Transportation Engineering Commons^™

The Lesser Known Side Of Highway Safety, Rick Drumm

Purdue Road School

Most highway professionals are aware of the main concepts of highway safety. But there are many other concepts, odd statistics, and unique countermeasures that are not well publicized and that we might consider brilliant—or silly. As a host of ideas are presented, you will be challenged to consider how to improve highway safety on your roads, and maybe share some of your own ideas.

Good Safety Program: Straight Ahead, Rick Drumm

Purdue Road School

AASHTO and FHWA conducted a joint scan tour in the fall of 2015 to document what makes a good safety program. A wealth of information on safety programs was pulled together in one effort and coalesced in one document. Topics to be presented that were discussed on this seven-state tour include data collection/analysis, funding, systemic safety improvements, types of projects and initiatives, project development and delivery, cooperation with safety partners, and measuring safety.

Storm Damage - Murphy's Law, Dale Sedler, Mark Bailey

Purdue Road School

Examination of a disastrous event that required 4 coinciding occurrences happening that individually would likely have resulted in minor or no damage.

Storm Damage - Floating Culverts, Dale Sedler, Mark Bailey

Purdue Road School

A review of buoyancy issues culverts experience due to blockage. Includes discussion of blockage due to floating debris and issues with multiple culverts. Provides information on characteristics that help to determine if a culvert has "floated."

Storm Damage - Sr-57 June 2008, Dale Sedler, Mark Bailey

Purdue Road School

A review of the impact of the White River leaving its watershed and destroying a box culvert under SR-57 in Greene County, IN. Includes discussion about impact of illegal levee, and photos and discussion on contraction scour.

Moving Beyond Functional Classifications: Street Typologies As A Systemic Approach To Complete Streets, Nick Batta

Purdue Road School

Rain Gardens for Roads: Installation & Maintenance Tips—Rain gardens and bio-swales provide an effective means of addressing water quality and quantity issues along roadways, if properly designed and installed. If not properly installed, they can create flooding, unsafe driving conditions, and ugly eyesores. We will examine how to successfully incorporate rain gardens into roadways, including design and long-term maintenance considerations, and present lessons learned from construction and upkeep of rain gardens in municipal installations.

Indot High Friction Surface Treatment Special Provision, Joseph Bruno

Purdue Road School

INDOT special provision on high friction surface treatments and related background material. Presented at Purdue University Road School on March 8, 2016.

Needs Driven Design Solutions In Railroad Projects, Tom Rueshhoff, Derek Tichy, Justin Cronin, Matthew J. Spiel

Purdue Road School

This presentation highlights state, federal, and railroad stakeholder coordination in a public-private partnership.

The Indiana Gateway Project is a $71.4 million construction project underway in northwestern Indiana. This project will help Norfolk Southern and Amtrak address the single most delay-prone intercity rail passenger corridor in the country.

The White River Freight Railroad Bridge Replacement by Indiana Railroad is a $14M project which replaced the 115-year old bridge with a 1,271-foot long bridge in Greene County, IN.

The presentation also provides a brief summary of the project management oversight role HNTB Corporation assumed in both project teams as a consultant for …

Role Of Soil Parameters On Loading Of Buried Structures, Xiao Zhang, Mark D. Bowman, Rafael R. Armendariz Briones

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Load rating is the process to evaluate and explore the structural capacity of bridges as much as possible within safety range. As a balance between economy and safety, proper load ratings save money and keep public safe. Knowing the contribution and interaction of each different soil parameter on the loading can significantly reduce the amount of work when load rating those structures. However, for buried structures without plans, such contribution or interaction is never known. This parametric study explores how much each soil parameter of three types of soils can affect the loading of buried structures without plans. An existing …

Influence Of Warping On Stress For Restrained Concrete Slabs: For Application To Crcp, Corey M. Beck, W. Jason Weiss, Nathan T. Todd

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Continuously-reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) is widely used in transportation system because of its low maintenance requirement. However, the need for large volumes of steel creates a high cost for new construction. The Illinois Tollway is preparing to substantially renovate highways in and around Chicago and this work seeks to understand how concretes of varying mixture designs can be made thinner by reducing the amount of built-in stress. The experiment examines warping in beams subjected to various degrees of restraint, in an effort to assess effectiveness at reducing warping in continuously reinforced concrete pavements. Value added methodologies such as internal curing …

Low Income, Supermarket Accessibility, And The Transportation Network: A Multimodal Analysis Identifying Areas Of Poor Accessibility And Intervention Strategies In Indianapolis, Indiana, Andrea Leigh Bailey

Open Access Theses

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service estimates that 23.5 million people live in food deserts, over half of which are considered low-income residents. Accurately defining a food desert is crucial as the designated areas can benefit from grant opportunities and funding priority. To qualify as an urban food desert, the USDA requires that at least 500 residents or one-third of the population live outside a one-mile buffer from a supermarket as well as have a median income of less than 80% of the area average or a poverty rate of greater than 20%. Approaches in the …

Four Runway Configuration Types And Their Relation To Arrival Delays, Rachel Jayne Kennedy

Open Access Theses

Aside from a safe flight, airline passengers expect to arrive to their destination on time. With an abundance of flights in the United States arriving late each day, it has yet to be determined if the airport's layout plays a role. This research looks at four common runway configuration types at hub and non-hub airports to determine if runway configurations affect arrival delays. A two-way ANOVA is conducted comparing the means of the on-time arrival percentage between airports exhibiting each of the four runway configurations as well as hub and non-hub airport status. The results determine if any or none …

Algorithms For Bundling And Pricing Trucking Services: Deterministic And Stochastic Approaches, Rodrigo Mesa-Arango

Open Access Dissertations

Bundling and pricing trucking services is an important strategic decision for carriers. This is helpful when they consider the incorporation of new businesses to their networks, look for economic and optimal operations, and develop revenue management strategies. Reverse combinatorial auctions for trucking services are real-world examples that illustrate the necessity of such strategies. In these auctions, a shipper asks carriers for quotes to serve combinations of lanes and the carriers have to bundle demand and price it properly. This dissertation explores several dimensions of the problem employing state-of-the-art analytical tools. These dimensions include: Truckload (TL) and less-than-truckload (LTL) operations, behavioral …

Railroad Quiet Zones, Glen T. Campbell, Mary Cripe

Purdue Road School

Speaker(s): Mary Cripe, P.E., City of Goshen Engineering Department

Glen Campbell, P.E., Patrick Engineering

Track: Multi-Modal Transportation

Submission ID #: 119

Presentation Duration: 50 Minutes

Presentation Title: Railroad Quiet Zones

Abstract: In 2005, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) provided communities with the opportunity to reduce locomotive horn noise without compromising public safety. The proposed Marion Branch Quiet Zone, located in Goshen, Indiana, will not only improve public safety, it will also enhance the quality of life and raise home values for adjacent residents.

This intricate process involves creative problem-solving and knowledge of the multiple parties involved. It will take a …

Integrating Pro-Environmental Behavior With Transportation Network Modeling: User And System Level Strategies, Implementation, And Evaluation, Husain M. Abdul Aziz

Open Access Dissertations

Personal transport is a leading contributor to fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse (GHG) emissions in the U.S. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that light-duty vehicles (LDV) are responsible for 61\% of all transportation related energy consumption in 2012, which is equivalent to 8.4 million barrels of oil (fossil fuel) per day. The carbon content in fossil fuels is the primary source of GHG emissions that links to the challenge associated with climate change. Evidently, it is high time to develop actionable and innovative strategies to reduce fuel consumption and GHG emissions from the road transportation networks. This dissertation …

Big Data Analytics With Nyc Taxicab Data, Xinwu Qian

Open Access Theses

In recent years, the fast development of pervasive computing technologies gives us access to a variety of big data sources, such as mobile phone users, bank note movements and twitter posts etc. It provides unprecedented opportunities to conduct urban studies and contributes to the sustainable and efficient development of large cities. While big data is an invaluable treasure, our knowledge is limited due to lack of appropriate tools to analyze the data. Hence, this thesis is mainly focused on demonstrating how taxicab data can be used to study urban travel patterns and explore useful insights.

Concession Analysis For Highway Infrastructure Projects Financed As Public-Private Partnerships, Tanaphat Jeerangsuwan

Open Access Dissertations

Public funds allocated to the improvement and maintenance of highway infrastructure have reached the limits due to a rapid rate of socioeconomic growth and deterioration in infrastructure system performance. A public-private partnership (PPP) concessions a contractual and project financing mechanism that helps public authorities lessen the impact of their limited financial resources. In this project financing scheme, a public authority enters into a partnership with a private concessionaire for the purpose of developing a specific infrastructure facility. In return, the concessionaire receives the right to operate for a specified period of time. This creates strong potential for the delivery of …