Transportation Engineering Commons^™

Rough Roads Ahead!?, Sarah Reed, Brooke Thomas, Jim Hellmann

Purdue Road School

Have you ever found yourself in the public's cross-hairs when it is time to implement a few roadway improvements? Are you handicapped in your ability to describe the true value of community planning and economic development planning? Come hear from one dynamic trio with the ability to identify issues and opportunities that others might not see and work to uncover even more ways tin which we are better together.

Webinar: Rethinking Streets For Bikes: An Evidence Based Guide Of Bike-Friendly Street Retrofits, Marc Schlossberg, Roger Lindgren

TREC Webinar Series

There is a growing demand for better infrastructure and fewer barriers to biking and other forms of space-efficient micromobility. Tackling daily trips by bike is easier on the environment, healthier for users and non-users alike, uses precious urbanized public and private land more efficiently, costs taxpayers less to build and maintain infrastructure, and when routes are safe and comfortable, moving by bike is also fun! Complete Streets policies are being adopted across the country, and there is an active conversation around the safety imperative of a Complete Streets approach. Yet, local officials often need both design guidance and the …

Webinar: Modeling Freeway Traffic In A Mixed Environment: Connected And Human-Driven Vehicles, Xianfeng Terry Yang

TREC Webinar Series

Although connected vehicles (CVs) will soon go beyond testbeds, CVs and human-driven vehicles (HVs) will co-exist over a long period. Hence, it is critical to consider the interactions between these two types of vehicles in traffic flow modeling. In this study, we aim to develop a macroscopic model to understand how CVs would impact HVs in the traffic stream. Grounded on the second-order traffic flow model, we study the relationships among flow, density, and speed by two sets of formulations for the groups of CVs and HVs, respectively. A set of friction factors, which indicate CVs' impact to HVs, are …

An Initial Exploration Of The 2005 Iowa Rural Interstate Speed Limit Increase Using Linear Regression, Thomas Ryan Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Speed limit increases, particularly on interstates have been studied and researched many times over the course of the last 50 years in the United States. These research efforts began after the implementation of the National Maximum Speed Law (NMSL), which reduced all speed limits to a maximum of 55-mph. In the years that followed, this restriction was relaxed to 65-mph with the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act (STURAA) and ultimately repealed later by the National Highway System Designation Act (NHSDA). Since the repeal, states reacted in myriad of ways and many studies documented the changes of those reactions. …

Modeling Changes In Public Transit And Private-For-Hire Usage When Implementing A Spatial Tax, Ty Lazarchik

REU Final Reports

Private-for-Hire (PfH) transportation options, such as Uber, Lyft, and taxicabs, are consistently growing in popularity. With this expanded utilization, cities are struggling to maintain usage of their public transit systems. While PfH transportation has been heavily researched, there is a need to further study how its effects on transit usage may be minimized. In this paper, previous work in traffic modeling and analysis of transit and PfH differences are expanded to develop an agent-based decision model in order to simulate and analyze the effectiveness of implementing a location-based tax in and around the city center of Portland, Oregon. The results …

The Short-Term Effects Of Interstate Highways On Small Rural Communities: A Case Study Of I-39, I-49 And I-72, 1990 To 2000, John Paul Metelko

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The presence of interstate highways in rural areas improves access to nearby rural

communities and changes those communities’ spheres of influence. Research into

understanding how improved access from interstate highways affects rural communities

is needed. This case study was designed to investigate how rural communities changed

on the basis of population, vacancy, median home value, and median contract rent in the

short term after an interstate highway was completed nearby in the early 1990s.

The communities included in this study are incorporated cities, towns, villages

and census-designated places in non-metropolitan counties with at least one incorporated

city, town, village and …

Walker, Dorian (Fa 1240), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1240. Collection of oral history interviews with railroad employees, locals, and historians recorded on Betacam and Betacam SP for Dorian Walker’s 1995 film Beauty of the Southland. Portions of the interviews were also used for a 2010 miniseries, All Aboard.

Relationship Between Road Network Characteristics And Traffic Safety, Hatim Sharif, Samer Dessouky

Publications

The Transportation and Capital Improvement of the City of San Antonio, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and other related agencies often make several efforts based on traffic data to improve safety at intersections, but the number of intersection crashes is still on the high side. There is no one size fits all solution for intersections and the City is often usually confronted with doing best value option analysis on different solutions to choose the least expensive yet more advancements. The goal of this project was to obtain the relationship between road network characteristics and public safety with a focus on …

Recruiting, Retaining, And Promoting For Careers At Transportation Agencies, Christofer Harper, Susan Bogus, Raghava Kommalapati, Doeun Choe

Publications

State transportation agencies currently face complex challenges in recruiting and retaining the workforce necessary to function effectively. The situation exacerbates due to the number of employees from different generations that have to coexist with varying values, expectations, and principles. These agencies are primarily comprised of two generational groups: the baby-boomers, who are approaching retirement and occupy many managerial positions; and the millennials, who are demonstrating their interest in technology and demanding dynamism in their careers. This multiplicity of interest represents a challenge for human resources (HR) in addressing workforce issues and providing the necessary means to recruit and retain qualified …

Research Incentive Programs For Closures Of Public And Private Grade Crossings, Julius Codjoe

Publications

Vehicle-train crashes that occur at highway-rail crossings result in injuries, fatalities, and damage to equipment. In order to reduce the number of vehicle-train crashes, Federal Railroad Administration requires states which have challenges with crossing safety, including Louisiana, to develop a State Action Plan to improve grade crossing safety. Consequently, identification of specific solutions for improving safety at crossings was included in the 2015 Louisiana Transportation Plan as one of its objectives. This study seeks to identify and evaluate current and new incentive programs that encourage closure of at-grade railroad crossings to reduce the number of potential vehicle-train collision points, and …

Service Learning Through Extracurricular Activities: Development And Implementation Of A Transportation Engineering Learning Module, Karla Diaz Corro

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project developed an easy to implement, low-cost learning module. The module has students compare and contrast the challenges of gathering comprehensive and quality transportation data through advanced technologies and traditional approaches while introducing traffic engineering topics like traffic signal timing. The modules target middle through high school students and first and second year undergraduate engineering students. The learning modules introduce transportation engineering using an engaging open-source computer simulation game adapted by students at the University of Arkansas, as part of a capstone project. The activities in the learning modules require off-the shelf, low-cost computer hardware, making it easy for …

The Influence Of Shared Mobility And Transportation Policies On Vehicle Ownership, Edgar Bertini Ruas

PSU Transportation Seminars

With the emergence of several new providers of shared mobility services, such as Uber, Biketown and Car2go, there has been the promise of changes to the traditional way of owning and using a vehicle. One potential consequence of the new mobility services is the reduction in vehicle ownership. At the same time, cities are trying to anticipate these changes by reducing the amount of space dedicated to parking. This thesis aims to asses the extent to which new shared mobility and transportation policy strategies (especially parking requirements and transit pass availability) relate to vehicle ownership among residents of multifamily dwellings. …

Webinar: Segmenting The Market For Transportation Demand Management Campaigns, Philip L. Winters, Amy Lester

TREC Webinar Series

Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. It is a useful transportation demand management (TDM) planning approach to promote travel behavior change. The purpose of this study was to explore a consumer market segmentation technique successfully used in Europe for its applicability to marketing efforts in the United States. Attitudinal and demographic data were collected from 1900 individuals in Florida, Oregon, and Virginia modeled after the European approach. Clustering analysis was applied to divide the sample into segments so that members of …

Scenarios For Adoption Of Autonomous Vehicle Technologies In Freight, Sabya Mishra

PSU Transportation Seminars

Innovation adoption research has largely ignored organizational adoption, and little work has been done to understand or predict the adoption of innovations by freight organizations. Among the existing innovation adoption theoretical and methodological approaches this seminar will explore which are most appropriate methods for freight organizational adoption. The seminar will present a disaggregate market penetration model for freight transportation organizations adopting connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) technology and demonstrate an application using a case study area in Memphis, TN. The seminar will highlight ongoing and future organizational adoption research for CAVs, and other innovations.

Webinar: Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts With Alternate Signal Control Strategies, Sirisha Kothuri

TREC Webinar Series

There is nationwide interest in supporting sustainable and active transportation modes such as bicycling and walking due to the many benefits associated with them, including reduced congestion, lower emissions and improved health. Although the number of bicyclists is increasing, safety remains a top concern. In urban areas, a common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. While geometric treatments and pavement markings have been studied, there is a lack of research on signal timing treatments to address right-hook bicycle-vehicle conflicts.

Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies …

Sustainable And Equitable Financing For Pedestrian Infrastructure Maintenance, Gregory Rowangould

Publications

In many communities, pedestrian infrastructure is discontinuous, inaccessible to those with physical disabilities, and poorly maintained. Correcting these problems would be a first step in providing infrastructure to achieve the active travel and related transportation goals of many communities. One nearly universal challenge to maintaining sidewalks in a state of good repair and addressing environmental justice concerns is an adequate, sustainable, and equitable source of funding. Municipal governments across the country maintain and repair their streets and roadways; however, most require residents to maintain and repair public sidewalks adjacent to their property. These policies are difficult to enforce and may …

Does Length Of Ride, Gender Or Nationality Affect Willingness To Ride In A Driverless Ambulance?, Stephen Rice, Scott R. Winter, Rian Mehta, Joseph R. Keebler, Bradley S. Baugh, Emily C. Anania, Mattie N. Milner

Publications

Due to the frequent lack of ambulances and personnel, the purpose of this study was to examine consumers’ willingness-to-ride in an ambulance that was either driven by a human driver or completely automated (with no human driver) based on the gender of the participant and their nationality, either Indian or American. A two-study experimental design was utilized using over 1,000 participants. In Study 1, the length of the ride and the type of driver were manipulated while in Study 2, the length of the ride was manipulated across genders and nationality. Study 2 also collected affect measures to complete a …

Data From: Market Segment Prediction Tool, Philip L. Winters, Amy Lester

TREC Datasets and Databases

Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. Social marketing is a useful transportation demand management (TDM) planning approach to promote travel-behavior change, and combines at least seven distinguishing features that sets it apart from other popular, behavior-change planning approaches, such as education and mass media campaigns. These seven features include a focus on socially beneficial behavior change; a strong consumer orientation; the use of audience segmentation techniques and the selection of target audiences; the use of marketing’s conceptual framework (marketing mix and …

Analysis And Research Of Cruise Ship Safety At Wusongkou International Cruise Ship Terminal, Zhanglong Wang

Maritime Safety & Environment Management Dissertations (Dalian)

No abstract provided.

Horizontal Integration In The Port Industry In China Challenges And Outlook, Jiren Chen

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Webinar: Meeting & Exceeding Mobility User Expectations With Real-Time Transit Information, Sean J. Barbeau, Derek Fretheim

TREC Webinar Series

Every day transit riders ask the same question: when’s the next one coming? To answer this question, transit agencies are transitioning to providing real-time transit information through smartphones or displayed at transit stops.

The proliferation of transit planning and real time arrival tools that have hit the market over the past decade is staggering. Yet with transit ridership on the decline, agencies can’t afford to ignore the importance of providing accurate, real time information to their customers. Real-time transit information improves the reliability and efficiency of passenger travel, but barriers have prevented some transit agencies from adopting the GTFSrealtime v1.0 …

Measuring Landscape Performance: Case Study Investigation, Hannah Michelle Lopresto, Brandon Zambrano, Catherine De Almeida

UCARE: Research Products

Participating in the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s 2018 Case Study Investigation has been an incredibly informative experience for our research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We are eager to shine a spotlight on the landscape performance of two Great Plains projects: P Street Corridor, a revitalized downtown streetscape in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Tom Hanafan River’s Edge Park, a waterfront redevelopment in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Working on the post-occupancy study of both projects has been extremely beneficial in understanding how reclaiming underutilized sites can create high-performing landscapes. Both are public projects in urban settings with primary goals of transforming formerly unpleasant, …

The Cost Of Jaywalking On Traffic Congestion In An Intersection In Greater Cairo: A Case Study, Hussein Gawdat

Theses and Dissertations

There have been many studies focusing on different types of traffic delays, pedestrians’ interaction at signalized intersections and economic losses as a result of these delays. However, there is a huge gap in the current literature, regionally and globally, in studying the traffic delays associated with jaywalking. In Egypt, jaywalking is considered a common phenomenon, however, population increased drastically over the past decades in Greater Cairo leading to more congested streets. This research provides a case study that investigates the economic effect of jaywalking on traffic flow in Mashaal, a sample location in Greater Cairo, due to traffic congestion. The …

A Survey Of Ride-Hailing Passengers, Steven Gehrke

PSU Transportation Seminars

In less than a decade, the ride-hailing industry, led by Uber and Lyft, has dramatically transformed the way we travel in our metro regions. Rider adoption of these on-demand mobility services has proceeded much quicker than our understanding of their impacts to our urban transportation systems. Planning for this transformation in personal mobility, which will have unintended consequences, has been made more difficult by the scarcity in meaningful data made available by these ride-hailing companies. Public agencies responsible for managing congestion and transit services are hindered in their ability to successfully plan for the integration of this emergent travel mode …

Analysis Of The Contribution Of Transportation And Land Use To Citizen Perceptions Of Livability, Rebecca Lewis

PSU Transportation Seminars

What is livability? How does the built environment influence resident perceptions of livability? Although livability is a broadly used term and a key goal in land use and transportation plans at the state level, it is unclear whether residents think their neighborhoods are livable and what contributes to their perception of livability. The purpose of the project was to understand how Oregonians, in neighborhoods of varying densities and within Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), perceive livability at the nexus of transportation and land use. We sought to understand how residents define and perceive livability in three different MPOs in the state: …

Fhwa Guidebook For Measuring Multimodal Network Connectivity, Joseph Broach

PSU Transportation Seminars

In 2016 the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) published a Guidebook for Developing Pedestrian and Bicycle Performance Measures that presents methods for measuring walking and bicycling performance and activities and embedding them into the transportation planning and decisionmaking process (U.S. Department of Transportation 2016). Building on the 2016 guidebook, this resource focuses on pedestrian and bicycle network connectivity and provides information on incorporating connectivity measures into state, metropolitan, and local transportation planning processes.

Connectivity measures can help transportation practitioners identify high priority network gaps, implement cost-effective solutions that address multiple needs, optimize potential co-benefits, and …

Sensor Technologies For Intelligent Transportation Systems, Juan Guerrero-Ibáñez, Sherali Zeadally, Juan Contreras-Castillo

Information Science Faculty Publications

Modern society faces serious problems with transportation systems, including but not limited to traffic congestion, safety, and pollution. Information communication technologies have gained increasing attention and importance in modern transportation systems. Automotive manufacturers are developing in-vehicle sensors and their applications in different areas including safety, traffic management, and infotainment. Government institutions are implementing roadside infrastructures such as cameras and sensors to collect data about environmental and traffic conditions. By seamlessly integrating vehicles and sensing devices, their sensing and communication capabilities can be leveraged to achieve smart and intelligent transportation systems. We discuss how sensor technology can be integrated with the …

Transportation Impacts Of Affordable Housing: Informing Development Review With Travel Behavior Analysis, Amanda Howell

PSU Transportation Seminars

Planning for affordable housing is challenged by development policies that often do not differentiate between the travel patterns of residents of market-rate housing and those living in affordable units. The development review process generally requires an evaluation of the anticipated additional transportation demand that new development places on the system and an assessment of fees or improvements to mitigate these impacts.

However, industry standard guidelines for assessment of travel demand outlined within the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Handbook have been focused solely on vehicle trip rates for these traffic impact analyses. Given the public goals of providing …

Transit Demand Analysis And User Classification Using Automatic Fare Collection (Afc) Data, Alireza Khani

PSU Transportation Seminars

Development of origin-destination demand matrices is crucial for transit planning. The development process is facilitated by transit automated data, making it possible to mine boarding and alighting patterns on an individual basis. This research proposes a novel stochastic trip chaining method which uses Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) and General Transit Feed Specifications (GTFS) data to infer an origin-destination (O-D) matrix.

Road Diet V2.0 - Road Diet With Roundabouts, Michael Williams

PSU Transportation Seminars

How can we go one step, or one lane, further than the standard road diet? Roundabouts allow a road diet to reduce the final number of lanes from three to two.

Questions arise when roundabouts are used with a road diet. What traffic volumes are supportable? Will the roundabouts fit within existing intersections? What does current guidance tell us about this approach?

Michael Williams will present his work on creating a sequel to FHWA’s Road Diet Informational Guide. This work is intended to provide a feasibility determination tool for the application of this approach to existing corridors. Data from Bird …