Engineering Commons^™

Accuracy And Uncertainty In Traffic And Transit Ridership Forecasts, Jawad Mahmud Hoque

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Investments of public dollars on highway and transit infrastructure are influenced by the anticipated demands for highways and public transportations or traffic and transit ridership forecasts. The purpose of this study is to understand the accuracy of road traffic forecasts and transit ridership forecasts, to identify the factors that affect their accuracy, and to develop a method to estimate the uncertainty inherent in those forecasts. In addition, this research investigates the pre-pandemic decline in transit ridership across the US metro areas since 2012 and its influence on the accuracy of transit forecasts.

The sample of 1,291 road projects from the …

Identifying And Evaluating The Perceptions Of Near-Miss Reporting Within The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Seth Atkins

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

In the field of construction, most safety data and practices focus on preventing and mitigating serious incidents resulting in injuries or fatalities. However, on construction sites, near-miss events occur more frequently than said serious incidents and, under marginally different conditions, could potentially lead to damages, injuries, or fatalities. Therefore, near-miss reporting can serve as a useful tool for managing safety as it allows for workers to identify and managers to address potential risk factors within construction sites. While most construction companies have implemented some method for reporting near-miss events, many organizations, such as the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC), struggle with …

Optimizing The Potential Of Highway Safety Investment, Riana Tanzen

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Highway safety management aims to prevent crashes and reduce the resulting frequency and severity within the limit of available resources. The identification of potentially hazardous sites and investment on safety treatments have been fundamental to fulfill this goal. However, having many highway safety improvement projects in hand, safety professionals need to evaluate several different alternatives and allocate the limited funds to the ones that would provide the highest return on investment. Hence, prioritizing the safety projects based on their potential to achieve the greatest safety benefit is crucial. Ineffective prioritization can distribute funds to locations with less potential for improvement …

Evaluation Of Scoring Methods For Prioritizing Pedestrian And Bicycle Projects, Daria Korostina

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

To increase the number of pedestrian and bicycle facilities and to grow the number of people using those facilities in Kentucky more such projects need to be implemented. The Strategic Highway Investment Formula for Tomorrow (SHIFT) is a data-driven approach that Kentucky uses for prioritizing projects in the state, but its focus is auto-centric. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a prioritization scoring approach for pedestrian and bicycle projects that could be implemented into SHIFT. The study used the SHIFT–2022 pedestrian and bicycle projects to develop and evaluate different scoring scenarios. After scoring each project on …

Incorporating Speed Into Crash Modeling For Rural Two-Lane Highways, Fahmida Rahman

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Rural two-lane highways account for 76% in mileages of the total paved roads in the US. In Kentucky, these roads represent 85 % of the state-maintained mileages. Crashes on these roads account for 40% of all crashes, 47% of injury crashes, and 66% of fatal crashes on state-maintained roads. These statistics draw attention to the need to investigate the crashes on these roads. Several factors such as road geometries, traffic volume, human behavior, etc. contribute to crashes on a road. Recently, studies have identified speed as one of the key factors of crashes as well as the severity associated with …

Load And Pressure Distribution As A Function Of Dynamic Contact Stress At The Railroad Crosstie-Ballast Interface, Habib Abdil Unluoglu

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Excessive crosstie wear and abrasion and ballast wear and fouling are two of the fundamental problems contributing to inadequate railroad track performance. This adversely affects the attainment and long-term maintenance of desired track geometric requirements. The magnitudes and distribution of the stresses at the crosstie-ballast (CT-B) interface must be known to determine the stress distribution on the ballast. However, the stresses at the top of the ballast often vary significantly. This study examines a new approach to predicting dynamic contact pressures at the interface of crosstie and ballast using the ‘square wave theory.’ A data set of in-track CT-B interfacial …

Induced Travel Demand: Measuring The Contribution Of Additional Lane Miles On The Increase In U.S. Vehicle Miles Traveled From 1980 To 2019, Brandon Ivanchak

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Induced travel demand is the effect of increasing the amount of vehicle miles traveled because of an increase in roadway capacity. It is explained by the idea that increasing capacity makes driving on those roads more desirable, thereby causing more people to use them. In1962, Robert Downs postulated that “On urban commuter expressways, peak hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity,” referring to this as the law of peak hour traffic congestion. Since then, there have been ongoing debates about the effectiveness and environmental impact of roadway expansion projects, and efforts to quantify induced demand to inform those debates. …