Tag Archives: Minnesota

Policy and Planning

Study reveals how Minnesota industries rely on transportation

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Results of a newly released MnDOT research report shed new light on the role transportation plays in our state’s economic competitiveness, and highlight the unique challenges faced by some of the state’s major industry clusters.

The report, authored by Professor Lee Munnich of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, underscores the importance of a reliable transportation system in facilitating economic growth. Munnich examined the impact of transportation on Minnesota’s competitive industry clusters — geographically concentrated, interconnected groups of companies and institutions that share knowledge networks, supply chains and specialized labor pools.

MnDOT Research Project Engineer Bruce Holdhusen said MnDOT’s goal with the study was to discover how its investment decisions could help support job creation and economic prosperity.

“The idea is to look at the companies and industries that are already bringing money into the state, figure out what their transportation challenges are, and then use that information to see what kind of investments we could make to support their continued growth,” Holdhusen said.

MnDOT is incorporating the results of the study into its statewide freight planning. The industry clusters-approach also is being used by MnDOT in a statewide effort to talk with manufacturers, other shippers, and carriers about their transportation priorities and challenges.  MnDOT will focus on its Metro District starting this summer.  Two similar projects have been undertaken in Greater Minnesota, with a third study starting later this year. (Results from one study, in southwest Minnesota/District 8, are available online.)

The full report is available online, and examines a wide range of industries, including forest products, medical devices, robotics and processed foods. We’ve pulled out a few interesting tidbits below.

Recreational Vehicles (Northwest Minnesota)

A semi truck driving on a snowy highway.
Minnesota winters are great for snowmobiling, but not always great for shipping snowmobiles. (Photo by Dave Gonzalez, MnDOT)

As noted in the report, Minnesota’s extreme winter weather poses unique challenges to its economic competitiveness. Ironically, nowhere is this more evident than in the state’s snowmobile-producing northwest corner.

Polaris and Arctic Cat (together with smaller, more specialized firms like Mattracks) employ thousands of Minnesotans, producing a wide variety of recreational vehicles and accessories that are sold and distributed all over the world. While the companies’ snowmobiles might fare well in a blizzard, the trucks that deliver them don’t. A bad snowstorm can cause delays in both supply and product shipments; it can also prevent employees from getting to work, or even shut down a plant altogether. On a larger scale, these issues make it difficult for the companies to expand at their ideal rates.

The report notes that MnDOT’s 511 system is an important source for many companies to identify and respond to potential shipping delays. It recommends continuous improvements to the system.

The Mayo Clinic (Rochester Area)

Metal FedEx containers at an airport.
Air carriers like FedEx have limited capacity for refrigerated shipments, which creates challenges for shipping medical lab samples. (Photo by Dave Gonzalez, MnDOT)

The Mayo Clinic has become synonymous with the Rochester metropolitan area, and for good reason: it employs 37,000 residents and brings in 500,000 unique patients each year from all 50 U.S. states and 150 countries. As you might imagine, generating that much activity in a community of only 110,000 people creates some unique and significant transportation challenges.

Unlike most competitor institutions (Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, for example), the Mayo clinic is located in a relatively small metropolitan area. The local airport has an older navigation system and offers less direct commercial air service. As a result, it depends on high-quality transit and freight service to help accommodate the constant flow of visitors and supplies. The shipping of highly perishable lab samples is also a challenge, as air carriers have limited capacity for refrigeration. Finally, adverse weather conditions can affect emergency services dispatchers’ ability to send fast modes of transportation such as helicopters.

Hospitality and Tourism (Brainerd Lakes Area)

Boats docked on a lake at dawn.
Lakeside resorts a great way to enjoy Minnesota’s scenic beauty — but getting there can be a challenge. (Photo by Dave Gonzalez, MnDOT)

The oil boom in North Dakota has generated a lot of wealth in a short amount of time, and resorts like the Grand View Lodge in Nisswa would love to capture some of it by enticing new vacationers from the west. The trouble is, the area is inconvenient to reach from that direction.

A four-lane highway makes it easy for visitors from St. Cloud or the Twin Cities to visit resorts in the Brainerd area, but travelers coming from the Dakotas face a more circuitous route. Air travel options help to an extent, as visitors from even farther distances can fly into Fargo and then drive in from there. St. Cloud also has daily air service from Chicago, which helps maintain a constant flow of visitors.

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Traffic and Safety

Six Ways to do Multimodal in Greater Minnesota

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Can rural Minnesota do multimodal?

You betcha, says a new study by University of Minnesota researcher Carol Becker, who compiled 65 examples of innovative multimodal rural and small urban transportation projects from around the United States.

The study, funded by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, looks at alternatives for promoting and strengthening multimodal transportation in rural and small urban areas. Becker developed these six case studies to showcase different modes and strategies:

Retrofitting Sidewalks

The city of Olympia, Washington, was mostly built during the automobile era. As a result, most of the city developed without sidewalks. In 2004, Olympia passed a voter referendum that linked enhanced parks with adding sidewalks throughout the city. The referendum was supported by parents who wanted safe routes to school for their children and by environmentalists who wanted alternatives to driving. But the key to voter approval was linking recreation at parks with recreation walking to and from the parks. The Parks and Pathways program is now retrofitting miles of sidewalks into neighborhoods.

A sidewalk that was built using utility tax funds on San Francisco Avenue in Olympia, Washington.
A sidewalk that was built using utility tax funds on San Francisco Avenue in Olympia, Washington.
Intercity Bus Service

North Dakota has the third-lowest population density in the United States. Despite this, it has a network of buses that connect small towns to larger regional centers. Such alternatives to driving allow residents — particularly elderly and disabled persons — to stay in their communities rather than move to large cities to access needed services.
InterCity

Senior Transportation

A nonprofit in Mesa, Arizona, implemented a program to reimburse eligible seniors for car trips provided by other individuals. The program was moved to the regional transit provider for expansion. It did not scale up well, however, and was recently replaced with the East Valley RideChoice Program, which provides seniors and disabled adults with  discounted cards for taxi service. RideChoice participants can receive up to $100 of taxi service per month for either $25 or $30, depending on their city of residence.

Photo courtesy of Valley Metro RideChoice
Photo courtesy of RideChoice
Integrating Highways into Small Town Fabric

One challenge to making smaller communities more walkable and pedestrian-friendly is that most small towns are built around MainStreethighways. In fact, unless a bypass has been built, the main street of a small town is also typically a highway. This creates a conflict between groups who want to move vehicles efficiently and groups who want pedestrian-friendly downtowns.

Oregon took two steps to help mediate this:

  • Added a functional classification to the Oregon Highway Manual for the portion of roadway that runs through small towns. This functional classification has very different design standards that can accommodate walking, biking, commercial activity along the roadway, parking along the roadway and many other small-town needs.
  • “Main Street: When A Highway Runs Through It” was written to help local governments understand their options for creating a multimodal environment and better advocate for their interests with the Oregon Department of Transportation. The document explains ODOT funding processes and  shows examples of design options. Local governments can then adopt these elements and standards into their local plans, which ODOT must work with when doing highway improvements.
Complete Streets

Clinton, Iowa, is a city with a population of 27,000 on the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa. In 1995, the rail yard closed, which provided an opportunity to redevelop land. The city created a comprehensive long-range plan that included remediating soil contamination, purchasing land for redevelopment, realigning two streets and increasing transportation choices with a “complete streets” design. The reclaimed land will support a multi-use path, sidewalks and connections to cross streets.

Approximately $50 million has been secured for the project.  A $2.7 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant was also received from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2012 to pay for a multi-use trail with a direct connection to the Mississippi River Trail, decorative lighting and plantings. In the future, land will be sold for higher density, walkable development.

A look at part of Clinton, Iowa’s redeveloped old railroad area, now called Liberty Square.
Impact Fees for Funding Infrastructure

As resistance increases to broad-based taxes, there has been a shift toward funding transportation with fees linked to specific projects. Examples include:

  • Concurrency laws, which require capacity in governmental systems (either planned or existing) before development can occur. If capacity does not exist, development cannot occur. In the state of Washington, a number of cities use concurrency to set transportation fees paid by new development. Bellingham, Washington, uses this kind of system to raise funds for transportation projects.
  • Development impact fees. Contra Costa County, California, has a capital plan for transportation improvements and sets a fee that is paid by new development to fund that infrastructure. Fees vary from under $1,000 to over $15,000 depending on where new development is occurring. The county expects to raise more than $845 million in transportation dollars from 2014 to 2030 using such a mechanism.
  • Allowing local units of government to create special districts to fund transportation projects.
Related Resources

Rural and Small Urban Multi-Modal Alternatives for Minnesota – Final Report

Traffic and Safety

How those little blue lights make intersections safer

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A story from WCCO-TV last week answered a question that has likely been puzzling many commuters passing through Ramsey County: what are those blue lights popping up on traffic signals?

The report explains that the blue lights illuminate when a traffic signal changes to red, allowing a patrol officer to witness and enforce a signal violation more easily and safely. What the report doesn’t explain is the safety benefits to be gained from increased red light enforcement.

In Ramsey County, the proposal for a recent large deployment of blue lights came from traffic engineers, not police.

“Our county safety highway program conducted by MnDOT indicated a lot of right-angle crashes related to people running red lights,” said Ramsey County Planner Joseph Lux. “These are typically the accidents with the severest injuries.”

As part of the statewide Towards Zero Deaths (TZD) initiative in July 2013, MnDOT worked with counties to develop safety plans that emphasize low-cost, high-value safety improvements.

A federal grant is helping fund the installation of 128 blue lights at 49 intersections in Ramsey County (see locations) over the next two weeks. Deputies will begin enforcement later this month, but the hope is that the blue lights will be so effective,  active enforcement won’t be necessary long-term.

A blue light, positioned on each of the four corner intersection poles, turn on whenever the opposite signal light turns red.

“The comments we’ve received from local police is they don’t want to write tickets; they just want people to quit running red lights,” Lux said.

IMG_2431
Blue light indicators were affixed to existing signal poles at Lexington Avenue and Larpenteur Avenue in Roseville.

The blue light indicators allow a police officer to view an infraction from many viewpoints, instead of having to pursue the offending vehicle through the intersection. Also only one squad is required to patrol an intersection; not two.

The blue light indicators have been shown to increase traffic safety. In Florida, crashes due to people running red lights fell by 33 percent, according to a low-cost safety improvement pooled fund study conducted on behalf of MnDOT and 37 other states.

Unlike Florida’s blue lights, Ramsey County’s are being placed on the signal pole, instead of the masthead. They’re more prominent than a couple indicators the county tried previously at accident-prone intersections in Little Canada and Maplewood.

“They’re bright and noticeable to the public, but not distracting, like the ones Florida puts on the masthead,” Lux explained.

According to WCCO-TV, the blue lights are funded by a $120,000 federal grant, with $13,000 in matching local funds.

Temporary signs will be put up by Ramsey County to notify the public of the new indicators.

A few other Minnesota communities — including Blaine, Crystal, Olmsted County and Dakota County — have also installed blue light indicators in recent years.

Lux explained that Ramsey County is installing blue lights on intersections that are easily enforced by law enforcement, as well as those that aren’t, in hopes that the public will obey them all because of the heightened presence.

Maintenance Operations

Mobile imagery, LiDAR help MnDOT maintain its assets

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How do you quickly and cost-effectively get an accurate inventory of transportation assets spread out along more than 1,100 miles of roadway?

That was the problem facing the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Metro District, which needed an inventory of its plate beam guardrail and concrete barriers.

To accomplish this, engineers in the district launched an innovative research implementation project using a pair of mobile mapping technologies — Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and mobile imaging — that can collect vast amounts of geospatial data on highway infrastructure in a safe and efficient manner.

Mobile imaging uses a camera mounted on a vehicle driving at highway speeds to take high-resolution photos at regular intervals. It’s accurate to within 1 foot, which makes it suitable for use in preliminary (30 percent) design plans without additional field surveys. In this project, researchers collected mobile images of roadway barriers and extracted data from them along Metro District roadways, including all ramps, overpasses, interchanges, weigh stations, rest areas and historical sites.

A MnDOT worker replaces a section of broken guardrail.
A MnDOT worker replaces a section of broken guardrail on I-94 near the Lowry Tunnel in Minneapolis. (Photo by Dave Gonzalez, MnDOT)

Researchers also collected LiDAR data at three Metro District sites. LiDAR uses a laser range finder and reflected laser light to measure distances. It provides survey-grade data accurate to within 0.1 foot, but it is significantly more expensive to collect than mobile imaging.

“Mobile imagery and mobile LiDAR are relatively new technologies, but this research shows that they are options that we can use. Collecting this information manually would have taken a lot more time and money,” said MnDOT Asset Management Engineer Trisha Stefanski.

MnDOT’s barrier inventory will provide invaluable information for design, planning and maintenance. The data will be published on MnDOT’s Georilla map server, where it will be beneficial to a variety of projects and recurring tasks. For example, if a vehicle hits a barrier, maintenance staff will be able to check the database to see the type of barrier and end treatment to ensure they bring the right equipment to make repairs. Although the project focused on barriers, the imagery contains data on other assets as well. MnDOT has already used the imagery to extract noise wall and sign data.

This blog post was adapted from an article in our upcoming issue of Accelerator, MnDOT’s research and innovation newsletter.

3D-vertical
Thousands of data points can be extracted from this image of a Highway 61 roadway segment created with LiDAR Technology.
Bridges and Structures

‘High Bridge’ study yields insights on bridge deck maintenance

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One of St. Paul’s most iconic landmarks is helping the Minnesota Department of Transportation find the most cost-effective methods of maintaining concrete bridge decks.

For the last three years, the Smith Avenue High Bridge, which connects downtown St. Paul with the city’s west side, has served as a test bed for a variety of products used to seal cracks on bridge decks. Through MnDOT-funded research, various sealant products have been applied on different areas of the bridge deck, with their performance tracked over time.

“This project will help MnDOT make cost-effective maintenance decisions to preserve its current bridge infrastructure,” said Sarah Sondag, a senior engineer with MnDOT Bridge Operations Support.

The bridge was chosen in part because of its large deck area, which allowed for the application of 12 sealant products and three control sections.

Sealing deck cracks is a routine preventive maintenance task for bridge crews. Left untreated, cracks can allow moisture and chlorides to penetrate the bridge deck, which can lead to the corrosion of reinforcing steel, deck deterioration and the need for early deck replacement.

researcher testing permeability of a deck crack on the Smith Avenue Bridge
A researcher tests the permeability of a crack on the deck of the Smith Avenue High Bridge in St. Paul.

MnDOT maintains a list of approved bridge deck crack sealing products, but until now had little data on how well each one performs in the field. The recently published report also examined several products that are not currently on the Approved Products List.

Among the study’s findings: some of the products on MnDOT’s Approved Products List did not perform as well as other products that are not currently on the list. MnDOT is using the results of the study to update its qualification process for products to get on the approved list. Insights gained from studying application techniques will also be used to update MnDOT’s bridge maintenance manual.

*Note: This blog post was adapted from an article and technical summary that will be featured in the upcoming issue of the Accelerator newsletter.

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Traffic and Safety

RailVolution showcases Minnesota transit successes

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Before a national audience of 1,400 urban planners and transit enthusiasts, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin and others told the story of how the Twin Cities metropolitan area was transformed into a community that embraces “livability” and mass transit, including light rail.

“The growth was horizontal and there were lots of people who were saying it wouldn’t work in Minnesota,” said McLaughlin, during the opening plenary of the RailVolution conference in Minneapolis.

But the metro region bucked years of infighting and helped pass a transportation bill in 2008 that allows counties to tax for the expansion of transit in the metro area. Anoka, Ramsey, Hennepin, Dakota and Washington Counties decided to pool their resources from the quarter-cent transit sales tax, which is why the Southwest Light Rail Line is able to move forward.

“They had to believe their day would come,” McLaughlin said of the counties.

MnDOT Commissioner Charles Zelle, who ran a regional bus company before being appointed to MnDOT, said it was faster for him to bike to the conference than to take his car.
MnDOT Commissioner Charles Zelle, who ran a regional bus company before being appointed to MnDOT, said it was faster for him to bike to the conference than to take his car.

This was the first time the annual conference has been held in the Twin Cities, allowing Minnesota leaders to share their success stories.

Minnesota Department of Transportation Commissioner Charlie Zelle, who biked the Greenway trail to get to the conference, spoke of MnDOT’s commitment to multi-modal transportation and maximizing the health of Minnesota’s people and economy.

“MnDOT is more than a highway department,” he said. “We have a statewide bike plan and we will probably be the second state in the union to have a statewide pedestrian plan.”

Michael Langley of Greater MSP said a mix of transportation types is critical to attracting  talented workers to the Twin Cities, especially millennials.

“Nearly every area of the world is facing a future workplace shortage,” he said. “It’s fueling a competition for talent like we’ve never seen.”

Federal Highway Administration Secretary Anthony Foxx on Tuesday addressed conference attendees about the need for a bipartisan compromise on funding. He proposed moving away from the Highway Trust Fund to a more inclusive transportation account (named the Surface Transportation Trust Fund) that also addresses rail needs, with $19 billion in proposed dedicated funding. He also discussed the recent announcement of $3.6 billion in resiliency funds for transit systems.

During his comments, he wore a red bicycle pin that the MnDOT commissioner frequently wears at multi-modal events.

During the five-day conference, attendees toured the recently completed Green Line and attended dozens of workshops on topics ranging from street walkability to bus-rapid transit to the use of mobile phones to enhance bus service. On Sunday, the Northstar commuter train traveled for the first time to St. Paul’s Union Depot and conference attendees took it back to Minneapolis.

Materials and Construction

Partnership planned for nation’s top pavement testing facilities

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The nation’s two largest pavement testing centers are planning to partner in order to better leverage research performed at their cold and hot-weather facilities.

MnROAD, located in Albertville, Minnesota, and its southern U.S. equivalent, the National Center for Asphalt Technology in Auburn, Alabama, are full-scale test tracks that evaluate different types of pavement material under real-life conditions using semi-trailer truck and live interstate traffic.

Each facility has a history of evaluating the performance of pavement preservation treatments, including chip sealing, micro-surfacing, crack sealing and thin overlays. To address needs in both northern and southern climates, similar test sections would be developed at each facility to address national issues.

“By working together we can maximize the potential for each track,” said MnROAD Operations Engineer Ben Worel. “A closer relationship between NCAT and MnROAD is a logical progression in developing and evaluating new sustainable technologies, pavement systems and construction methods that lead to safer, quieter, lower-cost and longer-lasting roads.”

A test track at the National Center for Asphalt Technology in Alabama, MnROAD's hot-weather equivalent.
A test track at the National Center for Asphalt Technology in Alabama, MnROAD’s hot-weather equivalent.

The partnership idea was introduced to federal officials earlier this month at a national pavement performance conference in Minneapolis. Final details must still be worked out.

One of the workshops at the event discussed the proposed partnership between MnROAD and NCAT. Further talks are expected at the end of October.

“NCAT is thrilled about the opportunity for a partnership with MnROAD to address pavement research needs at a national level,” said NCAT Director Randy West. “Bringing NCAT and MnROAD results together will expand the climate base, loading distribution and other important pavement factors.”

Pavement conference

Pavement engineers from around the nation gathered Sept. 2 to 5 for the Midwestern Pavement Preservation Partnership forum and the SHRP2 R26 Workshop for the Preservation of High-Traffic-Volume Roadways, which featured tours of MnROAD, Minnesota’s cold weather pavement testing facility.

Conference participants also reviewed the latest preservation techniques being developed for high volume roads. MnROAD’s chip sealing study, which demonstrated that highways with an average daily traffic (ADT) of 58,000 can be successfully chip sealed, was especially attention-grabbing for agencies who don’t chip seal on roads with more than 2,000 ADT.

A national panel of speakers included Michael Trentacoste, director of the federal Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (pictured in top photo), who discussed Federal Highway Administration’s support of pavement preservation research and implementation.

With about 160 people in attendance over four days, MnDOT Materials Engineer Jerry Geib said the conference was successful in sharing the benefits of pavement preservation techniques with other state DOTs and federal highway officials who want adopt new practices to help alleviate budget constraints.

Environment

Drinking water solutions may help construction site runoff

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The same chemicals used to treat drinking water might now be able to treat stormwater runoff to reduce the amount of pollutants entering Minnesota lakes and rivers from road construction sites.

A research project headed by Mankato State University and funded by the Minnesota Department of Transportation has identified three chemical flocculants that are effective at removing a broad range of Minnesota soils from water.

“Water is leaving construction sites carrying too much sediment,” said Minnesota State University-Mankato Environmental Engineering Professor Steve Druschel. “Chemical treatment has been used to treat drinking water for 70 to 80 years, and our thought was to try it in construction as well.”

Adding flocculant to a sample of water from the Minnesota River causes sediment to clump and sink.
Adding flocculant to a sample of water from the Minnesota River causes sediment to clump and sink.

Recent MnDOT research has investigated monitoring the amount of sediment in stormwater runoff and using temporary ponds to let sediment settle out of stormwater before it runs off the construction site. MnDOT also wanted to examine the possibility of treating  construction runoff with flocculants, which are chemicals that cause suspended sediment to form clumps that quickly settle out of the solution.

Researchers tested 21 chemicals to see how well they could remove 57 types of soil from water. While no chemical was effective for the entire range of Minnesota’s soils, three chemicals were broadly effective on a range of samples.

The research will contribute to improved treatment of stormwater runoff from construction sites and reduce the amount of sediment pollution entering the state’s rivers and lakes.

Although flocculants have been used to treat drinking water for seven decades, there has been only limited testing of their use in treating construction runoff. Research was needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach.

Adding flocculant to stormwater runoff can be as simple as drilling a hole in a bucket of the chemical and mounting it above the water (as shown here), although thorough mixing must be ensured. MnDOT hopes to develop a system that will automatically dispense a precise dose based on the amount of sediment in the water.
Adding flocculant to stormwater runoff can be as simple as drilling a hole in a bucket of the
chemical and mounting it above the water (as shown here), although thorough mixing must be ensured. MnDOT hopes to develop a system that will automatically dispense a precise dose based on the amount of sediment in the water.

Since it is not feasible for workers to constantly monitor sediment concentration in stormwater runoff, MnDOT hopes to leverage the knowledge gained from this project to develop an automated system that measures the amount of sediment in runoff and automatically adds the appropriate dose of flocculant to treat the water.

“We’re trying to develop a portable water treatment plant that can be applied to construction projects to deliver clean runoff water after a storm,” said MnDOT Environmental Specialist Dwayne Stenlund.

Any chemicals recommended for field usage will need to be approved by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and methods for disposing of used chemicals will need to be identified as the environmental impacts of residual chemicals are unknown.

*Editor’s note: This article was adapted from the September-October 2014 issue of our Accelerator newsletter. Read it online or sign up for your free subscription.

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