Tag Archives: research

What happens when you incentivize transit use during construction projects

August 1, 2013 Nick Leave a comment

In 2010, MnDOT began a three-year long, $67 million repair and upgrade project on I-35 in Duluth. Dubbed the “Mega Project,” it created a serious disruption for Duluth-area commuters. To help mitigate the impact, the Duluth Transit Authority stepped up its bus services, offering free rides in newly established bus-only express lanes as well as access to new park-and-ride lots and various other enticements. Perhaps not surprisingly, many area residents took advantage of their new transit options to avoid construction-related travel delays. But what’s really interesting is what happened after the construction ended.

As described in a recently published MnDOT/University of Minnesota study, commuters who started taking the bus to avoid traffic caused by the construction ended up continuing to ride the bus even after the construction ended. Researchers surveyed riders during and after the 2010 and 2011 construction seasons and found that, even after bus fares went back to normal levels, only 15 percent of the new bus users switched back to driving. Researchers concluded that once riders developed a habit of using transit, the habit tended to stick.

The report author sums up the phenomenon quite nicely in her executive summary:

Human beings are creatures of habit. Most of us travel the same route every day to the same destination. Sometimes, however, something comes along to push us to examine our habits and possibly change them. A major highway construction project can be such an event. (…) This provides a very good opportunity to examine our travel patterns and possibly change our habitual modes.

Of course, this change didn’t just happen on its own. As the technical summary notes, the DTA marketed its services aggressively during this period. (The above photo is just one example.) The study also noted that the elimination of expanded bus services in the winter had a negative impact on ridership.

Materials and Construction

Geotextile research at MnROAD

July 19, 2013 Matt 1 Comment

Geotextiles are synthetic polymer materials used to improve the performance of roadways. As discussed in this 2011 technical summary, geotextiles facilitate filtration and water drainage, improve the integrity and functioning of base materials, and provide a stable construction platform over soft or wet soils. These improvements can benefit both the cost-efficiency and longevity of pavements.

Geosynthetic materials have been used throughout Minnesota, and can be found in both reconstructed and new roadway projects. The use of geotextiles as a separator layer under concrete overlays, however, has had limited documentation in Minnesota and other cold weather climates. MnROAD‘s recent dedication of several test cells to this purpose will determine the performance of this application of geotextiles, with the goal of improving its applications on other Minnesota roadways.

The new test sections, designated as Cells 140 and 240, consist of a very thin, 3-inch concrete overlay over an existing 7-inch concrete pavement constructed 20 years ago. Some unique features of the design include the use of a fiber-reinforced concrete mix, two different thicknesses of the nonwoven geotextile, and the use of a special type of glue, rather than nails, to fasten it to the existing concrete before paving.

The fabric and fiber used in the concrete mix were supplied through a public-private partnership with Propex Geotextile Systems. The results of this study, along with other unbonded overlays constructed at MnROAD and around the country, will be incorporated into a new national pooled fund project — TPF 5-(269) — led by MnDOT. This project will develop an improved mechanistic design procedure for unbonded overlays.

A second application being demonstrated at MnROAD is the use of a geosynthetic drainage system under several dowel bar baskets in new concrete pavement test section. Minnesota has historically used a dense-graded base layer under concrete pavements to provide a stable foundation and construction platform. However, this material drains very slowly, and traps moisture within the joints, leading eventually to significant distress (See Effect of Drainage on the Performance of Concrete Pavement Joints in Minnesota.) This application will compare the use of the geotextile drainage material placed under both sealed and unsealed joints, as well as a control joint without the drainage material.

Traffic and Safety

Best practices for trail crossings – webinar and draft report

July 15, 2013 Nick Leave a comment

Last week, MnDOT Research Services hosted a workshop on a forthcoming report, “Decision Tree for Identifying Alternative Trail Crossing Treatments.” It was broadcast as a webinar, the recording of which is now available online via Adobe Connect:

http://mndot.adobeconnect.com/p8hlfripuwe/

The final report is coming soon, but in the meantime you can see the draft version on our website (link), along with case studies and other related documents.

research

Bridging the gap between research and implementation

July 2, 2013 Nick 1 Comment

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.

Environment, Materials and Construction

Permeable pavements could protect the environment, save taxpayer dollars

June 21, 2013 Nick 1 Comment

KSTP has a nice story today on the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s ongoing research into permeable pavements at the MnROAD research facility. (The video isn’t embeddable on WordPress, but you can find a direct link here.)

Permeable pavements (also known as “porous” or “pervious” pavements) are designed to allow water to pass through roadways and infiltrate directly into the underlying aggregate and soil. Their primary effect is to reduce stormwater runoff, which carries harmful materials from the road’s surface out into waterways. Of course, reducing runoff also mitigates the need for the kinds of costly drainage structures that are normally required to manage stormwater. Permeable pavements also reduce noise and mitigate the potential for hydroplaning, among other documented benefits.

These types of pavements are already used in some areas in Minnesota — mainly in parking lots and city streets — and MnDOT has been studying their potential use for full-depth roadway pavements. As the video indicates, so far the results have been encouraging. (You can read more about MnDOT’s ongoing research on the MnROAD website.)

As a side note, the amount of water these pavements can absorb is quite impressive. Last month, we posted a new Local Road Research Board video on stormwater management. In one scene, a public works crew dumps what appears to be several hundred gallons of water onto a permeable pavement and watch as it disappears almost instantaneously. (Watch the clip here.)

Here are the results of some recent permeable pavement studies here in Minnesota:

Porous Asphalt Pavement Performance in Cold Regions – 2012
Pervious Concrete Test Cells on MnROAD Low Volume Road – 2011
Drainable Pavements at MnROAD Pervious Concrete and Porous Concrete Overlay Cells 39, 85, and 89 (PDF) – 2010

Freight and Railroads, Maintenance Operations, Materials and Construction, Traffic and Safety

Portable weigh-in-motion system demonstration

May 17, 2013 Nick Leave a comment

Weigh-in-motion (WIM) systems consist of sensors placed in road pavements to measure the weight of vehicles passing over them, along with other data such as speed, axle load and spacing, and vehicle type. This data is used to enforce weight limits on trucks and is also useful in a wide range of other applications, such as pavement design and traffic analysis.

However, constructing and maintaining permanent roadside WIM stations is expensive, so these systems are installed primarily on roadways with heavy traffic, such as interstate and trunk highways, and rarely used for rural local roads. Meanwhile, heavy truck volumes on local roads are increasing, significantly shortening their lives. A less costly, portable WIM system is needed for such roads so that collected data can be used to better design these roads to accommodate heavy truck traffic.

One solution for bringing WIM technology to local roads is to implement a portable, reusable system similar to pneumatic tube counters used to conduct traffic counts. With funding and technical assistance from MnDOT and the Local Road Research Board, Professor Taek Kwon of the University of Minnesota—Duluth has developed a prototype system that has already proven to be nearly as accurate as the more expensive, permanent systems. MnDOT Research Services staff drove up to MnROAD this week to observe a live demonstration of the technology, and made this short video.

The research being conducted here is part of an implementation project based on Kwon’s original study, the results of which can be found in this research report and its accompanying two-page technical summary from MnDOT Research Services.

Maintenance Operations, Materials and Construction

Research partnerships create better pavements

May 3, 2013 Nick 1 Comment

As is painfully evident this time of year, Minnesota’s weather is highly destructive to our asphalt roadways. One of the biggest challenges for transportation practitioners in cold-climate states like ours is low-temperature cracking in asphalt pavements. The distress caused by our extreme weather variations and constant freeze-thaw cycles wreaks havoc on our asphalt streets and highways, causing decreased ride quality, increased maintenance costs and shorter pavement lifespans.

On April 17, the Center for Transportation Studies presented its 2013 Research Partnership Award to the team members of a multi-state, Minnesota-led study designed to combat the problem. The project, “Investigation of Low Temperature Cracking in Asphalt Pavements, Phase II,” was a national pooled-fund study involving six state DOTs, four universities, the Minnesota Local Road Research Board and the Federal Highway Administration. It resulted in a new set of tools — test methods, material specifications and predictive models — that will be used to build longer-lasting pavements.

The project is a prime example of the value and benefits of cooperative research. Each organization brought its own unique strengths and expertise to bear on the problem. The University of Minnesota, led by Professor Mihai Marasteanu, brought its strength in lab testing of binders and mixtures, for example; other universities leveraged their respective expertise in data analysis, statistics and modeling capabilities. MnDOT, as the lead state agency, controlled the finances and kept the research on track, guiding the process through technical advisory panels. MnDOT’s materials laboratory and its unique MnROAD pavement research facility also played a key role in the study.

The above video provides an excellent overview of the project and includes commentary from key MnDOT and University of Minnesota team members. MnDOT is already moving to implement the results. It plans to use the new test procedure on several road construction projects this year. Iowa and Connecticut are among the other states reportedly planning implementation projects.

Crossroads