Transportation Engineering Commons^™

Field Investigation And Performance Evaluation Of Interface Bonding Between Pavement Layers, Ramendra N. Das

LSU Master's Theses

Proper bonding between pavement layers is essential to provide a monolithic pavement structure that allows distribution of loading over a larger area. Inadequate interface bonding may cause debonding or shear failure at the interface due to the accumulation of concentrated tensile stresses at the bottom of the overlay. Tack coat, a light application of asphaltic cement emulsion is applied on the existing surface to create a strong adhesive bond between pavement layers. The objectives of this study are to investigate the effects of various factors affecting bond strength between hot-mix asphalt (HMA) overlay and underlying pavement layers in the field. …

Sustained Flow Index: A Stochastic Measure Of Freeway Performance, Siavash Shojaat

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The capacity of a road addresses its quantitative traffic carrying ability. The estimation of capacity as a parameter to assess traffic flow performance on freeway facilities has received considerable attention in the literature. Research into the traffic operation at high volumes reveals that the capacity of freeways is not a fixed number, but rather a random variable. Thus, in a stochastic approach to freeway capacity of estimation, the capacity is treated as a random variable generated from a population of flow observations, stemmed from a certain distribution function. Since the type of capacity distribution function is generally not known with …

Development Of A Mode And Destination Type Joint Choice Model For Hurricane Evacuation, Ruijie Bian

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Since Hurricane Katrina, transit evacuation service has been seen to serve critical needs in affected cities and an increasing number of hurricanes have struck the east coast where more people rely on public transportation to evacuate. Thus, it is important to model mode choice in evacuation for a better estimation of evacuation transit demand. In this study, a joint mode and destination type choice model was estimated based on multiple post-storm behavioral surveys from the northeastern seaboard to the Gulf coast. A Nested Logit model specification was used to estimate this joint choice model. The estimated model showed significant linkage …

An Enhanced Bridge Weigh-In-Motion Methodology And A Bayesian Framework For Predicting Extreme Traffic Load Effects Of Bridges, Yang Yu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the past few decades, the rapid growth of traffic volume and weight, and the aging of transportation infrastructures have raised serious concerns over transportation safety. Under these circumstances, vehicle overweight enforcement and bridge condition assessment through structural health monitoring (SHM) have become critical to the protection of the safety of the public and transportation infrastructures. The main objectives of this dissertation are to: (1) develop an enhanced bridge weigh-in-motion (BWIM) methodology that can be integrated into the SHM system for overweight enforcement and monitoring traffic loading; (2) present a Bayesian framework to predict the extreme traffic load effects (LEs) …

Countywide Bluetooth System: Use Cases & Performance Measures, Shaun Quayle

PSU Transportation Seminars

Washington County has 124 permanent roadside Bluetooth readers, which passively and in an anonymous fashion collect travel time, speed, and origin-destination information across the major arterials in the urban County. This presentation gives an overview of the program purpose, history, some interesting use cases, and the formation of comparative performance metrics to gauge the magnitude and duration of congestion across the County. These metrics and information will help planners improve travel demand models, consultants improve traffic analyses, operations staff prioritize timing, detection, and maintenance functions, agencies inform traveler information data, and leaders better communicate the story of traffic demand, delay, …

Evaluation Of Roadway Reallocation Projects, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Project Briefs

This NITC study offers a new methodology for evaluating the before-and-after effects of roadway space reallocation projects.

Evaluation Of Roadway Reallocation Projects: Analysis Of Before-And-After Travel Speeds And Congestion Utilizing High-Resolution Bus Transit Data, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Travis B. Glick

TREC Final Reports

The traditional process of identifying corridors for road diet improvements involves selecting potential corridors (mostly based on identifying fourlane roads) and conducting a traffic impact analysis of proposed changes on a selected roadway before implementing changes. The evaluation of roadway reallocation projects should include the analysis of traffic volumes, level of service, speeds, queue lengths and bus operations. There are tools and equipment to evaluate effectively traffic volumes and level of service changes in before-and-after studies. However, the detailed evaluation of speed and queue length distributions along a segment are significantly more cumbersome. In addition, the exhaustive evaluation of bus …

In-Place Recycling And Reclamation Of Asphaltic Concrete Pavements In Kentucky, David Q. Hunsucker, David L. Allen, R. Clark Graves

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Full-depth reclamation has been defined by the Asphalt Recycling and Reclaiming Association as a “rehabilitation technique in which the full thickness of the asphalt pavement and a predetermined portion of the underlying material (base, subbase, and/or subgrade) is uniformly pulverized, blended and compacted to provide an upgraded, homogeneous material resulting in a stabilized base course.” The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has utilized the full-depth reclamation (FDR) process as a method to address asphalt pavements exhibiting widespread base failures. The FDR process transforms the existing hot mix asphalt (HMA) pavement and underlying granular materials into a stabilized base layer. The stabilized layer …

Accelerated Innovation Deployment (Aid) Demonstration: Kytc — Roundabout Installation Project In London, Kentucky, Jeff Jasper, Adam J. Kirk

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This document serves as the final report on the construction and opening of the Roundabout Project in London, Kentucky (Kentucky Item Number 11‐904.1). This project (hereafter referred to as the London Roundabout) was constructed on the authority of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC), which received an Accelerated Innovation Deployment (AID) Demonstration grant of $1 million to offset project construction costs. The AID Demonstration program requires that award recipients submit a final report to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) within six months of project completion. The purpose of this report is to document the project delivery and construction processes, benefits, and …

Coaxing His Data From Mandli Pavement Scans, Eric R. Green, William Nicholas Staats, Erin Lammers-Staats, Teng Alex Wang

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) Division of Planning’s Highway Information Systems (HIS) database provides geometric information about horizontal and vertical curves, but its accuracy is unknown. An updated method of pavement analysis collects data by scanning the pavement as a van equipped with Mandli software drives the area of interest. The scans provide detailed information that can be used to calculate roadway geometry characteristics (e.g., curve radius, cross slope/superelevation, and grade). This study evaluated the ability of the Mandli data to support curve advisory calculations and find a way to utilize Mandli data to improve the existing HIS database. To …

Webinar: Transportation Benefits Of Parking Cash-Out, Pre-Tax Commuter Benefits, And Parking Surtaxes, Allen Greenberg, James Choe, Sonika Sethi, Colleen Stoll

TREC Webinar Series

The vast majority of employers provide their employees free parking at work, which encourages employees to drive alone. Multiple strategies exist to level the playing field between travel modes and allow employees to select the travel option most beneficial to them without suffering a financial penalty. The U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration sponsored a study to understand the effect parking cash out, pre-tax commuter benefits, and parking surtaxes can have on congestion, emissions, and other driving-related externalities. The study is part of the Administration’s ongoing efforts to increase awareness of solutions to address the transportation issues affecting communities …

Application Of Surface Treatments To Improve Fuel Efficiency Of Internal Combustion Engines, Amirabbas Akbarzadeh

LSU Master's Theses

To improve the tribological performance of contacting surfaces, different surface modification methods can be employed. Surface texturing and surface coating are examples of viable techniques developed for this purpose. Surface texturing involves creating micropatterns on the contacting surfaces while surface coating requires depositing a thin layer of a suitable material on the surface(s) to improve the component’s friction and wear characteristics. The performance of textured surfaces is affected by the geometric characteristic of textures.When dealing with surface coating parameters, the parameters of interests are the type of coating materials and their thicknesses.

The current study aims to experimentally study the …

Advisory Bike Lanes In North America, Michael Williams

PSU Transportation Seminars

Despite being used successfully for decades in Europe, Advisory Bike Lanes are an emerging facility type in North America and can be an effective tool for communities wishing to provide bicycle lanes on streets that are otherwise too narrow to accommodate them. This talk will introduce the concept and operation of advisory bike lanes and look at some lessons learned from the early installations of this facility in the U.S. and Canada.

Safety Effectiveness Of Pedestrian Crossing Treatments, Christopher Monsere

PSU Transportation Seminars

Over the last decade, the transportation agencies in Oregon have systematically enhanced many pedestrian crossings at mid-block locations with Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFBs), Flashing Yellow Beacons (Flash), and high visibility crosswalk markings (Hi-Vis). Enhancements often included the installation of refuge medians. This study explored the safety performance of these enhanced crossings, categorized by enhancement type. Data were collected on 191 crossings that included installation year, geometric features, surrounding land use, traffic volumes, and the number of crashes. Because pedestrian volume at the locations was unavailable, a pedestrian activity level variable was developed. Target crashes for analysis were identified as …

Datumate, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Datumate is digitally transforming civil engineering processes used in construction, surveying and infrastructure inspection markets with fully automated, highly precise, cost effective and safe tools. It utilizes state-of-the-art image processing and advanced drones and camera technologies dramatically reducing the amount of time surveying crews spend in the field, speeding up construction progress checks and shortening infrastructure inspection duration, while maintaining survey grade accuracy. The intuitive, simple and automated solutions increase productivity by saving field and office time in civil engineering and inspection projects of roads, intersections, stockpile volumes, topography, piping, industrial facilities, bridges, property surveys, building facades, railways, cellular infrastructure …

Review Of Project Development Practices And Project Management Resources At State Transportation Agencies, Christopher Van Dyke, Bryan Gibson, Jeff Jasper, Doug Kreis

Kentucky Transportation Center Technical Assistance Report

At the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s (KYTC) Department of Highways, project development encompasses all the work activities needed to move a transportation project from concept and project initiation to construction letting. Developing projects efficiently requires the adoption of sound project management practices. And having recourse to validated project development practices is critical for helping KYTC project managers negotiate the variety of tasks and processes leading up to project implementation and delivery. For a project manager to be successful, they must possess a holistic understanding of how the complex interplay of engineering, environmental, and economic issues affect different stages and facets of …

An Artificial Neural Network Model For Predicting Freeway Work Zone Delays With Big Data, Bo Du

Dissertations

Lane closures due to road reconstruction and maintenance have resulted in a major source of non-recurring congestion on freeways. It is extremely important to accurately quantify the associated mobility impact so that a cost-effective work zone schedule and an efficient traffic management plan can be developed. Therefore, the development of a sound model for predicting delays or road users is desirable.

A comprehensive literature review on existing work zone delay prediction models (i.e., deterministic queuing model and shock wave model) is conducted in this study, which explores the advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of different modeling approaches. The performance of those …

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Roads, Keith Pierce

News Items

No abstract provided.

Safety Concepts For Workers From An Osha Perspective, Zamaan Al-Shabbani, Roy E. Sturgill Jr., Gabriel B. Dadi

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Highway construction and maintenance workers face numerous hazards on job sites, many of which are unique by industry standards. Despite the exposure of state transportation agency employees and contractors to these hazards, there are few safety standards, regulations, programs that directly target the sector aimed at prevention and mitigation. To help the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) improve employee safety, researchers at the Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC) analyzed the frequency and causes of workplace injuries for 10 essential Cabinet maintenance operations. Most incidents were attributable to human factors or ergonomics. Based on this analysis, the leading causes of incidents, and a …

Increased Span Length For The Mgs Long-Span Guardrail System Part Iii: Failure Analysis, Sagheer A. Ranjha, Robert W. Bielenberg, John D. Reid, Ronald K. Faller

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The objective of this research study was to review and analyze the system failure observed during crash testing of an increased span length for the MGS long-span guardrail system in test no. MGSLS-2. Test no. MGSLS-2 was a full-scale crash test conducted on the MGS long-span guardrail with a span length of 311⁄4 ft (9.5 m). This test utilized universal breakaway steel posts (UBSPs) adjacent to the long span in lieu of the controlled release terminal (CRT) wood posts used in previous long span systems.

An engineering analysis was undertaken to review the downstream end anchorage failure observed in test …