Join the Minnesota and Twin Ports (Wisconsin) chapters for an engaging Brown Bag webinar on the significant transition regional airports are undergoing.
Friday, May 17 Noon-1 p.m. CT
Our panelists will explore:
The historic role of essential air service.
Impacts of airline equipment trends on regional airports.
Innovations in rural connectivity.
Tom Werner, Executive Director of Minnesota’s Duluth Airport Authority, will begin the panel discussion focusing on the role of regional airports and the airport challenges resulting from the upscaling of airline equipment. Keith Brune, A.A.E., IAP, Chief Operating Officer at the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Aviation, which includes Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) and Northeast Philadelphia Airport, will discuss the highly innovative and seamless-for-passengers bus-to-plane connection from the Lehigh Valley to Philadelphia via The Landline Company. Joe Schwieterman, Director of Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, will share his reactions and pose some questions to open the discussion.
Daniel L. Rust and Frank Douma lead the host chapters, will welcome guests, and will moderate the webinar.
Check out these recent episodes from AASHTO’s Talkin Winter Ops podcast.
Snowplow modeling or messing around? (Episode 99): Snowplow blades can be hard to test in real-world conditions. In this episode Alex Klein-Paste of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology describes his work to design and test a scale model in a laboratory setting. Podcast.
Can you see the snowplow? (Episode 98): Jeff Pifer, Director of the Equipment Division at the West Virginia Division of Highways discusses how changing a snowplow’s color and adding lights and reflective tape can make slow-moving snowplows and other maintenance vehicles easier to see. Podcast.
Where’s the snowplow? (Episode 97): When a vehicle crashes into a snowplow, the results can be dangerous and costly. In this episode, Jed Falgren, the State Maintenance Engineer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, discusses the innovative solutions his agency has found to reduce these types of crashes. February 27, 2024. Podcast.
This webinar will explore the use of autonomous technology to support worker safety in transportation maintenance operations. Presentations will highlight:
Reprinted from CTS News, March 19, 2024 —Sophie Koch, contributing writer
Hydrogen is getting a lot of attention in recent years as a potential fuel source in the transportation sector. However, it is important to consider the pros, cons, and limitations of this molecule when deciding how to use it.
“(There) seems to be so much interest in this particular molecule, and for a lot of reasons—it has a lot of potential,” says Karen Bridges, research specialist with the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. “It’s a very flexible, light energy-carrier.”
Bridges, along with Assistant Professor Elise Harrington from the Humphrey School, co-authored a high-level review paper summarizing research and reporting on the viability of hydrogen as a carbon-neutral fuel alternative. The paper was commissioned by the Minnesota Freight Advisory Committee.
Hydrogen, Bridges says, has the potential to serve as a “missing link” in the quest for decarbonization. It is energy-dense enough to move heavy, long-distance freight, easy to store and transport, and able to be used in applications such as aviation, international shipping, rail, and trucking.
However, the main drawback to hydrogen is that not all of it is truly “clean.” Obtaining a hydrogen molecule involves using electricity to split an existing molecule (either natural gas or water) into its component parts. The cleanness of the hydrogen depends on what molecule is split, what energy source is used to split it, and whether there’s some sort of carbon capture method used to clean up the byproducts of the process.
(Photos: Kenworth)
The absolute cleanest method is called “green” hydrogen—it uses renewable energy sources to split water molecules, and it doesn’t need a carbon-capture method because there are no carbon byproducts. Unfortunately, green hydrogen is the most expensive to produce.
“Blue” hydrogen is in the middle in terms of both cost and cleanness; it splits natural gas molecules and has a carbon-capture system set up to catch the byproducts. “Grey” hydrogen, by contrast, also splits natural gas molecules but involves no carbon-capture system.
“Currently, it’s very expensive to produce zero and low-carbon hydrogen,” Bridges says. “There’s not a lot of it being produced today, and a lot of it’s grey, and so there would be a tremendous amount of investment that we’d need to go to scale.”
Increasing the scale and driving down the cost of green hydrogen are going to be key to making it a viable, affordable option for freight companies, Bridges says. Regional and cross-sector cooperation will help significantly in this process.
“In order to help support the development of the infrastructure, you really need coordination across the country,” Bridges says.
Initiatives aimed at pushing hydrogen forward are already in motion on the federal level, Bridges notes. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has a Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit program for incentivizing hydrogen production facilities, and the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act dedicated $8 billion toward the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs Program to support the development of clean hydrogen production, storage, and transportation.
“I think we’re really starting to see these things move forward,” Bridges says.
Bridges presented her and Harrington’s work at the 2023 Freight and Logistics Symposium. The white paper—Hydrogen for Freight in Minnesota: Considerations for Technology Readiness and Policy Options in Minnesota—will be posted on the MFAC website.
Reprinted from CTS News, March 21, 2024 —Sophie Koch, contributing writer
Changing precipitation patterns caused by the onset of climate change mean that Minnesota’s stormwater management systems—the ponds, pipes, and other structures meant to control runoff in the event of a heavy rainstorm—are going to need an upgrade.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation, which manages a significant portion of Minnesota’s stormwater infrastructure, has noted that its current systems are based on pre-climate-change data. Because climate change is broadly linked to increases in extreme rain events, MnDOT sponsored a U of M study to analyze whether Minnesota’s current infrastructure is prepared for predicted changes in precipitation patterns.
Swales in the right-of-way can infiltrate stormwater runoff from roads.
“The traditional hydrologic design method of using past observed data must evolve to incorporate precipitation predictions,” says Erik Brenna, assistant state hydraulics engineer at the MnDOT Bridge Office. “We have an ethical obligation to use the best available data to provide designs benefitting the health, safety, and welfare of the traveling public.”
The first section of the study—which ran predictive models on watersheds in Duluth, Rochester, and Minneapolis—determined that precipitation volumes are likely to rise in Minnesota, and the current stormwater designs will be insufficient to control flooding.
With the aim of guiding these investments, the researchers analyzed potential stormwater control strategies for both performance (ability to reduce flood depth and duration) and cost. This list includes:
Adding infiltration basins (such as rain gardens).
Retrofitting existing ponds into “smart” ponds (which use a digital system to automatically drain water levels in response to upcoming weather events).
Adding new stormwater ponds (both normal and smart).
Enlarging stormwater pipes to convey more water.
Infiltration basins proved good at handling the more common, low-volume rain events that the models predicted. However, higher-volume “100-year storms” need more capacity. For this, the researchers recommend adding new ponds, since this strategy threads the needle between performance and cost.
Rain gardens, or infiltration basins, can be included in new and existing development. Planted with deep-rooted vegetation, these areas can accommodate a significant amount of rainfall.
Converting normal ponds into smart ponds, by contrast, was cheaper but less effective, and enlarging stormwater pipes tended to simply move flood problems downstream rather than solving them.
The main drawback to adding ponds, Gulliver says, is that ponds require a lot of land, which might be particularly difficult and costly to access in highly developed areas like Minneapolis.
However, the researchers point out that doing nothing might be even more costly in the long run, citing the 2012 storm in Duluth that caused over $100 million in damage, $20 million of which was to MnDOT infrastructure.
“While preventing all damage from extreme events may be infeasible, minimizing impacts through cost-effective adaptation strategies can save millions of dollars,” Gulliver says.
MnDOT’s Office of Livability developed the Livability Framework to help guide planning, programming, and project development processes. It is being piloted in MnDOT Metro District. The outcomes should result in more people focused outcomes for the plans, programs and projects in the District. The Livability Initiative wants each of the Livability Pillars of the Livability Framework to be thoroughly considered and evaluated when planners, project managers, and others make decisions about transportation policies, programs, and/or projects.
Clear Roads has published the results of their ninth Annual Survey of State Winter Maintenance Data, which compiles winter resources, material and cost data from 41 states for the 2022-2023 winter season. The spreadsheet includes all submitted data, as well as calculated statistics, winter severity index data, and a United States map that displays many of these metrics. The spreadsheet also includes data from the previous seven surveys (winters 2014-2015 through 2021-2022) and displays averages and changes across winter periods.
A long-running series of U of M research projects aimed at improving stormwater quality are beginning to see practical application by stormwater specialists from the Twin Cities metro area and beyond.
Webinar materials and a new FAQ about the Mobility, Access, and Transportation Insecurity (MATI) Program RFP process are now available on the MATI website.
Thursday, March 28, 2024 10:00–11:30 a.m. Central (Virtual)
About the Event
Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they’re practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as alien forces of death and disruption. More than a million animals are killed by cars each day in the US alone, creatures from antelope to salmon are losing their ability to migrate in search of food and mates, and the very noise of traffic chases songbirds from vast swaths of habitat.
Crossroads 