Category Archives: Research

General research posts.

Bicycling, Policy and Planning, Research

Exploring Nice Ride job accessibility and station choice

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Although bike share systems are becoming more popular across the United States, little is known about how people make decisions when integrating these systems into their daily travel.

In a study funded by CTS, researchers from the U of M’s civil engineering department investigated how people use the Nice Ride bike share system in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The researchers examined how Nice Ride affects accessibility to jobs and developed a model to predict station choice.

In the first part of the study, the researchers created maps showing accessibility to jobs by census block for both Nice Ride and walking—as well as the difference between the two—at time thresholds ranging from 5 to 55 minutes.

Overall, in blocks with both Nice Ride and walking job accessibility, Nice Ride provides access to 0.5 to 3.21 times as many jobs as walking.

By comparing Nice Ride to walking, the study demonstrated that walking can successfully be used as a baseline to show how a bike share system improves job accessibility. The results also pinpointed when and where Nice Ride had the strongest accessibility advantage over walking.

“This type of information can be used by bike share system planners to identify where new stations could be built to maximize their impact on job accessibility,” says grad student Jessica Schoner, a member of the research team.

In addition, the team developed a theoretical model for bike share station choice. The model considers users’ choice of a station based on their preference 
for the amount of time spent walking, deviation from the shortest path (the closest station may not be in the direct path of the person’s destination), and station amenities and neighborhood characteristics.

Findings show that people generally prefer to use stations that don’t require long detours to reach, but a station’s surroundings also play an important role. Results also indicate that commuters value shorter trips and tend to choose stations that minimize overall travel time.

According to Schoner, understanding people’s station preference can help provide guidance to planners that want to expand or optimize a bike share system.

Read the full article in the January issue of Catalyst.

Bridges and Structures, Environment, Research

Culvert research aims to protect endangered small fish

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The Topeka shiner
The Topeka shiner, a small minnow that inhabits slow-moving prairie streams, was once widespread and abundant in portions of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota. It now inhabits less than 10 percent of its original geographic range.
(Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources)

In a new study funded by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, engineers are trying to ensure that new culverts do not degrade the habitat of an endangered fish in southern Minnesota.

The state has already researched how to better accommodate fish passage at river and stream crossings. Now it is looking at design guidelines for culverts that specifically impact the Topeka shiner, a small endangered fish found in five Midwestern states.

In Minnesota, the Topeka shiner is known to live in at least 57 streams, totaling 605 miles, within the Big Sioux and Rock River watersheds.

“The Topeka shiner is reported to have been erased from about 50 percent of its historic range in Iowa and much of its range in Minnesota, which is why Minnesota is so intent on doing what it can to help this fish thrive here,” said Alan Rindels, MnDOT’s project coordinator for the research.

The Topeka shiner is endangered due to the degradation of stream habitat, stream channelization, non-native predatory fishes and construction within waterways.

Culverts might impede the passage of this small minnow for a number of reasons, including that they might be too long, lack sufficient depth or carry water too fast.

Culverts allow water to pass under roads.
Culverts (also called small bridges) allow water to pass under roads. Occasionally, they can harm a stream’s fish habitat by inadvertently acting as a barrier to fish passage or migration. On the West Coast, large-scale efforts are under way to protect migratory salmon, and in Minnesota, culvert designers are concerned about fresh water species.

In addition, long culverts block sunlight, which possibly discourages fish from swimming through. Typically, older culverts are replaced with longer culverts to improve road safety and minimize maintenance costs. To eliminate or minimize impacts to the Topeka shiner, the state is trying to determine if light mitigation strategies are necessary.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Research Laboratory will monitor a newly installed culvert (110 feet in length) and a few other culverts in critical Topeka shiner habitat streams during spawning and fall movement.

Additionally, a laboratory-based light manipulation experiment will examine the behavior of the warm-water fish when presented with a dark culvert.

Guidelines for culvert design in Topeka shiner habitat will be developed based on these results, as well as examples from neighboring states. The state is also collaborating with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and affected Minnesota counties.

Policy and Planning, Research

Uncovering manufacturers’ perspectives on the transportation system

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It’s no secret that manufacturing plays a key role in driving economic growth, or that transportation is essential for the success of any manufacturing operation.

While the relationships among manufacturing, transportation, and economic growth have been studied on a large scale, there is often little dialogue between transportation organizations and the manufacturers themselves. A recently completed pilot study conducted jointly by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and University of Minnesota Extension aims to address this communication gap.

The pilot project focused on 12 counties in southwest Minnesota, where more than 172 regional businesses were contacted for participation and 75 in-person interviews were completed with manufacturers, shippers, and carriers. During the interviews, participants were encouraged to focus their comments on high-value, low-cost improvements that MnDOT can address in the short term without over-promising projects that currently cannot be funded.

Participants identified the need for smooth pavements and wide shoulders, the value of advance warning lights at intersections with traffic signals, the importance of highway safety, and the challenges of maneuvering oversized vehicles through roundabouts, among others.

The research team is compiling the pilot study’s findings into a final report. In the meantime, MnDOT is working to address a number of the challenges and suggestions uncovered through the pilot program.

Read the full article in the December issue of Catalyst.

Research

Previewing MnDOT’s next round of research projects

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MnDOT Research Services recently released its 2013 request for proposals. If you have any kind of direct interest in transportation research in Minnesota, chances are you might have known that already. But those with more of a general curiosity might be interested to see the list of research need statements from the RFP, as they provide a nice preview of the next round of potential MnDOT research projects.

As you can see, some are of a highly technical nature. (It’s safe to say that a study on “PCC Pavement Thickness Variation Versus Observed Pavement Distress” would be of interest mainly to engineers.) Others, however, like “The Economic Impact of Bicycling in Minnesota,” might have a broader appeal. In any case, it’s a fascinating glimpse at the myriad of issues that MnDOT is attempting to address through research and innovation.

Here’s the list of research need statements from the 2013 RFP, broken down by category:

Environment

Maintenance

Materials and Construction

Multimodal

Policy and Planning

Traffic and Safety

Research

Bridging the gap between research and implementation

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The end goal of transportation research, broadly speaking, is to see the results implemented — that is, to transfer the knowledge generated through research to those who can put it to good use. Research Services and the Center for Transportation Studies use a variety of tools to help disseminate research results: our respective websites, email lists, social media, newsletters and this blog, to name a few. But what do we know about how our audiences actually interact with these various channels of communication?

At the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting earlier this year, researchers from Nebraska presented the findings of a very interesting survey on how engineers and other transportation practitioners prefer to learn about research results. Their presentation, entitled “What Engineers Want: Identifying Transportation Professionals as an Audience for Research,” is available via Slideshare. (Unfortunately, WordPress won’t let me embed it.)

Some key takeaways from the survey:

  • Practitioners overwhelmingly prefer one- or two-page technical briefs to other types of research communication products. (Other popular formats include presentations, video highlights and webinars.)
  • By a wide margin, practitioners use search engines like Google or Bing to seek research results (compared to other options like contacting a colleague or university faculty).
  • Practitioners are mostly interested in information on how to implement findings, as well as cost-benefit analyses of implementation.

The survey results present what I think is a fairly realistic and nuanced picture of the audience for transportation research; they’re also consistent with our (Research Services) own internal research on the issue. The bottom line is that research results need to be condensed into usable bits of information and made easily accessible in a variety of formats. People want information they can use, without having to dig for it. More importantly, they want it in whatever their preferred format is, whether it be print, email, Web, RSS, social media or in-person presentations.

Interestingly, Research Services already produces the kind of two-page technical briefs described in the survey. We call them “technical summaries,” and they are among our most popular products. We generally produce a technical summary for each research project we manage, and post them on our website alongside the full research report. Reading a two-page summary, written in layman’s terms, is certainly easier than poring over research reports that oftentimes number in the hundreds of pages, so it’s not surprising that even those with a strong engineering background prefer the format.

As a side note, last Friday we published a batch of 10 new technical summaries — along with two new transportation research syntheses, which are a type of literature review. Topics range from pedestrian and bicycle safety in roundabout crossings to the effect of intelligent lane control systems on driver behavior. You can check the full list on the Research Services main page.

Now it’s your turn: What forms of communication do you think are most effective at reaching transportation practitioners? Which ones do you prefer? Let us know in the comments.