Engineering Commons^™

The North American Transportation Security Center – Technology Prototype Gap Analysis, Steven Douglas Kreis, Michael M. Barclay

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Executive Summary

There are over 800,000 hazardous materials (hazmat) shipments over the nation’s roads each day. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), terrorist activity related to the transportation of hazardous materials represents a significant threat to public safety and the nation’s critical infrastructure. Specifically, the federal government has identified the government’s inability to track hazmat shipments on a real-time basis as a significant security vulnerability.

In 2004, the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) completed a study to determine if “smart truck” technology such as GPS tracking, wireless modems, panic buttons, and onboard computers could be …

Highway-Railway At-Grade Crossing Structures: Optimum Design/Installation Practices And Management Program – An Overview, Jerry G. Rose

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Replacing and rehabilitating highway-railway at-grade crossings represent major track maintenance expenses for the U.S. highway governmental agencies and railroad industry. The ideal crossing system is one that will maintain a smooth surface and stable highway/trackbed for a long period of time minimizing costly and inconvenient disruptions to highway and rail traffic.

This report describes the consensus goals for, and the development of, a cooperative, fast-track crossing renewal system for an ideal highway-railway crossing management program. The performance-based process utilizes premium structural materials and construction techniques to provide long-term, cost effective, smooth, and safe crossings. Specifically stressed is the desirability of …

Highway-Railway At-Grade Crossings: Long-Term Settlement Measurements And Assessments, Jerry G. Rose, Mary G. Swiderski, Justin S. Anderson, Lindsay A. Walker

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the long-term settlements for a wide variety of at-grade crossings. Twenty-four highway crossings were monitored to determine the effects of enhanced support on minimizing long-term settlements of the crossing surfaces. Settlements of the rail and highway approaches to the crossing areas were compared to settlements of the common crossing areas over an average service period of three years. Long-term settlements of crossings with traditional all-granular support materials were compared to crossings with enhanced support. The enhanced support was provided by substituting a layer of asphalt (termed underlayment) for the all-granular subballast layer. …

Vehicle Tire-Pavement Interfacial Surface Pressure Measurements And Assessments, Jerry G. Rose, Timothy E. Guenther

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This report examines a method of using Piezoelectric Pressure-Sensitive Ink (Tekscan) Pressure Measurement System to evaluate vehicle tire pressures that are exerted on the surface of pavements. Upgrades to the Tekscan system facilitated refinements from previous research and allows for procedures to be modified in order to account for these improvements. Among the most significant advances is the ability to select various sensitivities within the software program. In addition to the methodology of evaluating calibration practices, sensitivity and sensor selection, it was important to determine how accurately the pressures and wheel loads can be computed from pavement tests. Also examined …

Impacto Socioeconómico Generado Por La Obra Civil De Transmilenio En El Sector Comprendido De La Calle 13 Entre La Avenida Nqs Y Puente Aranda, Hector Andres Pérez Cortés, Heider Marino Vallejo Delgado

Ingeniería Civil

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of The Use Of Snowplowable Raised Pavement Markers, Kenneth R. Agent, Eric R. Green

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness and durability of snowplowable raised pavement markers (RPM) installed on the RPM system in Kentucky. The durability evaluation dealt with the marker housing.

The data show that continued use of the currently approved snowplowable RPM can be justified if the castings are properly installed on new pavements with a commitment that the pavement will be maintained. An evaluation of centerline rumble strips installations showed that they should be considered on rural, two-lane roads with 12-foot lane widths (having new pavements) and paved shoulders.

Nondestructive Method To Detect Corrosion Of Steel Elements In Concrete, Saeed Javidi Niroumand, Aaron Jon Yakel, Atorod Azizinamini, Marcelo Dasilva

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

No abstract provided.

A Cost Assessment Of The Dayton Public Schools Vehicle Routing Problem, Frankie L. Woods Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The routing and scheduling problem involves both constructing efficient routes to deliver goods or services to and from customers from a single depot or set of depots, as well as scheduling particular vehicles to these routes such that customers receive their goods within a specified time window. There have been several different methods developed to reduce the costs incurred in transporting goods or services (i.e. students) to customers (i.e. schools). This problem may be used to model many circumstances in logistics and public transportation. Several school districts do not utilize operations research techniques to minimize, as much as possible, the …

Evaluation Of The Work Zone Safety And Mobility Rule, Kenneth R. Agent, Jerry G. Pigman

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Work Zone Safety and Mobility Rule (Rule) was published in the Federal Register in September 2004 indicating that all state and local governments receiving Federal-aid funding were required to comply with provisions of the Rule no later than October 2007. Kentucky received an extension to October 2008. The objectives of this study were to review the requirements of the Work Zone Safety and Mobility Rule and provide recommendations for implementation of the Rule to ensure a consistent approach for designing and managing the impacts of work zones. This report documents results from: a) a review of literature and Kentucky’s …

Ohio River Denial As A Transportation Corridor And Its Economic Impacts On The Energy Industry, Caglar Utku Guler

Theses and Dissertations

What if the Ohio River is disrupted or denied partially or completely as a transportation corridor? A disruption may be either a natural or man-made disaster or a planned outage on the river’s lock and dam structures. Recent history is full of water transport disruption events having significant economic effects on the waterside industries. To assess coal-based economic impacts, we developed a network flow model to represent waterside coal-fired power plants situated along the Ohio River, their respective coal supplying mines, and the various transportation modes that connect them. We show that significant transportation-centric insights can be derived by using …

Evaluation Plan For The Ticketing Aggressive Cars And Trucks (Tact) Program In Kentucky, Eric R. Green

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Kentucky State Police Division of Commercial Vehicle Enforcement in cooperation with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has started a concentrated education and enforcement campaign in an effort to increase the safety and awareness of drivers around commercial vehicles. The University of Kentucky Transportation Center has evaluated this campaign and reported the effectiveness of this effort.

The campaign was focused in two high volume, high crash interstate areas: one in northern Kentucky on I‐75, and one in the Louisville area on I‐65. Several blitzes (including a media and enforcement component) were conducted throughout the year. This evaluation measured the success …

Experimental Painting Of The I-64 Riverside Parkway In Louisville, Ky, Rick Younce, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Sudhir Palle

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet conducted a large-scale zone maintenance painting operation on 13 elevated steel bridges along the I-64 Riverside Parkway in Louisville, KY in 2007. That work included abrasive blast-cleaning and painting of steel underlying open deck joints on 3.2 miles of steel structures. The painting was performed by spray application of one coat of a calcium sulfonate alkyd coating. The painting covered an area of 237,060 ft2 of steel cleaned and painted at a unit cost of $15.82/ft2.

The project incorporated a high level of containment as the existing coating possessed lead-based paints and the project was located …

Optimizing Container Retrieval Operation At A Port Container Terminal, Dejan Besenski

Dissertations

In the presence of major challenges, where ports are striving to improve their operation and stay competitive in the global market, the issue of port efficiency, particularly the intelligent management of straddle carriers is investigated in this study. A new approach is presented that optimizes container handling equipment operation and is beneficial for the terminal operator in terms of improving productivity, providing faster service and reducing operating cost, Also, the solution provides acceptable service for truckers, The operational strategies presented are able to assess the operation from the truckers' and terminal operators' perspective.

The research is structured into four different …

Optimizing Fare Structure And Service Frequency For An Intercity Transit System, Feng-Ming Tsai

Dissertations

This study presents an approach to jointly optimize service headway and differentiated fare for an intercity transit system with an objective of total profit maximization and with consideration given to the economic and social sustainability of the system. Service capacity and fleet size constraints are considered. The optimization problem is structured into four scenarios which are comprised of the combinations of whether the Ranges of Travel Distance (RTD) is fixed or variable and if the time period is for a single period or for multiple periods. A successive substitution method (specifically, a modified Gauss Southwell method) is applied to solve …

Impacto Socioeconómico Implementado Al Proyecto Transmilenio Av. Ciudad De Cali Entre La Biblioteca El Tintal Y El Portal De Las Américas, Jhon Fernando Sánchez Pérez, Manuel Augusto Sánchez Fajardo

Ingeniería Civil

No abstract provided.

Análisis Del Actual Sistema De Recaudo Para El Sistema De Transporte Público Colectivo De Bogotá, Adriana Suleny Rodríguez Chacón

Ingeniería Civil

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Evaluation Of A Pinned Anchoring System For New York State’S Temporary Concrete Barriers, Christopher N. Howard, Cale J. Stolle, Karla A. Lechtenberg, Ronald K. Faller, John D. Reid, Dean L. Sicking

Mid-America Transportation Center: Final Reports and Technical Briefs

Temporary concrete barrier (TCB) systems are utilized in many circumstances, including for placement adjacent to vertical dropoffs. Free-standing TCB systems are known to have relatively large deflections when impacted, which may be undesirable when dealing with limited space behind the barrier (as seen on a bridge deck) or limited lane width in front of the barrier system. In order to allow TCB systems to be used in space-restricted locations, a variety of TCB stiffening options have been tested, including beam stiffening and pinning the barriers to the pavement. These pavement-pinning procedures have been considered time-consuming and may pose undue risk …

Urban Transportation Planning Decision Making: A Robustness Analysis Approach, Deogratias Eustace

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Faculty Publications

Travel demand modeling remains a cornerstone of the transportation planning process. Although current transportation planning procedures are mostly performed by an interdisciplinary team approach, there are still a number of institutional issues which may hinder the process from providing the best results. According to Marshment (2001), the most notable setback is a lack of coordination between land use and transportation planning. Most of the time, land use plans do not reflect the influence of the accessibility to the alternative transportation facilities.

The lack of interaction between land use and transportation planning may play a major role in using unrealistic and …

Reacciones Que Presentan Los Conductores Cuando Transitan Por Túneles, Fredy Enrique Quiroga Quira, Juan Pablo Ortega Jaramillo

Ingeniería Civil

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Evaluation Of New York State’S Aluminum Pedestrian Signal Pole System, Scott K. Rosenbaugh, Ronald K. Faller, Karla A. Lechtenberg, Robert W. Bielenberg, Dean L. Sicking, John D. Reid

Mid-America Transportation Center: Final Reports and Technical Briefs

The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) mounts pedestrian “hand/man” signals to aluminum

poles and uses frangible transformer bases to allow the system to break away. However, engineers at NYSDOT believed that the material properties of the aluminum poles themselves would allow the pedestrian signal poles to break away without the use of transformer bases. Elimination of the frangible transformer base would result in significant savings.

An aluminum pedestrian signal pole system was erected at the Valmont testing facility and tested with the Valmont- MwRSF/UNL pendulum with crushable nose in accordance with NCHRP Report No. 350 test designation no. …

Kentucky Highway User Survey 2008, Lenahan O'Connell

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This study updates surveys of Kentucky driver opinion regarding the quality of Kentucky’s highway system. The survey was conducted in 2008. Data is presented in bar graphs and tables that allow the analysis of changes in public opinion since the first administration of the survey. For most topics, data are available from 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2008. The respondents are 845 Kentucky-licensed drivers, age 18 and over. The study looked at seven characteristics of Kentucky highways and found that satisfaction levels were quite stable since 2003. In regard to overall satisfaction in 2008, 54% of drivers said they were …

Reduction Of Stresses On Buried Rigid Highway Structures Using The Imperfect Ditch Method And Expanded Polysterene (Geofoam), Liecheng Sun, Tommy C. Hopkins, Tony L. Beckham

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The study of earth pressure distribution on buried structures has a great practical importance in constructing highway embankments above pipes and culverts. Based on Spangler’s research, the supporting strength of a conduit depends primarily on three factors: 1. The inherent strength of the conduit; 2. The distribution of the vertical load and bottom reaction; and 3. The magnitude and distribution of lateral earth pressures that act against the sides of the structure. Rigid culverts are frequently used in Kentucky for routing streams beneath highway embankments because of rolling and mountainous terrain, numerous streams, shallow depths to bedrock, which creates unyielding …

Kentucky Traffic Collision Facts 2009 Report, Kentucky Transportation Center, Kentucky State Police

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

KENTUCKY’S TRAFFIC COLLISION FACTS report for 2009 is based on collision reports submitted to the Kentucky State Police Records Branch. As required by Kentucky Revised Statutes 189.635, “every law enforcement agency whose officers investigate a vehicle accident of which a report must be made...shall file a report of the accident...within ten days after investigation of the accident upon forms supplied by the bureau.” The stated purpose of this requirement is to utilize data on traffic collisions for such purposes as will improve the traffic safety program in the Commonwealth. Data contained in this report are based solely on the observations …