schueler

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The planned refurbishment of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station (DNGS) by the Ontario Power Generation (OPG), scheduled to commence in late-2016 and extend until 2026, will result in significant employment growth and increased traffic volumes that cannot be supported by the area’s roadway network. In particular, the original Highway 401/Holt Road interchange, located approximately 40 km east of Toronto and serving as the primary access route for employee traffic into and out of the DNGS, was in need of significant upgrade and improvement in advance of commencing the refurbishment. The original interchange provided partial access to the highway only, while …

Tra-936: Modifying Signal Control At Intersections Under Adverse Weather Conditons, Zhengyang Lu, Liping Fu, Tae J. Kwon

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Adverse winter weather has always been a cause of traffic congestion and road collisions. To mitigate the negative impacts of winter weather, transportation agencies are under increasing pressure to introduce weather responsive traffic management strategies such as adaptive control of signalized intersections and variable speed limits. Currently, most traffic signal control systems are designed for normal weather conditions and are therefore suboptimal in terms of efficiency and safety for controlling traffic during winter snow events due to the changing traffic patterns and driver behavior. The main objective of this research is to explore how to modify traffic signal control under …

Tra-935: Repairing High Volume Hma Highways With Precast Concrete Inlay Panels, Daniel Pickel, Susan L. Tighe, Stephen Lee, Rico Fung, Tom Kazmierowski, Peter Smith, Mark Snyder

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The pavements which make up Canada’s high volume highways are subjected to some of the most demanding conditions in the world. They must structurally be capable of supporting significant traffic loading, which can exceed an average of 30,000 trucks per day. They must be capable of supporting these loads throughout the wide variety of environmental conditions to which they are exposed, ranging from hot summers to cold winters. In order to achieve service lives which do not necessitate frequent maintenance and repair activities, these pavement structures are required to be very resilient. A complication to constructing the resilient pavement structures …

Tra-938: A Parkway In A Prairie: The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway, Joel Foster

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Can a new international trade corridor successfully co-exist with one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems? Through careful design and innovative mitigation, the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway (the Parkway) was built with sensitivity to the adjacent tallgrass prairie. The Parkway was approved under the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act as the new freeway connection between Highway 401 and a new crossing of the Detroit River between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan.

Tallgrass prairie ecosystems are one of the most endangered vegetation communities on Earth and home to many rare species. The Parkway's ecological approach …

Tra-933: Effects Of Rainfall On Control Delay And Queue At Multilane Roundabout, Stephen Olukayode Ibijola, Johnnie Ben-Edigbe

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The main thrust of the study is to investigate the extent of delay induced by rainfall at the roundabouts. Traffic flows at roundabout are continuous in one direction around a central island where entry flows yield to circulating flows. Based on the hypothesis that, rainfall will increase roundabout entry delay, ‘with and without’ rainfall studies were carried out at selected roundabouts in Durban, South Africa. Entry and circulating traffic flow data as well as geometric data were collected continuously at three selected sites during rainfall and dry weather conditions. Three classes of rainfall intensity were used: light rainfall with intensity < 2.5mm/h, moderate rainfall with intensity 2.5 – 10mm/h and heavy rainfall with intensity 10 – 50mm/h. Results show that entry delays increased between 11% and 22% during rainy conditions. The study concluded that heavy rainfall has a significant impact on delays and queues at roundabouts. The delay is not responsive to light and moderate rainfall intensity.

Tra-939: Re-Establishing Community Connections: The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway, Joel Foster

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway (the Parkway) is the Canadian access road portion of a new end-to-end transportation system for the Windsor-Detroit corridor. The Parkway was identified through the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) study, one of the most extensive environmental assessments ever undertaken by Ontario. The Parkway was approved under the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in 2009 and construction began in 2011.

Windsor-Detroit is the busiest land border crossing in Canada. More than 9,000 transport trucks per day travel the corridor from Highway 401 to border crossings in Windsor. Prior to construction, …

Tra-942: Imputation Of Missing Classified Traffic Data During Winter Season, Hyuk-Jae Roh, Satish Sharma, Prasanta K. Sahu

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Highway agencies collect traffic data to calculate traffic parameters such as Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT), Design Hourly Volume (DHV) and then to use as input in the planning, operation and management of their highway systems. The traffic data are usually collected through traffic monitoring programs. In particular, the Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) system is one of data collection systems to capture configuration patterns of vehicle travelling on the detection area. It is learned from literatures that traffic monitoring devices are prone to be in malfunctioning and, consequently, providing erroneous or missing traffic data due to the adverse weather conditions in which …