Transportation agencies collect vast amounts of data about their winter operations. Dashboards can help to summarize the information, measure performance, inform decision-making during winter weather events and improve planning for future storms.
This Clear Roads project examined the use of dashboards among transportation agencies to assess current strategies and identify innovative and effective practices. The results offer guidance to transportation agencies that are considering implementing or expanding their dashboard use to enhance winter maintenance operations.
Download the final report and two-page brief: CR 22-05 – Use of Dashboards for Winter Operations, December 2024.
Roundabouts and J-turns have consistently shown significant improvements in safety and traffic flow in Minnesota and across the U.S. Still, some community residents and businesses oppose replacing traditional intersections with alternative intersections like roundabouts or J-turns.
Preventing vehicles from drifting out of traffic lanes is a top safety priority for transportation officials. An ongoing research project has produced a smartphone app that alerts drivers when their vehicles drift from a lane. The current phase of the project improved upon earlier versions of the app by adding GPS and significantly increasing the effectiveness of lane departure detection.
Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) transit planning apps provide a simple, convenient way for transit users to plan trips, make payments, and book on-demand rides—enhancing the user experience and encouraging more transit use. While prevalent in urban areas, these apps are uncommon in rural settings.
As hauling practices change for waste collection, mining and other industries, local transportation agencies are receiving more permit requests for oversize or overweight trucks. These larger vehicles can have significantly greater impacts on pavements than passenger vehicles.
Approximately 62,000 miles of Minnesota’s roads are bituminous, or asphalt, surfaces. Bituminous roads are cost-effective and offer improved ride quality and safety.
Pedestrian hybrid beacons (PHBs) are one tool to help pedestrians safely cross roads. PHBs provide red-signal control for vehicular traffic when needed at lower installation costs and reduced traffic delays than full traffic signals.
Clear Roads has just published its tenth Annual Survey of State Winter Maintenance Data, which compiles winter resources, material and cost data from 41 states for the 2023-2024 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 nine surveys (winters 2014-2015 through 2022-2023) and displays averages and changes across winter periods.
Speed Safety Cameras (SSCs) detect the speed of vehicles through the use of radar technology or detectors that are embedded in the surface of the roadway, and associate those readings with a photograph or video of the vehicle. They can be deployed as fixed units (a stationary camera targeting a specific location), point-to-point units (multiple cameras that capture average speed over a set distance) or mobile (a portable camera positioned in a trailer or vehicle). The results are then “read” by trained analysts in a data center, who may or may not be members of law enforcement. Speeding tickets are then issued on the basis of this technology. The question facing the Minnesota Legislature in 2024 was, is this needed? And what are the best practices for implementing it?
Freight transportation is evolving rapidly, and its future success will require managing increased residential demand, planning for equity, and incorporating micro-delivery options such as cargo e-bikes. At the 2024 CTS Transportation Research Conference, three experts shared their knowledge of these trending topics in a session focused on the future of urban freight.
In response to the increasing demand for residential package delivery spurred by the shift towards online shopping, U of M Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering PhD student Can Yin shared her research on mobile parcel locker scheduling. Yin explained that in the growing ecommerce market, last-mile delivery is the most expensive and time consuming. While door delivery is commonly used, it can be unsecure and inconvenient for customers.
“Parcel lockers are an alternative, but they come with the disadvantages of limited locations, expensive fixed cost, and the inability to adapt to varying demand,” Yin said.
A newer, more flexible alternative is the use of mobile, vehicle-based parcel lockers, which offer greater flexibility, higher accessibility, and lower fixed costs—particularly if autonomous vehicles eliminate the need for driver salaries. However, mobile parcel lockers also create challenges for e-commerce businesses such as estimating demand and customer choices.
To address these challenges, Yin’s research team developed a mobile parcel locker demand-estimation model. Additionally, the researchers found that compared with stationary lockers, mobile lockers offer a better value and demand fulfillment.
Another challenge surrounding the rapid growth of e-commerce and urban freight is racial equity in urban freight planning. In his presentation, University of Washington Urban Freight Lab researcher Travis Fried explained how his research is seeking to better understand these inequities and create a framework for mitigating them.
The past and present systems that perpetuate the segregation of people and neighborhoods have been well documented. However, Fried said there is little research exploring how these patterns play out in freight planning and their impacts on air quality, health, and road safety for people of color. Fried’s research looked at high-volume traffic exposure and found that low-income populations of color were disproportionately exposed to e-commerce traffic.
“By our most conservative estimate, BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] populations were exposed to 35 percent more traffic related to last-mile home delivery on average, despite ordering less than half as many packages as white populations,” Fried said. That’s because delivery facilities and highways are disproportionately located near historically marginalized neighborhoods, he explained.
In light of this finding, Fried emphasized the importance of including equity considerations when prioritizing urban freight strategies. “Solutions focused on the upper end of the distribution chain have outsized benefits for marginalized communities, so we need to consider that in our cost-benefit evaluations and engagement strategies,” he added.
Using cargo e-bikes for last-mile freight delivery was the topic of the session’s final presentation from Marc Liu of Civilized Cycles. Liu explained how his company’s innovative semi-trike—which has as much cargo capacity as a small delivery van—can be used to move a significant amount of cargo over short distances, particularly within campus environments such as universities, hospitals, residential developments, and military bases.
Semi e-trike from Civilized Cycles
“Regardless of what these campuses are moving, they have the same core challenge of moving as much cargo as possible while keeping operating costs as low as possible,” Liu said. “On top of that, emissions and safety are key concerns because most of this happens in pedestrian-heavy areas.”
Liu explained that the first customers for the cargo e-bikes are micro-mobility fleet operators at the forefront of sustainable transportation including Lime, Net Zero Logistics, and Amazon. Moving forward, the company is targeting campus environments for expansion. Liu said that “economics drives adoption” and believes the key to adoption is offering an affordable, American-made product that reduces vehicle fleet costs, increases safety, improves efficiency, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Crossroads 