Transportation Engineering Commons^™

Demystifying Utility Coordination: Understanding The Basics, Josshe I. Palm

Purdue Road School

This session will explain utility coordination to non-utility coordinators. It will help educate others about the role and responsibilities of a utility coordinator, an OSA, easy UC and design mistakes to avoid, scope and design considerations, items commonly overlooked, when to coordinate SUE, and how to work with your UC to request a letting adjustment. We will also highlight UC submittals and allow time for questions about the UC’s role in a project’s success.

Analyzing Video And Isobus Data To Understand Risk And Safety Practices For Roadside Mowing, Nathan Sprague, Timothy Wiegman, J. T. Evans

Graduate Industrial Research Symposium

In Indiana, roadside mowing covers 11,200 miles, presenting significant risks. The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) seeks safer methods, including automated evaluations and autonomous robots. Analyzing 120 hours of video and ISOBUS data, we quantify mower interactions with the road and obstacles, finding mowers on -road up to 91% of the time in rural areas and 57% on highways. Key obstacles identified include signs and posts. This research aids in developing risk assessment models and safety evaluations, aiming to improve mowing safety and efficiency, and it supports future development of autonomous mowing technologies.

Best Practices For Recruitment And Retention Of Transportation Professionals, Chris Van Dyke, Bryan Gibson, Sarah Mccormack, Merl Hackbart, Doug Kreis

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Many public sector agencies, including state departments of transportation (DOTs), have long found recruiting and retaining staff a daunting challenge. Lured by the promise of higher salaries in the private sector, many people are reluctant to sacrifice their long-term earnings potential to pursue public service. And with the quality of fringe benefits (e.g., retirement plans, health insurance) offered by public agencies having declined gradually, it is even more difficult to persuade prospective employees to accept a lower salary. Many studies over the past 15—20 years have looked at methods for solving the problem of recruitment and retention within the context …

Evaluation Of Ndot’S Sediment Barrier Practices Using Performance Data, Michael A. Perez, Wesley N. Donald, J. Blake Whitman, Brian G. Roche

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

To protect waterways adjacent to construction projects with disturbed land, a 50 ft (15 m) vegetated buffer or equivalent sediment controls are required. However, there is little guidance on the effectiveness of vegetated buffers in removing sediment or how sediment barriers can aid shorter buffers or replace buffers. A modeling methodology was developed and used to determine the performance of 11,664 50 ft (15 m) vegetated buffer configurations with Nebraska conditions; sediment capture averaged 92.6% and ranged from 18.5% to 99.5%. To determine the performance of Nebraska Department of Transportation standard and modified sediment barrier installations, a large-scale testing methodology …

An Exploratory Framework For Benchmarking Vehicle Miles Traveled (Vmt) Estimates Associated With University Campuses, Troy Kawahara

Master's Theses

Although vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has become the standard for assessing transportation related impacts in California, some have concerns that many VMT estimates are not properly grounded or informed by real world data, potentially resulting in flawed estimates and impact assessments. This is especially true of special generators, like college and university campuses, which have complex travel patterns distinct from that of the general public. This thesis attempts to resolve a significant disparity observed between two credible VMT estimates for Cal Poly’s campus wide VMT. As part of a campus master planning effort, a VMT estimate was produced in 2019 …

Assessing Military Parking: A Deep Learning Approach To Evaluating Standards And Impacts, Ryan D. Lalonde

Theses and Dissertations

Current United States Department of Defense (DoD) standards require a minimum amount of parking for each building. This requirement defines how much off-street parking to construct. However, the impact of these requirements remains unclear. This study builds upon the emerging field of overhead imagery analytics by directly tying it to parking on military installations. Specifically, this study leverages a pretrained deep learning car detection model, Car Detection – USA, developed by Esri for use within ArcGIS, and couples it with open-access temporal imagery sourced from Google Earth Pro to assess selected parking lots across Area B, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, …

Online Instructional Tools For Motor Carriers, Brian Howell, Jennifer Walton, Paul Ross, Andrew Martin

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Commercial motor carrier customers on Kentucky highways must register and pay taxes for licensing and credentialing requirements. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) provides an online Motor Carrier Portal that offers information and instructions on meeting these requirements, but customers have increasingly resorted to calling into KYTC’s motor carrier help desk, thereby straining limited personnel resources. The Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC) coordinated with KYTC to develop a series of online instructional videos that can better assist customers with applying for and meeting credentialing requirements.

KTC researchers used a three-phase approach to determine the feasibility and requirements for instructional videos. First, they …

Strengthening The Deployment Of Uncrewed Aerial Systems (Uas) At Kytc, Rachel Catchings, Suzanne Smith, Gayle Marks, Candice Wallace, Christopher Van Dyke

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) and transportation agencies around the United States increasingly depends on uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS — also commonly known as drones) to collect data and accelerate project development and delivery. Drones let transportation practitioners safely and efficiently perform many activities, including bridge and highway inspection, construction monitoring, surveying, emergency response, and measuring stockpiles. KYTC’s implementation of UAS has expanded rapidly over the past 10 years, however, the agency lacks well-coordinated procedures for connecting pilots with end data users, scheduling and conducting flights, developing and documenting best practices, and processing and storing data. Based on a review …

Impact Of The New Context Functional Classifications For Kytc, Arlen Sandlin, Jill Asher, Nikiforos Stamatiadis, Jeff Jasper, Rachel Catchings, Chris Van Dyke

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

State transportation agencies are adopting an expanded context classification system to inform project development and delivery. This system classifies roadways into one of five categories based on factors such as level of development, building densities and setbacks, multimodal user patterns and requirements, network permeability, and speed. Compared to functional classification, context classification better captures the types of mobility, travel patterns, and user mixes observed in specific contexts. The expanded context classification system is found in AASHTO’s A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets (7^th Edition). The forthcoming 8^th edition will deepen integration of context classification throughout …

Pl 43 Traffic Forecasting Report 2023, Mei Chen, Xu Zhang, Eugene Antwi

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This document is the seventh edition of the Traffic Forecasting Report (TFR) for the state of Kentucky. TFR data are important for multiple engineering applications that involve analyzing temporal and spatial variability in traffic distributions and volumes. Most of the metrics discussed in the report were computed using data from 2019, 2021, and 2022 — excluded from consideration were 2020 data because they exhibited anomalous traffic patterns tied to shutdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Data summarized in this report include average daily traffic, annual average daily truck traffic, travel activity by vehicle type, weekday and weekend hourly volume percentages, …

Reliability-Based Analysis Of Horizontal Curve Design By Evaluating The Impact Of Vehicle Automation On Roadway Departure Crashes And Safety Performance, Omar Al-Sheikh, Seyed Hooman Ghasemi, Mohammad Jalayer

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

Roadway departure (RwD) crashes are significant safety concerns, especially at horizontal curves. The design of these curves plays a crucial role in mitigating RwD crashes. Thus, a thorough understanding of the interaction between driver behavior, vehicle automation, and geometric design is vital. Substantive safety, which emphasizes the inherent safety in a road's design and function, serves as the foundation of our approach. Building on this, the study employs a safe system approach to investigate the performance of horizontal curves under both non-automated and partially automated conditions, using a reliability-based analysis focusing on Stopping Sight Distance as the primary driver demand. …

Beneath I-280: Excavating A Neighborhood Lost To San José Freeways, Leila Ullmann, Gordon Douglas

Mineta Transportation Institute

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of people in San José, California were displaced from their homes as the state used eminent domain to purchase land and uproot neighborhoods for the construction of Interstate freeways. This report presents a multifaceted research and public knowledge effort that uncovers some of the communities buried beneath these freeways, in the area where I-280 and CA-87 meet today near downtown San José. The project builds primarily from previously unprocessed California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) archival documents, which this project studies for the first time. The records are rich in detail about valuation and sale …

Advancing Universal Id Through Demonstration Of Enabling Technologies, Joseph Crabtree, Andrew Martin, Jeeyen Koo, Brian Beaven

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The purpose of this project was to install, demonstrate, and evaluate two candidate technologies that could be used to achieve “Universal ID” (i.e., having a unique, electronically readable identifier on every commercial motor vehicle in the United States). The two technologies selected for this demonstration represent (1) a potential low-cost near-term solution (simple RFID tags and roadside readers) and (2) a potential future solution that leverages technology that is anticipated to be installed on all future vehicles to support a variety of connected-vehicle (CV) applications. For this demonstration project, both types of roadside reader technology were installed at three existing …

Pilot Study On Improving Crash Data Accuracy In Kentucky Through University Collaboration, Michael A. Fields, Eric Green, Robert Kluger, Xu Zhang, Kirolos Haleem

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Without high-quality crash data and robust interpretive/analytical tools to analyze these data, transportation agencies will struggle to develop evidence-based strategies for improving road safety. Crash narratives are one element of crash reports that pose especially acute interpretive challenges. These narratives supplement coded data and give an account of incidents authored by responding law enforcement officers. Despite their value, conducting manual reviews of the 150,000+ crash reports and narratives issued in Kentucky each year is not feasible. To address this challenge, reviewers examined approximately 8,000 crash narratives from calendar year 2020 using a proprietary web-based quality control tool to identify discrepancies …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Laboratory Evaluation Of Warm Mix Additives At Lower Than Traditional Compaction Temperatures, Abdelrahman Mahmoud Waheish Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The study aims to evaluate the impact of warm mix additives (WMA) on the rheological and performance properties of asphalt binders and mixtures. For this purpose, PG 76-28 and PG 58-28 were obtained with one organic (Sasobit Redux) and three chemical WMA (Rediset, Evotherm, and Zycotherm). All WMA-modified asphalt binders were aged at three different aging levels. Laboratory tests such as performance grade (PG), critical temperature differential (ΔTc), asphalt binder cracking device (ABCD), linear amplitude sweep test (LAS), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were performed. In addition to the binder testing plan, this study also evaluated the impact of …

Research On Orthogonal Test Of Mgo-Fiber Cement Soil′S Deformation Modulus, Hu Qizhi, Yu Yang, Ma Qiang, Zhuang Xinshan

Journal of China & Foreign Highway

Appropriate amounts of MgO and fiber can improve the compressive strength of cement soil. In order to further study the mechanical properties of MGO-fiber cement soil, Minitab software was used to design an orthogonal test method, and sensitivity analysis and influence analysis were carried out. The change rules of deformation modulus of MgO content, fiber content, and fiber length were studied at three different levels. The regression equations of MgO content, fiber content, and fiber length with cement soil deformation modulus were obtained by using Matlab software to process the test data. The sample was tested by scanning electron microscope …

Experimental Study On Performance Of Cast Asphalt Mixture Basedon Dry Modification, Wang Ming, Li Bo, Bao Guangzhi, Hu Deyong

Journal of China & Foreign Highway

Cast asphalt mixture is the most widely used material for the pavement of long-span steel bridge decks, and the special asphalt binder cannot be produced and used in small batches. The wet modification process is obviously not suitable for the production of the cast asphalt mixture during the operation and maintenance period. In this paper, according to the requirements of cast asphalt mixture and its binder, combined with the requirements of the dry modification process, the developed direct injection modifier was employed to conduct the mix design of cast asphalt mixture and tests of the fluidity, penetration and increment, low-temperature …

Enhancing Bridge Resilience And Overheight Vehicle Mitigation Through Innovative Sacrificial Cushion Systems, Aly Mousaad Aly, Marc Hoffmann

Faculty Publications

Transportation departments have made significant strides in addressing the challenges posed by the increasing weights of trucks on bridges. While there is a growing awareness of overheight vehicle collisions with bridges, implementing effective countermeasures remains limited. The susceptibility of bridges to damage from such collisions is on the rise, further exacerbated by unpredictable lateral impact forces. This study employs nonlinear impact analysis to assess the response of an unprotected vehicle-girder model, yielding realistic deformation outcomes comparable to observed impacts on the US-61 bridge. Predictions for a truck traveling at 112.65 km/h indicate deformations of 0.229 m, 0.161 m, and 0.271 …

Operations Research In Civil And Environmental Engineering, Nicholas Lownes

Open Educational Resource

The purpose of this text is introduce fundamental operations research techniques to the civil and/or environmental engineering student, providing a broad background in linear programming, integer programming and network optimization. The material is presented in such a manner so that the student does not need an extensive background in operations research or or linear algebra. Applications include transportation engineering, project management and general civil and environmental engineering applications.