The Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota has called for speakers. If you have recently completed or participated in an innovative transportation-related research, implementation, or engagement activity, consider sharing your work in a presentation at the 2026 CTS Transportation Research Conference!
Continue reading Call for Presentations: 2026 CTS Transportation Research ConferenceFebruary 25, 2025, 10-11 AM CST
TRB is offering a free webinar tomorrow on rural mobility, which has been a focus of a number of MnDOT studies in the last few years. For a review of research on rural mobility in Minnesota, see the following lists of completed and active projects. To register for the webinar, follow the link above.
Continue reading TRB Webinar: Improving Mobility in Rural and Tribal CommunitiesPost-construction soils can produce much higher stormwater runoff rates than pre-construction or typical vegetated soils. Poor soil conditions can hinder the establishment of vegetation and carry large volumes of runoff, sediment, and nutrient loads to local waters. Organic soil amendments (composts) may support post-construction vegetative growth by boosting soil structure, nutrient availability, and water holding capacity.
This research aims to define targeted pre-construction soil health baselines, determine optimized design and field implementation inputs that return soils to baseline health indices using organic amendments, and identify how these inputs can benefit transportation requirements and resilient stormwater treatment.
The results may facilitate the quantification of benefits provided through soil health restoration and the development of implementable guidance for roadside soil health restoration techniques.
“This research project will help us understand how implementing soil health practices can improve the performance of roadside vegetation establishment resulting in MnDOT being able to close out construction contracts and stormwater permits sooner,” said Warren Tuel, Natural Resources Program Coordinator with MnDOT’s Office of Environmental Stewardship. “There are also significant potential stormwater benefits of soil health practices including increased infiltration, improved treatment of pollutants present in highway stormwater runoff. The improved management of stormwater will result in improved water quality of runoff from MnDOT highway systems resulting in greater protection of the many water resources here in Minnesota.”
The objectives are:
Project Details
Details of the research study work plan and timeline are subject to change.
To receive email updates about this project, visit MnDOT’s Office of Research & Innovation to subscribe.
While studies have shown that salt brine can be less expensive and better for the environment than granular salt, public perception maintains that salt brine is less efficient and less safe for travelers.
In this Clear Roads project, researchers developed metrics for comparing the two different forms of salt and conducted a variety of tests to measure their performance in the field.
Now, agencies have data and infographics they can use to support their decision to use salt brine in place of granular salt.
Download the final report and two-page brief: CR 22-04 – Evaluation of Direct Liquid Application of Salt Brine vs Granular Salt as Measured through Various Performance and Safety Metrics, December 2025.
Reprinted from Clear Roads news, January 21, 2026.
While research has found that right-turn-only, or dedicated right-turn lanes, at intersections reduce traffic delays and vehicle crashes, their impact on pedestrian safety has been unclear. To better understand these impacts for future intersection design and countermeasure considerations, this project investigated driver response to pedestrians in or near crosswalks at dedicated right-turn lanes.
Continue reading Pedestrian Safety Impacts of Dedicated Right-Turn LanesReprinted from Catalyst, December 15, 2025
Across the country, transportation agencies, including the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), are working to meet ambitious targets for reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and climate emissions. To succeed, they need to understand what actually encourages households to drive less.
A recent University of Minnesota (UMN) research study aimed to answer this question. Led by Eric Lind, director of the UMN’s Accessibility Observatory, the study examined how accessibility—the opportunities reachable by different travel modes such as driving, public transit, or biking—influences a household’s VMT.
“We wanted to go beyond the typical approach of using roadway volume counts and instead examine households, because that is where VMT comes from,” Lind says. “This helps us better understand the influence of transportation and land-use systems on the travel decisions people make in their daily lives.”
Lind and his research team used Twin Cities travel behavior survey records to match households with access to opportunities on three different levels: local access (biking to jobs within 20 minutes), transit access (walking or rolling to transit to reach jobs within 10 to 40 minutes), and regional access (driving to jobs within 20 to 60 minutes). The models also accounted for important demographic factors including household income, vehicle availability, and number of workers.
The findings point to a challenging road ahead for transportation agencies working to reduce VMT and greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that higher local and transit access does lead to lower expected VMT. However, the impact is modest: doubling local or transit access to jobs results in a VMT decrease of about 3 percent.
Conversely, higher regional auto access is the most influential factor and positively predicts higher VMT. According to the model, a modest 10 percent increase in regional auto access to jobs resulted in a VMT increase of roughly 4 percent.
“The challenge is that MnDOT is required to balance increasing roadway capacity with strategies that reduce VMT to the same extent,” Lind explains. “Increasing what is easily reachable by bike or transit does lead people to drive less, but these are nudges compared with the main effects of roadway expansions that have a much larger, counteracting effect on VMT.”
To meet VMT goals, the research team recommends a two-pronged approach. First, agencies must continue to invest in and increase local and transit and nonmotorized access. Second, they must critically assess any planning that increases regional auto access, as its VMT-boosting impact requires non-auto mitigation to balance it out.
These findings will provide MnDOT and other transportation agencies with a clearer understanding of the levers available to them, offering the estimates needed to calculate the true VMT impact of future infrastructure changes.
This study was sponsored by the Applied Research in Transportation (ART) Program, which addresses time-sensitive research questions in a 6- to 12-month timeframe. CTS and MnDOT contributed initial funding to launch this pilot program in 2024, with the Metropolitan Council joining in 2025. To reinforce the applied nature of the program, ART projects must directly address a current process, document, or policy need with an initial focus on sustainability in transportation and climate change impacts.
For an overview of travel behavior in the U.S. generally, see Ten years of measurement reveals evolution of destination access across America.
To see how the transportation system is performing in Minnesota, see MnDOT performance measures.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
noon–1:00 p.m. CST, VIRTUAL
Accessibility is the ease of reaching valued destinations. It can be measured for various transportation modes (auto, transit, bicycling, walking), to different types of destinations (home, work, school, shopping), at different times of day. Accessibility measures can be used to answer questions such as: How many jobs can I reach within a 30-minute transit trip from my home in Evanston, Illinois?
Continue reading CTS Webinar: Reaching Opportunities Through Transportation—New Results from the National Accessibility EvaluationOver time, asphalt pavement becomes stiff and brittle due to oxidation, often leading to surface cracking and distress. To mitigate these damages and extend the service lives of roads, transportation agencies may apply a spray-on rejuvenator (SOR) to restore essential components of the asphalt. This project investigated the short- and long-term effectiveness of 12 SORs that state and local transportation agencies may consider for future use.
Continue reading Assessing Rejuvenators That Extend Pavement Service LifeHistorically, equity has not been a primary objective in the transportation infrastructure investment planning process. By effectively incorporating equity into the process, underserved communities and Native nations can realize increased benefits from transportation improvements. This research explored effective strategies for incorporating equity in transportation capital investment planning and provides guidance to transportation agencies, planning organizations and Native nations.
Continue reading Increasing Equity in Transportation InvestmentsReprinted from CTS News, November 24, 2025
Even for cities, counties, and organizations with zero-carbon emissions goals, most fleet managers are skeptical about going fully electric. Calculating the return on investment for a single vehicle is straightforward—but for a fleet, it’s complex.
Continue reading The winding road to an electric fleet
Crossroads 