Transportation Engineering Commons^™

Analysis Of Autonomous Vehicle Policies, Bryan Gibson

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The rapid development and adoption of connected and autonomous vehicles will transform the U.S. transportation system over the next 30 years. Although the widespread use of fully connected and autonomous vehicles is still several years away, it is nonetheless critical that legislators, policymakers, and regulators understand how the presence of these vehicles will restructure the operation of roadway networks. Without a doubt, lawmakers and policymakers will need to develop new laws — and revise existing ones — to account for the presence of connected and autonomous vehicles. This report provides an overview of connected and autonomous vehicles — their positives …

Development Of A Research Project Tracking System, Joseph D. Crabtree, Bradley A. Rogers

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Center, in cooperation with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, has developed a Research Project Tracking System (RPTS). The RPTS is web-based and includes a database of active (and recently completed) research projects. The system allows authorized users to access and edit the project data, enter new projects into the system, and produce periodic progress reports. It produces a homepage (or dashboard) for each project, and it provides links to key project documents. It also has the capability to track the implementation of research results on a project-by-project basis.

Protocol To Evaluate And Load Rate Existing Bridges, Maria Szerszen, Ali Alhajami

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Load tests can be used to verify component and system performance under a known live load and provide an alternative evaluation methodology to analytically computed the load rating of a bridge. Procedures for nondestructive load testing, which involves field observations and measurements of in- service bridges and field testing often can revel additional capacity since analytical bridge rating tend to be fairly conservative. The goal of presented research was to develop a data-driven rating process to assess and rate bridges. This data-driven rating system reduces the subjective judgment of the bridge inspectors through the use of computer models and field …

Exploring The Positive Utility Of Travel And Mode Choice, Patrick Allen Singleton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Why do people travel? We traditionally assume traveling is a means to an end, travel demand is derived (from the demand for activities), and travel time is to be minimized. Recently, scholars have questioned these axioms, noting that some people may like to travel, use travel time productively, enjoy the experience of traveling, or travel for non-utilitarian reasons. The idea that travel can provide benefits and may be motivated by factors beyond reaching activity destinations is known as “the positive utility of travel” or PUT.

This study presents a conceptual and empirical look at the positive utility of travel and …

Webinar: Integrating Explicit And Implicit Methods In Travel Behavior Research: A Study Of Driver Attitudes And Bias, Tara Goddard

TREC Webinar Series

Car crashes are still a leading cause of death in the United States, with vulnerable road users like bicyclists and pedestrians being injured or killed at rates that outpace their mode share.

Planners, engineers, and advocates are increasingly adopting Vision Zero and Tactical Urbanism approaches and trying to better understand the underlying causes of dangerous roadway interactions. However, existing research into crash causation has focused on instrumental factors (e.g. intersection type, vehicle speed) while little research has probed the role of attitudes or socio-cognitive mechanisms in interactions between roadway users.

Social psychology suggests that attitudes and social cognitions can play …

Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps To Model Policy Issues In The Face Of Uncertainty And Limited Data, Brian Gregor

PSU Transportation Seminars

Planners and policymakers are often faced with the need to make decisions about issues for which there is uncertainty and limited data. For example, transportation planners are now faced with the prospect that new transportation technologies such as autonomous vehicles could greatly alter future transportation system needs. Decisions about these types of issues are difficult to reason about and consequently are likely to be ignored or made on the basis of simplistic logic. Although modeling could be helpful, especially for issues involving complex systems, it is rarely used because models usually require large amounts of data and and handle uncertainty …

Bicp Global Bim Study - Lessons For Ireland’S Bim Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Reports

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) has been promoting the benefits of digitisation in the construction and engineering industry in Ireland since its formation back in 2002. Whilst the Alliance has always strived to ensure that its members are exposed to a wide spectrum of contemporary digital tools and processes, the concept of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has dominated the focus of its activities over the past five years.

BIM can be described as a digital tool that facilitates everybody to better understand a building or structure through the use of a digital model which draws on a range of data …

Road Zipper™, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Construction work zones are growing in number around the world. The natural aging of existing roadway infrastructure ensures that more and more maintenance and rehabilitation will be required. Work zones, by their very definition, create two major problems that must be addressed in some way: safety and mobility. In the United States, highway work zones are responsible for almost 25% of all non-recurring congestion and 10% of overall congestion. Vehicle accidents are more common in work zones, and traffic congestion through work zones on urban arterials and freeways is often considered to be “unavoidable." To address these issues, ROAD ZIPPER™ …

Develop A Highway Inventory Data Quality Control Scheme (Pl-26), Mei Chen, Obaidur Rahman Kazi, Tony Fields

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Since passage of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), transportation agencies have become increasingly reliant on data for planning and programming, asset management, and performance tracking. An efficient asset inventory database with accurate data is critical for states to comply with MAP-21 (and now FAST Act) requirements.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s (KYTC) Division of Planning maintains the Highway Information System (HIS), which is a primary source of this information for transportation professionals at the Cabinet (KYTC). Because highway system is continually changing, it is a challenging task to keep the information in the HIS up to …

Kentucky Vehicle License Plate Study, Valerie J. Keathley, Andrew Martin, Jerry Kissick, Gray Forlines, Jennifer R. Walton

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This study assesses Kentucky’s options for potentially re-plating all motor vehicles registered in the Commonwealth. The report begins with a background and discussion of Kentucky’s plate production processes, the difference between flat and embossed plates, and the structure of license plate labor at the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange. It details current plate production costs and processes, along with fees and production numbers. It evaluates three scenarios for future plate production: flat plate production, a hybrid system with embossed general issue plates and flat specialty plates, and an embossed plate system with in-house printed sheeting. Also included is an …

Assessing Passenger Car Equivalency Factors For High Truck Percentages, Jianan Zhou, Laurence Rilett, Elizabeth Jones

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The Passenger Car Equivalent (PCE) values in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) 2010 might not be valid for western Nebraska freeway conditions. This is because: 1) Interstate 80 (I-80) experiences high truck percentages (25% to 60%), while the HCM provides PCE values up to 25% of the truck percentage; 2) the average speed of trucks are observed lower than passenger cars, which is incompatible with the HCM assumption that the free speed of all vehicle types is the same at level terrain; and 3) it is unclear whether the “average” truck used in the simulation study for PCE values in …

Estimating Reliability Indices And Confidence Intervals For Transit And Traffic At The Corridor Level, Travis B. Glick

PSU Transportation Seminars

As congestion worsens, the importance of rigorous methodologies to estimate travel-time reliability increases. Exploiting fine-granularity transit GPS data, this research proposes a novel method to estimate travel-time percentiles and confidence intervals. Novel transit reliability measures based on travel-time percentiles are proposed to identify and rank low-performance hotspots; the proposed reliability measures can be utilized to distinguish peak-hour low performance from whole-day low performance. As a case study, the methodology is applied to a bus transit corridor in Portland, Oregon. Time-space speed profiles, heatmaps, and visualizations are employed to highlight sections and intersections with high travel-time variability and transit low performance. …

Current Efforts To Make Bike Share More Equitable: A Survey Of System Owners And Operators, Steven Howland

PSU Transportation Seminars

The number of public bike share systems has been increasing rapidly across the United States over the past five to ten years. To date most academic research around bike share in the U.S. has focused on the logistics of planning and operationalizing successful systems. Investigations of system users and impacts on the local community are less common, and studies focused on efforts to engage underserved communities in bike share are rarer still. This paper utilizes a survey of representatives from 55 U.S. bike share systems to better understand and document current approaches toward serving low income and minority populations. The …

Webinar: Improving Walkability At Signalized Intersections With Signal Control Strategies, Edward J. Smaglik, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri

TREC Webinar Series

The goal of signal timing at an intersection should be to maximize efficiency for all users. In many jurisdictions, however, traffic signals are timed mostly with the goal of reducing vehicular delay.

Other road users, such as pedestrians, deserve similar focus. In legacy transportation systems, pedestrians experience delays much in excess of those that would be deemed acceptable for a motor vehicle at the same location.

Excessive delay can lead to pedestrian frustration, non-compliance and ultimately decreased safety.

In the North American context, implementation of strategies to address pedestrian service varies greatly across jurisdictions, and there has been limited research …

The Potential Of Elephant Grass (Pennisetum Purpureum Schum), An African Indigenous Grass, In Bioethanol Production: A Decarbonization Alternative For The Shipping Industry, Lawrence Kuroshi Phd

MARENER 2017

While it is true that fossil fuel based energy which is non-renewable has contributed immensely to global economic growth, it has brought with its usage the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), a principal greenhouse gas. Studies using business as usual (BAU) model has predicted that the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere will increase by 50 to 250% by the year 2050 with perhaps a commensurate increase in the global carbon footprint. The shipping industry has remained a major contributor to this global carbonization. Concern over this increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, has intensified interests in developing …

15-07 App-Based Crowd Sourcing Of Bicycle And Pedestrian Conflict Data, Stephen Mattingly, Colleen Casey, Taylor Johnson

Transportation Research Center Reports

Most agencies and decision-makers rely on crash and crash severity (property damage only, injury or fatality) data to assess transportation safety; however, in the context of public health where perceptions of safety may influence the willingness to adopt active transportation modes (e.g. bicycling and walking), pedestrian-vehicle and other similar conflicts may represent a better performance measure for safety assessment. For transportation safety, a clear conflict occurs when two parties’ paths cross and one of the parties must undertake an evasive maneuver (e.g. change direction or stop) to avoid a crash. Other less severe conflicts where paths cross but no evasive …

Avoiding Bus Bunching: From Theory To Practice, Ricardo Giesen

PSU Transportation Seminars

The problem of bus bunching in a high frequency service has been largely studied in the literature.

This phenomenon is produced by three main factors

(i) the variability in travel time between stops; (ii) variations in passenger demand; and (iii) drivers’ heterogeneity.

In order to tackle this phenomenon a wide range of control strategies have been proposed, however, none of them had been successfully implemented on a large transit network with high frequency services.

In this talk, we present a control scheme based on a rolling horizon optimization problem that has been successfully implemented for real-time control of two high …

Design And Implementation Of The Manitoba Constrained-Width Tall Wall Barrier, Harald P. Larsen, Scott K. Rosenbaugh, Andrew Pankratz, Diana Emerson, Jennifer Schmidt, Ronald K. Faller, Elizabeth M. Regier

Mid-America Transportation Center: Final Reports and Technical Briefs

Manitoba Infrastructure (MI) desired a new, tall concrete median barrier capable of satisfying the Test Level 5 (TL-5) safety requirements of the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH). It needed to fit within the footprint of an existing F-shape median barrier located in a narrow median. It also was required to address headlight glare from opposing traffic. The barrier was designed with a height of 1,250 mm, a maximum width of 600 mm and to resist a load of 845 kN applied at the top of the barrier. The Manitoba Constrained-Width, Tall Wall was optimised to withstand the design load …

After 40 Years Of Regional And Coordinated Ship Safety Inspections: Destination Reached Or New Point Of Departure?, Armando Graziano, Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs, Aykut I. Olçer

Journal Publications

Port State Control (PSC) is the major global strategy for fighting substandard shipping since the signature of The Hague Memorandum in 1978. In the last years, the increased volume of trade, the enlarged number of main international conventions and the highlighted differences among the various Regimes have posed new challenges to the modern system of PSC, which may need to find its new course.

This paper examines the point of view of key maritime stakeholders with regard to the EU PSC regime. Elite interviews (n = 14) were conducted with subject matter experts ranging from policy makers, to industry and …

Data-Driven Spatial Modeling For Quantifying Networkwide Resilience In The Aftermath Of Hurricanes Irene And Sandy, Yuan Zhu, Kun Xie, Kaan Ozbay, Fan Zuo, Hong Yang

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

In recent years, the New York City metropolitan area was hit by two major hurricanes, Irene and Sandy. These extreme weather events disrupted and devastated the transportation infrastructure, including road and subway networks. As an extension of the authors' recent research on this topic, this study explored the spatial patterns of infrastructure resilience in New York City with the use of taxi and subway ridership data. Neighborhood tabulation areas were used as the units of analysis. The recovery curve of each neighborhood tabulation area was modeled with the logistic function to quantify the resilience of road and subway systems. Moran's …

Impact Of Connected Vehicles On Mitigating Secondary Crash Risk, Hong Yang, Zhenyu Wang, Kun Xie

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

Reducing the risk of secondary crashes is a key goal for effective traffic incident management. However, only few countermeasures have been established in practices to achieve the goal. This is mainly due to the stochastic nature of both primary and secondary crashes. Given the emerging connected vehicle (CV) technologies, it is highly likely that CVs will soon be able to communicate with each other through the ad-hoc wireless vehicular network. Information sharing among vehicles is deemed to change traffic operations and allow motorists for more proactive actions. Motorists who receive safety messages can be motivated to approach queues and incident …

Bayesian Nonparametric Model For Estimating Multistate Travel Time Distribution, Emmanuel Kidando, Ren Moses, Eren E. Ozguven, Thobias Sando

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

© 2017 Emmanuel Kidando et al. Multistate models, that is, models with more than two distributions, are preferred over single-state probability models in modeling the distribution of travel time. Literature review indicated that the finite multistate modeling of travel time using lognormal distribution is superior to other probability functions. In this study, we extend the finite multistate lognormal model of estimating the travel time distribution to unbounded lognormal distribution. In particular, a nonparametric Dirichlet Process Mixture Model (DPMM) with stick-breaking process representation was used. The strength of the DPMM is that it can choose the number of components dynamically as …

Feasibility Determination Guide For The Road Diet Plus: A Five/Four-Lane To Two-Lane Road Diet, Michael Williams

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Road diets are a popular tool for corridor improvement. Road diets are normally defined as the conversion of a four-lane undivided road to a three-lane undivided road made up of two through lanes separated by a center two-way-left-turn-lane (known as a TWLTL). This new configuration has similar vehicular capacity, greater safety and frees up right-of-way for other uses.

This work examines the possibility of going one step, or one lane, further. What is the possibility of reducing five- or four-lane roads to two-lanes? If this is possible, what are the corridor characteristics within which this process would be feasible?

The …

Improving Walkability Through Control Strategies At Signalized Intersections, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri, Andrew Kading, Edward J. Smaglik, Christopher Sobie

TREC Final Reports

As cities and communities nationwide seek to develop Complete Streets that foster livability and accommodate all modes, signal timing control strategies that include pedestrians in the operational decision process are gaining importance. This research tested several efficiency-focused pedestrian treatments – coordination, actuated-coordination, free operation, short cycle lengths – and safety-focused treatment including leading pedestrian intervals and Barnes Dance. Using a software-in-the-loop simulation, the operational impacts of these treatments on all users (vehicles, heavy vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians) at an intersection were evaluated. Results showed that among the efficiency-based treatments, free operation was most beneficial for reducing minor-street pedestrian delays. Both …

Assimilation Of Tracking Technology In The Supply Chain, Rahul Basole, Maciek Nowak

Information Systems and Operations Management: Faculty Publications & Other Works

While tracking technology has become increasingly accessible, firms still struggle with deploying these technologies into the supply chain. Using the complementary perspectives of transaction cost and institutional theory, we develop an understanding of how supply network, product, and environmental characteristics jointly impact tracking technology assimilation. We empirically test our model on a global dataset of 535 supply chain executives and decision makers. The results suggest that assimilation is frequently initiated by an external stakeholder in a firm's supply chain and that firms must develop strong collaborative ties with their partners in order to take full advantage of this technology.

Wrong-Way Driving: A Regional Approach To A Regional Problem, Md. Omar Faruk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Wrong-way driving (WWD) has been problematic on United States highways for decades despite its rare occurrence. Since WWD crashes are rare, recent researchers have studied WWD non-crash events such as WWD 911 calls and WWD citations to understand the overall nature and trend of WWD. This paper demonstrates the regional nature of the WWD problem and proposes regional transportation systems management and operations (Regional TSM&O) solutions to combat this problem. Specifically, it was found that 11% of all WWD multi-data events (e.g., multiple 911 calls for the same WWD event) traveled from one county to another. Additionally, 30% of all …

Field Evaluation Of Insync Adaptive Traffic Signal Control System In Multiple Environments Using Multiple Approaches, Md Shafikul Islam Shafik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the beginning of signalization of intersections, the management of traffic congestion is one of most critical challenges specifically for the city and urbanized area. Almost all the municipal agencies struggle to manage the perplexities associated with traffic congestion or signal control. The Adaptive Traffic Control System (ATCS), an advanced and major technological component of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is considered the most dynamic and real-time traffic management technology and has potential to effectively manage rapidly varying traffic flow relative to the current state-of-the-art traffic management practices. InSync ATCS is deployed in multiple states throughout the US and expanding …

Transportation Network Companies: Influencers Of Transit Ridership Trends, Richard A. Mucci

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

The major transit systems operating in San Francisco are San Francisco Municipal (MUNI), Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), and Caltrain. The system of interest for this paper is MUNI, in particular the bus and light rail systems. During the past decade transit ridership in the area has experienced diverging growth, with bus ridership declining while rail ridership is growing significantly (Erhardt et al. 2017). Our data show that between 2009 and 2016, MUNI rail ridership increases from 146,000 to 171,400, while MUNI bus ridership decreases from 520,000 to 450,000. Direct ridership models (DRMs) are used to determine what factors are …

Prediction Of Protected-Permissive Left-Turn Phasing Crashes Based On Conflict Analysis, Shraddha Sagar

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Left-turning maneuvers are considered to be the highest risk movements at intersections and two-thirds of the crashes associated with left-turns are reported at signalized intersections. Left-turning vehicles typically encounter conflicts from opposing through traffic. To separate conflicting movements, transportation agencies use a protected-only phase at signalized intersections where each movement is allowed to move alone. However, this could create delays and thus the concept of a protected-permissive phase has been introduced to balance safety and delays. However, the permissive part of this phasing scheme retains the safety concerns and could increase the possibility of conflicts resulting in crashes. This research …

Identification, Calculation And Warning Of Horizontal Curves For Low-Volume Two-Lane Roadways Using Smartphone Sensors, Shaohu Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smartphones and other portable personal devices that integrate global positioning systems, Bluetooth Low Energy, and advanced computing technologies have become more accessible due to affordable prices, product innovation, and people’s desire to be connected. As more people own these devices, there are greater opportunities for data acquisition in Intelligent Transportation Systems, and for vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Horizontal curves are a common factor in the number of observed roadway crashes. Identifying locations and geometric characteristics of the horizontal curves plays a critical role in crash prediction and prevention, and timely curve warnings save lives. However, most states in the US face a …