Transportation Engineering Commons^™

Machine Learning For Predictive Energy And Emissions Modeling Of Vehicles And Power Grids In The United States, S M Tanvir Faysal Alam Chowdhoury

Dissertations

The environmental benefits of electric vehicle (EV) adoption depend on more than replacing internal combustion engine vehicles with electric powertrains. EV adoption reshapes electricity demand, interacts with regional generation mixes, and influences travel behavior and congestion, creating a coupled transportation-energy system in which vehicle and power-plant emissions must be evaluated together. This dissertation develops machine-learning frameworks for predicting energy consumption and emissions from vehicles and power grids under rising EV adoption. The first component forecasts grid emissions from EV charging. Using simulation data from NREL's Cambium database, a Prophet-based time-series framework predicts carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane emission rates …

Significant Crash Characteristics Associated With E-Scooter And E-Bike Crashes, Aimee Jefferson

Dissertations

Micromobility devices—namely e-scooters and e-bikes—have rapidly gained popularity in the United Sates, rising from 35 million annual shared rides in 2017 to over 133 million in 2023 (NACTO 2024). But also increasing is the number of injuries associated with these devices; however, most research emphasizes injury and demographic patterns rather than crash characteristics that would inform prevention strategies. Most existing crash research also relies on small sample sizes, lacks nuance distinguishing between involved parties (motorists, pedestrians, single device), and fails to distinguish between bicycle and micromobility crash patterns despite micromobility devices often being instructed to use conventional bicycle facilities. These …

Behavior Of A Mildly Skewed Network Tied-Arch Bridge During Construction And Early Service Life, Harsha Amunugama

Dissertations

This dissertation work investigated the structural performance of the 2nd Avenue Bridge in Detroit, Michigan, the first skewed, unbraced network tied-arch bridge in the U.S. The 245-ft long, 96.5-ft wide bridge features an 18-degree skew. The bridge was constructed using accelerated bridge construction (ABC) techniques, including off-site fabrication at a bridge staging area (BSA) and installation via self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) and lateral launching, enabling the completion of construction with minimal disruptions to I-94 traffic and improved safety.

Given the unique structural configuration of the bridge, the use of innovative construction techniques, and differences observed in structural responses predicted by …

Sustainable And Cost-Effective Work Zone Scheduling On Two-Lane Highways With Managed Lanes, Ahmed Z. Edrees

Dissertations

Roadway maintenance projects greatly influence the roadway capacity, resulting in potential traffic disturbances captured by delays. Additionally, costs associated with these projects tend to be exorbitantly extensive. Most agencies and planners try to find a solution that minimizes roadway maintenance costs, traffic delays, crash risks, and environmental impact.

Work zones on two-way two-lane roadway typically avoids high-demand periods. Lane-closure scenario is commonly used and converts the open lane into a phantom intersection, alternating two-direction movements on one lane with the help of a flagger or a temporary signal. Alternatively, using shoulders as temporarily managed lanes allows for simultaneous two-way movements …

Integrated Land Use And Transportation Modeling Considering The Impact Of Autonomous Vehicles, Roksana Asadi

Dissertations

The advent of autonomous urban mobility is expected to effect changes in land use patterns and urban development. A new framework for integrated land use and transportation system models that incorporate Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs) will be needed to investigate the development of transportation and land use plans and policies. This study aims to analyze the impacts of AVs and SAVs on land use changes by defming scenarios that consider different shares of these emerging transportation modes. Also, this study explores the corollary effects of various land use factors by applying them to a case study …

Optimizing Speed Profiles For Sustainable Train Operation With Wayside Energy Storage Systems, Leon A. Allen

Dissertations

Large hauling capability and low rolling resistance has put rail transit at the forefront of mass transportation mode sustainability in terms of congestion mitigation and energy conservation. As such, rail vehicles are one of the least energy-intensive modes of transportation and least environmentally polluting. Despite, these positives, improper driving habits and wastage of the braking energy through dissipation in braking resistors result in unnecessary consumption, extra costs to the operator and increased atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions.

This study presents an intelligent method for the optimization of the number and locations of wayside energy storage system (WESS) units that maximize the …

Planning Methodology For Alternative Intersection Design And Selection, Liran Chen

Dissertations

The recent publication of the 6th Edition of the Highway Capacity Manual included a chapter on Ramp Terminals and Alternative Intersections that introduces various alternative intersection designs and assesses the performance of Median U-turn, Restricted crossing U-turn and Displaced left-turn intersections. Missing from the literature is an alternative intersection selection tool for identifying whether an alternative intersection would be successful under local conditions. With limited information of organized alternative intersection research, most planners must rely heavily on their personal judgement while selecting the most suitable intersection designs. As appealing as alternative intersections are, there is no comprehensive methodology for planners …

A Self-Learning Intersection Control System For Connected And Automated Vehicles, Ardeshir Mirbakhsh

Dissertations

This study proposes a Decentralized Sparse Coordination Learning System (DSCLS) based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to control intersections under the Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) environment. In this approach, roadway sections are divided into small areas; vehicles try to reserve their desired area ahead of time, based on having a common desired area with other CAVs; the vehicles would be in an independent or coordinated state. Individual CAVs are set accountable for decision-making at each step in both coordinated and independent states. In the training process, CAVs learn to minimize the overall delay at the intersection. Due to the …

Crash Injury Severity Prediction With Artificial Neural Networks, Rima Abisaad

Dissertations

Motor vehicle crashes are one of our nation's most serious social, economic and health issues. They are the leading cause of death among children and young adults, killing approximately 1.35 million people each year. Providing a safe and efficient transportation system is the primary goal of transportation engineering and planning. To help reduce traffic fatalities and injuries on roadways, crash prediction models are used to forecast the injury severity of potential crashes and apply precautionary countermeasures accordingly. Most of these models are reactive as they use historical crash data to categorize crash-related factors. Recently, advancements have been made in developing …

Connected And Automated Vehicles: Their Implication On Capacity Of A Basic Freeway Section And Impacts On Walkway Safety, Sia Macmillan Lyimo

Dissertations

Autonomous vehicles have recently gained the attention of researchers due to their expected potential benefits on highway traffic streams, such as improving roadway capacity, among others. It is imperative to investigate how these expected benefits can be leveraged in the transportation sector. Understanding the safety and operational benefits helps the concerned transportation agencies and other key stakeholders to make necessary infrastructural and policy adjustments to accommodate such future traffic operation changes. The main goal of this dissertation is to study the impact of connected and automated vehicles on freeway capacity. The simulated environment was created to emulate autonomous vehicle behaviors, …

Short-Term Crash Risk Prediction Considering Proactive, Reactive, And Driver Behavior Factors, Sina Darban Khales

Dissertations

Providing a safe and efficient transportation system is the primary goal of transportation engineering and planning. Highway crashes are among the most significant challenges to achieving this goal. They result in significant societal toll reflected in numerous fatalities, personal injuries, property damage, and traffic congestion. To that end, much attention has been given to predictive models of crash occurrence and severity. Most of these models are reactive: they use the data about crashes that have occurred in the past to identify the significant crash factors, crash hot-spots and crash-prone roadway locations, analyze and select the most effective countermeasures for reducing …

Analysis Of Container Throughput: Demand Forecast And Seaport Competitiveness Assessment, Hussain Talat Sulaimani

Dissertations

Seaports play a crucial role in the container industry, where they act as important nodes in the transport chain to facilitate international trade. In a competitive market, port capacity plays a significant role in defining its competitive position to attract demand and avoid congestion. Failing to provide suitable capacity results in the loss of market share. Therefore, port decision-makers face the challenge of maintaining and developing suitable port facilities to provide efficient services to port users. One of the aspects that decision-makers consider in the planning and development process is analyzing container demand. The analysis of container demand can be …

Performance Evaluation Of Transportation Systems For Sustainability And Smart-Growth Of Cities: An Integrated Assessment Of Health Impacts, Ahmad Feizi

Dissertations

The performance of transportation systems is a significant component that influences the quality of life. The performance evaluation refers to a process of determining how well transportation systems perform regarding their intended goals and objectives. The advancement of information and communication technology and the integration between transportation systems and advanced technologies have directed more attention to the concept of smart cities. Smart cities are constituted of several interrelated components. Therefore, this offers comprehensive and integrated frameworks to evaluate the transportation performance and understanding of multifaceted interactions between the components from a transportation engineering perspective in four sections.

In the first …

Data Mining Of Unstructured Textual Information In Transportation Safety Domain: Exploring Methods, Opportunities And Limitations, Keneth Morgan Kwayu

Dissertations

The unprecedented increase in volume and influx of structured and unstructured data has overwhelmed conventional data management system capabilities in organizing, analyzing, and procuring useful information in a timely fashion. Structured data sources have a pre-defined pattern that makes data preprocessing and information retrieval tasks relatively easy for the current technologies that have been designed to handle structured and repeatable data. Unlike structured data, unstructured data usually exists in an unorganized format that offers no or little insight unless indexed and stored in an organized fashion. The inherent format of unstructured data exacerbates difficulties in data preprocessing and information extraction. …

Optimizing Work Zone Schedules Considering Traffic Diversion With Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm, Celina Semaan

Dissertations

Highway maintenance activities often decrease roadway capacity and intrude traffic movements. The need to finish the project on time and under a specific budget while minimizing the traffic congestion and complying with the emission standards requires an appropriate work zone schedule optimization. The objective of this research is to improve the efficiency of work zone activities and minimize the total project cost including maintenance, user, and emission cost.

While previous studies investigated the work zone optimization problem, they did not consider the implementation of emission standards nor applied a green diversion strategy. This dissertation analyzes the optimization of work zone …

A Deep Machine Learning Approach For Predicting Freeway Work Zone Delay Using Big Data, Abdullah Shabarek

Dissertations

The introduction of deep learning and big data analytics may significantly elevate the performance of traffic speed prediction. Work zones become one of the most critical factors causing congestion impact, which reduces the mobility as well as traffic safety. A comprehensive literature review on existing work zone delay prediction models (i.e., parametric, simulation and non-parametric models) is conducted in this research. The research shows the limitations of each model. Moreover, most previous modeling approaches did not consider user delay for connected freeways when predicting traffic speed under work zone conditions. This research proposes Deep Artificial Neural Network (Deep ANN) and …

High-Speed Rail Safety Analysis Based On Dual-Weighted Complex Network, Liu Lv

Dissertations

This study uses a complex network model to analyze the causes of accidents in high-speed railway operations. By identifying the key factors that led to high-speed railway accidents, hidden safety hazards were discovered. This will help improve the operational safety of the U.S. high-speed rail line under construction.

The analysis uses the regional high-speed railway network in Guangzhou, China as a case study, including the railway (including high-speed railway) accidents that occurred in the company's jurisdiction from 2013 to 2017. With comparative analysis between general railways and high-speed railways, the changes of high-speed railway safety factors are explored. Data analysis …

Development And Evaluation Of Low Cost 2-D Lidar Based Traffic Data Collection Methods, Ravi Jagirdar

Dissertations

Traffic data collection is one of the essential components of a transportation planning exercise. Granular traffic data such as volume count, vehicle classification, speed measurement, and occupancy, allows managing transportation systems more effectively. For effective traffic operation and management, authorities require deploying many sensors across the network. Moreover, the ascending efforts to achieve smart transportation aspects put immense pressure on planning authorities to deploy more sensors to cover an extensive network. This research focuses on the development and evaluation of inexpensive data collection methodology by using two-dimensional (2-D) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. LiDAR is adopted since it is …

Modeling Strategies For Structures Using Ductile Concrete Materials In Seismic Applications, Hasan Tariq

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Application Of Artificial Intelligence And Geographic Information System For Developing Automated Walkability Score, Md Mehedi Hasan

Dissertations

Walking is considered as one of the major modes of active transportation, which contributes to the livability of cities. It is highly important to ensure walk friendly sidewalks to promote human physical activities along roads. Over the last two decades, different walk scores were estimated in respect to walkability measures by applying different methods and approaches. However, in the era of big data and machine learning revolution, there is still a gap to measure the composite walkability score in an automated way by applying and quantifying the activityfriendliness of walkable streets. In this study, a street-level automated walkability score was …

Minimizing Vehicular Traffic Via Optimized Land Use Development For A Sustainable And Equitable Future, Babu Veeregowda

Dissertations

Mixed-use developments and transit-oriented developments are becoming very common in urban areas in an effort to reduce sprawl. Numerous studies have shown that such programs would not be successful unless the mix of land uses and sizes is well-balanced and integrated with the surrounding neighborhood. Developers often ignore this aspect in favor of immediate financial gain and do not realize that there are sustainable financial benefits in land use optimization. In addition, professionals often work with limited logistics, resources, and technical knowledge and therefore struggle in setting goals and suggesting land uses that have less auto dependency based on travel …

Development And Evaluation Of Cooperative Intersection Management Algorithm Under Connected Vehicles Environment, Slobodan Gutesa

Dissertations

Recent technological advancements in the automotive and transportation industry established a firm foundation for development and implementation of various automated and connected vehicle (C/AV) solutions around the globe. Wireless communication technologies such as the dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) protocol are enabling instantaneous information exchange between vehicles and infrastructure. Such information exchange produces tremendous benefits with the possibility to automate conventional traffic streams and enhance existing signal control strategies. While many promising studies in the area of signal control under connected vehicle (CV) environment have been introduced, they mainly offer solutions designed to operate a single isolated intersection or they require …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Managed Lane Strategies For The Rapid Deployment Of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Technology, Zijia Zhong

Dissertations

Connected and Automated Vehicle (C/AV) technologies are fast expanding in the transportation and automotive markets. One of the highly researched examples of C/AV technologies is the Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) system, which exploits various vehicular sensors and vehicle-to-vehicle communication to automate vehicular longitudinal control. The operational strategies and network-level impacts of CACC have not been thoroughly discussed, especially in near-term deployment scenarios where Market Penetration Rate (MPR) is relatively low. Therefore, this study aims to assess CACC's impacts with a combination of managed lane strategies to provide insights for CACC deployment. The proposed simulation framework incorporates 1) the Enhanced …

A Methodological Framework For Quantifying Impacts Of Truck Traffic On Regional Network With Implications To Transport Policy, Chaitanya Narendra Pathak

Dissertations

Increased global trade has promoted the importance of shipping industry and the introduction of mega-ships has created an opportunity to be more cost-effective. Because of this, the expected change in freight transportation influences the operating regimes and schedules at the port terminals. Trucks being the predominant mode of transportation used to carry the freight transport, there is a growing concern about the impact of trucks in the region. The problems are further expected to grow as the improvements to resolve them are hindered by funding shortfalls. Public agencies are therefore involved in developing comprehensive state freight plans that outline immediate …

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 …

Optimization Of Headway, Stops, And Time Points Considering Stochastic Bus Arrivals, Liuhui Zhao

Dissertations

With the capability to transport a large number of passengers, public transit acts as an important role in congestion reduction and energy conservation. However, the quality of transit service, in terms of accessibility and reliability, significantly affects model choices of transit users. Unreliable service will cause extra wait time to passengers because of headway irregularity at stops, as well as extra recovery time built into schedule and additional cost to operators because of ineffective utilization of allocated resources.

This study aims to optimize service planning and improve reliability for a fixed bus route, yielding maximum operator’s profit. Three models are …

Accounting For Midblock Pedestrian Activity In The Hcm 2010 Urban Street Segment Analysis, Albert Forde

Dissertations

The Urban Street segment analysis Chapter of the 2010 Highway Capacity Manual (HCM 2010) provides a methodology for analyzing automobile performance on signalized roadway segments within an urban roadway network. The methodology involves applying a platoon dispersion model to: a) predict the vehicle arrival flow profiles at a downstream signalized intersection; b) use the predicted arrivals to compute the proportion of vehicle arrivals on green; and c) subsequently estimate the delay, travel speed and Level of Service (LOS) under which the segment operates. Vehicles arriving during the red interval at a signalized intersection generally accumulate and form a platoon. When …

Optimization Of Vehicle Routing And Scheduling With Travel Time Variability - Application In Winter Road Maintenance, Haifeng Yu

Dissertations

This study developed a mathematical model for optimizing vehicle routing and scheduling, which can be used to collect travel time information, and also to perform winter road maintenance operations (e.g., salting, plowing). The objective of this research was to minimize the total vehicle travel time to complete a given set of service tasks, subject to resource constraints (e.g., truck capacity, fleet size) and operational constraints (e.g., service time windows, service time limit).

The nature of the problem is to design vehicle routes and schedules to perform the required service on predetermined road segments, which can be interpreted as an arc …

Optimization Of Path Based Sensor Spacing On A Freeway Segment For Travel Time Prediction During Incidents, Patricia Kathleen Dijoseph

Dissertations

Congestion on freeways is increasing and a key source of it is non-recurring incidents. Accurate vehicle travel time predictions are needed during these incidents in order for roadway users to make informed trip decisions. Path based sensors are becoming a leading technology in gathering real-time travel time data. The data is used to make travel time predictions that are then provided through various means, such as dynamic message signs, to roadway users. These types of sensor are located at stationary points along a roadway and collect individual vehicle travel time data from vehicles as they drive pass the sensors.

The …

A Framework For Guiding Transportation Improvements To Support Desired Land Use, Jiruttichut Leoviriyakit

Dissertations

There is a growing recognition that transportation and land use policies cannot succeed independently of one another. The interactions between them must be understood, analyzed, and accounted for in order for land use and transportation plans and policies to be effective and successful. A methodological framework is presented that can help urban planners determine what outcomes can be expected in terms of change in land use patterns within the targeted communities and within the county should a transportation project be undertaken.

The framework is based on an interaction between travel demand model TRANSIMS and land use model TELUM that enables …