Transportation agencies revegetate roadsides after construction projects to provide road stability, stormwater filtration, and visual appeal. Revegetation is also a good opportunity to create pollinator-friendly habitat. However, planting and maintaining ditches can be expensive, funds for such projects are usually limited, and there isn’t much data on which methods actually work.
When a person wants to take a trip across the country, they can choose from a variety of travel planning apps to help make that happen. But what if the trip they want to take is from Mankato to New Ulm, or within their own community, using non-personal transportation?
The Minnesota Department of Transportation has launched a pilot project to bring trip planning and payment technology for daily trips to areas less dense than urban settings.
Residents and visitors in southern and western Minnesota now have the ability to plan for and, in some cases, pay for public transit and intercity bus trips using the Transit app. Travel and route information for these agencies went live within Transit on March 1.
Transit, a free app available for download in Google Play or the Apple App Store, is used in more than 300 cities around the world. It allows users to see route and travel options for public transit and connecting services. Select agencies also have in-app ticketing, allowing riders to pay for fares electronically and then show their device to transit drivers to ride.
“This pilot with the Transit app focuses on rural areas because this technology has not yet been made available outside of Minnesota’s big cities,” says Elliott McFadden, MnDOT’s Greater Minnesota Shared Mobility Program coordinator. “The project will be the first to bring the latest technology to make it easier to plan and take trips in many communities in Greater Minnesota.”
The pilot will run through April 2024 and is funded by two innovation grants from the Federal Transit Administration at a cost of $1.9 million.
U of M researchers led by Alireza Khani will evaluate the project to help determine whether this technology should be scaled to the rest of the state. Focusing on southern Minnesota, the research team will work closely with MnDOT’s project management team and the platform development team to study these questions:
How do residents of the region benefit from having access to a variety of mobility options through an integrated platform?
To what extent does the platform help increase transit ridership and reduce personal vehicle use?
How can the features of the platform—such as route planning or pricing—be optimized for greater system efficiency and benefits for all residents?
“Our goal is to provide the data and analysis policymakers need to make the most effective transit investments,” says Khani, an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering.
The Future of Mobility series collects the perspectives of top U researchers and other national experts. In 17 articles, the authors scan the horizon and reflect on critical transportation topics. Each article recommends action steps for public officials and policymakers.
When transportation officials determine which route a heavy truck should take, their aim is maximizing efficiency while ensuring safety. Detours around bridges on critical freight routes increase fuel and labor costs for the trucking industry—and eventually hit consumer pocketbooks, too.
Surge pricing in rideshare apps leads to more complaints from customers, which ultimately eats away at drivers’ incomes, according to new U of M research.
While fully automated vehicles (AVs) have not yet reached the roads, the work to get them market-ready is steadily moving forward. One of the essential technologies these vehicles rely on for safety and performance is lidar, which has traditionally experienced a loss of accuracy in bad weather.
Traditional practices for planting and maintaining roadside turfgrass in Minnesota have generally focused on finding a few plant species that do well in combination and blanket-prescribing them across the state. A recent U of M study, however, finds that plantings tend to do better when they are both biodiverse and carefully matched to their ideal growing conditions.
A new book—Space, Structures, and Design in a Post-Pandemic World—explores the rebalancing of our physical and digital interactions and what it means for the built environment going forward.
Crossroads 