Technical News

VTTI Celebrates 35 Years and the Future of Transportation Safety

In 2023, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) celebrated 35 years of innovative and impactful research in transportation. Research conducted at VTTI has effected significant changes in public policies for driver, passenger, and pedestrian safety. This research has also advanced the design of vehicles and infrastructure to increase roadway safety. Currently, VTTI is the second largest university-level transportation institute in the United States. As the organization solidifies its 36th year and maintains its status as a top transportation research organization, VTTI continues to support its original mission: to save lives, time, and money as well as protect the environment.

Naturalistic driving studies were born at VTTI. In the early 1990s, VTTI Director Tom Dingus acted on an idea to bridge the gap between research and real-world driving. As director for more than 25 years, Dingus placed cameras and sensors inside a volunteer’s vehicle to assess driver behavior, crashes, and near-crash incidents.

Upon the creation of naturalistic driving studies, data acquisition systems (DAS) were constructed at Virginia Tech to store information from VTTI’s investigations. The data has ultimately influenced improvements in the transportation system for all users. Collectively, the data acquisition systems hold data from nearly 7,000 vehicles—cars, tractor-trailers, bicycles, and e-scooters. For instance, in January 2021, VTTI produced statistics that showed the dangers of distracted driving for both cars and trucks as Virginia became the 22nd State to ban handheld phone usage while driving.

In the 2000’s, Dingus, alongside Andy Petersen (VTTI’s chief engineer), helped create the first large-scale, naturalistic driving study: a 100-car study funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which resulted in enhanced safety regulations and other aspects of transportation on both a national and international scale.

VTTI’s current and future plans involve conducting field research on transportation’s most advanced systems by collecting naturalistic driving data; implementing the #SharingTheRoadVTTI campaign by visiting schools to educate teen drivers on how to stay safe when driving around semi-trucks; and recruiting efforts for volunteers to participate in transportation research. Additionally, VTTI gives back to their community each year through the Commonwealth of Virginia Campaign, a program that supports more than 1,000 charities.

For more information on VTTI, visit: https://www.vtti.vt.edu/.

Recycled Roadways Discussed at TRB

Touted as the most well-known gathering of global transportation leaders, including administrators, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers, the Transportation Research Board’s 103rd Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., took place in January 2024. Overall, more than 14,000 attended and saw more than 200 exhibitions and 600 workshops, lectern, committee, panel, and poster sessions.

Technology and policy leaders gathered to discuss highway infrastructure, including the benefits of using recycled materials and sending electricity through pavement. Such electricity—created by mixing carbon with cement and water and using recycled materials—could be used to recharge electric vehicles as they travel on roadways. An added benefit includes using electricity to keep pavement free of ice or wintry mix during cold weather months.

During a panel session on reinventing road pavement, several U.S. Department of Transportation officials weighed in on the direction of roadways and future goals, including USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Our aim is to make infrastructure materials like pavement more effective, resilient, durable, and longer lasting than ever before,” he stated. Dr. Robert Hampshire, USDOT’s deputy secretary for research, also provided commentary, covering a range of topics alongside a host of other speakers.

For more information on TRB, visit https://www.trb.org/AnnualMeeting/AnnualMeeting.aspx. The 104th Annual Meeting will also be held in Washington, D.C., on January 5–9, 2025.

Public Information and Information Exchange

Beehives, Honey, and Transportation

The Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC), a 40-acre campus of widespread forests, wildflowers, and pollinator gardens, is the home to more than 100,000 honey bees. With TFHRC’s campus located near the George Washington National Parkway and Potomac River, the honey bees play a critical role in plant reproduction and the upkeep of the center’s park-like environment. Consisting of two individual colonies, with each colony residing in its own beehive, the TFHRC bees are conversation starters. “As the resident beekeeper at the research center, I have the pleasure of discussing bees with co-workers and visitors,” states Matt Gaillardetz, an FHWA systems engineer. “The research center’s bees are a frequent topic of interest to guests that visit the center, including President Obama in 2014, and most recently, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in October [2023]. Both were gifted TFHRC honey with a label I designed specifically for the research center.”

Conversations around the bees typically lead to their importance as pollinators to the environment. On a larger scale, honey bees play a critical role in pollinating more than 100 agricultural crops across the Nation. In addition to honey—a product of nectar, a sugar-rich liquid by-product of flower nectar and honey crop of a honey bee—the fascinating insects produce propolis (an antimicrobial compound used to treat various diseases and to heal wounds), royal jelly (used in high-grade cosmetics), and beeswax (used to create a variety of medical, cosmetic, and home care products).

In 2014, former President Barack Obama signed a presidential memorandum directing the creation of the Federal Pollinator Task Force that encompassed 17 Federal agencies. The task force was charged with developing Pollinator Protection Initiatives, which continue in many Government agencies, State departments of transportation, and private landowners. The memorandum followed a revelation in Spring 2009, in which a White House carpenter disclosed his hobby as a beekeeper. The White House assistant chef and food policy advisor caught wind of the news and requested the carpenter supply honey for various recipes. Soon after, the carpenter relocated a honey bee colony to the South Lawn to help with pollination of the White House kitchen garden.

Like at TFHRC, the White House bees became a conversation starter. Congress held hearings on the plight of honey bee pollinators as a result of significant colony losses across the country. Around this time, Gaillardetz and other TFHRC beekeepers initiated discussions surrounding having bees at the research center “We collectively concurred that if the White House is going to have bees, why not TFHRC! …We had the ideal campus with plenty of diverse forage, natural water sources, good wind breaks, and 300 employees to share the importance of pollinators to our ecosystems,” Gaillardetz reasoned. The idea was presented to TFHRC leadership and the rest is a 15-year history of honey bees at the center. The future of maintaining bees is promising so long as good stewardship of the bees is maintained.

MnDOT’s 2024 10-Year CHIP

In November 2023, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) published the 2024–2033 Capital Highway Investment Plan (CHIP). Updated yearly, the document details the State’s highway projects selected for construction over the next 10 years based on the Minnesota 20-Year State Highway Investment Plan (MnSHIP)—MnDOT’s vehicle for deciding and communicating capital investment priorities for Minnesota’s highway system for the next 20 years. This CHIP was developed during an update to MnSHIP, and is based on the draft MnSHIP investment direction for the years 2028-2033. Years 2024-2027 are based on the previous 2017 MnSHIP investment direction.

Like its predecessor, the latest CHIP is updated yearly to remove projects that are currently in construction, adjust the timing of existing planned projects, and add new planned projects. CHIP serves as a checks and balances method to ensure that MnDOT is meeting the investment levels and performance outcomes identified in MnSHIP.

MnDOT will complete many important pavement, bridge, safety, mobility/expansion, and flood mitigation projects. For instance, 2024 will see the completion of a Complete Streets reconstruction in Pelican Rapids and a resurfaced bridge over the Pelican River; construction of a roundabout in Glencoe at the intersection of Highway 212 and Morningside Drive; and reconstruction of Highway 93 (from Highway 169 to the flood wall in Henderson).

To view the 2024–2033 CHIP, visit: https://www.dot.state.mn.us/planning/10yearplan/.

Rebuilding Illinois

In June 2019, Illinois developed its first and largest comprehensive, multimodal, 6-year capital plan—the historic Rebuild Illinois. As the sixth largest State in the Nation and a transportation hub for the country, the plan set out to repair crumbling roadways and bridges; create nearly 540,000 positions, including 431,600 jobs in transportation; and develop much-needed infrastructure in areas across the State, including Chicago, where $561 million will fund the construction and repairs of infrastructure and capacity enhancements (e.g., auxiliary lanes) from Bessie Coleman Drive to Interstate 90, improving safety and access to O’Hare International Airport.

By the end of 2023, Rebuild Illinois completed work on 5,659 miles (9,107 kilometers (km)) of their highway system, 578 bridges, and 862 additional safety improvements. From combined Federal, State, and local funds, Rebuild Illinois also maps investments in transit, rail, ports, aeronautics, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure. As work approaches its fifth year, the Illinois Department of Transportation touts a plethora of accomplishments, including Federal approval for the department’s first Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment, which outlines strategies for programs and countermeasures to keep pedestrians and bicyclists safe. Other accomplishments include:

• Construction of a $18.3 million highway stormwater pump station at Deerpath and Skokie Highway in Lake Forest, IL.
• Federal approval for an Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan that maps the allocation of $148 million toward creating a network of public electric vehicle charging stations across the State.
• Opening of the Jane Bryne Interchange, a critical transportation hub for the region and the entire Midwest. As one of the State’s most significant projects in size, the $806.4 million project utilized 52 million pounds of steel and 2,100 miles (3,380 km) of rebar in improving safety, reducing congestion, and increasing travel options for the nearly 400,000 drivers of vehicles and commercial trucks a day that the interchange serves.

To review Rebuild Illinois, visit: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6189293/Rebuild-Illinois-Capital-Plan.pdf; for additional information and views of IDOT’s accomplishments, visit IDOT’s dashboard at https://idot.illinois.gov/transportation-system/transportation-management/transportation-improvement-programs/rebuild-illinois-capital-program-highway-accomplishments/dashboard.html.

2024 LTIP Student Data Analysis Contest Open

The Federal Highway Administration holds an annual contest for undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in degree-granting programs in the United States that support pavement or bridge curricula and research, including engineering, planning, statistics, materials, computer science, and economics.

The Long-Term Infrastructure Performance (LTIP) Student Data Analysis Contest is designed to encourage students to use pavement or bridge performance data to study the various factors affecting pavement and bridge lifecycles and to develop a technical paper to document their research. Students are encouraged to partner with State departments of transportation, transportation-related consultants, and school faculty members.

The lead authors placing first- and second-place in the contest will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting held in Washington, DC, in January 2025, where they will present their winning papers. Papers are due Aug. 1, 2024.

To view the contest guidelines and the winners of the past contests, visit https://highways.dot.gov/research/research-programs/infrastructure/long-term-infrastructure-performance. For more information on the contest, contact LTIPStudentContest@dot.gov.

BTS Publishes 2023 TSAR

Recognizing the importance of objective statistics for transportation decisionmaking, the U.S. Congress requires the Director of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation to provide the Transportation Statistics Annual Report (TSAR) yearly. In December 2023, the 29th TSAR was released (https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/72943).

The 2023 report is organized into seven chapters, in addition to an Introduction:

• Chapter 1—State of the System (discusses recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic)
• Chapter 2—Passenger Travel and Equity (discusses the COVID impact on passenger travel)
• Chapter 3—Freight and Supply Chain (discusses disruptions to the supply chains from drought)
• Chapter 4—Transportation Economics (discusses inflation and transportation)
• Chapter 5—Transportation Safety (discusses new standards in transportation)
• Chapter 6—Energy and Sustainability (discusses the transition to new energy sources for transportation)

Unlike past reports, the 2023 TSAR covers emerging issues; each chapter identifies notable emerging issues in transportation related to the subject area of the chapter. For example, Chapter 4 highlights how transportation costs can impact inflation from the perspective of the consumer, transportation providers, and non-transportation services.

For more information on BTS, visit: https://www.bts.gov/about-BTS.

Nation’s First NEVI-Funded EV Charging Stations Open

In December 2023, Ohio and New York opened the Nation’s first electric vehicle (EV) fast charging stations. Funded through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, the two openings are part of a larger plan to build reliable EV charging stations every 50 miles or less from one another on our highways nationwide. EVs are essential components in the Nation’s transition to clean transportation systems as they produce zero tailpipe emissions and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

In January 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration announced nearly $150 million in grants from the Investing in America agenda. The grants will be provided to recipients in 20 States to repair or replace approximately 4,500 existing EV charging ports to further fill gaps in EV charging, boost the reliability of the Nation’s charging network, and make charging an EV just as convenient as filling up a gas tank. Also, in January 2024, the Federal Highway Administration announced $623 million in grant awards for the first round of the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Program, funding 47 EV charging and alternative-fueling infrastructure projects in 22 States as well as Puerto Rico. Last year, FHWA approved all 52 EV charging plans from States, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC. Nearly $15 million in FY24 NEVI Formula funding will be used to implement the charging plans. NEVI is a $5 billion program administered by FHWA and supported by the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation to help States build out EV charging. The Biden-Harris Administration is on schedule for accomplishing its goal of building a national network of 500,000 public EV charging ports by 2030.

For more information, visit https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-administration-celebrates-opening-nations-first-nevi-funded-ev-charging and https://highways.dot.gov/newsroom/biden-harris-administration-announces-grants-upgrade-almost-4500-public-electric-vehicle.

Pennsylvania Awarded $132 Million for Bridge Repairs

Announced in January 2024 by Robert B. Casey Jr., the U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) will receive $132 million in Federal funding to fix three of the State’s more than 25,000 bridges: McKees Rocks Bridge ($25 million), West End Bridge ($47 million), and the Fort Duquesne Bridge ($60 million). Funding will enable PennDOT to replace or repair the bridges’ structural components, including decks, overlays, abutments, and piers. The McKees Rocks Bridge and the Fort Duquesne Bridge projects will receive direct funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which has already delivered more than $1 billion to the repairing of Pennsylvania bridges.

Thousands of Pittsburgh residents and visitors rely on the bridges each day. The 92-year-old West End Bridge, officially known as the Allegheny County Bridge No. 3 Ohio River, is a steel, multilane bridge suspended by steel cables over the Ohio River. The bridge carries two lanes in each direction plus two pedestrian walkways. As the once longest-tied-arch bridge in the world when construction was finalized in 1932, it connects the West End area to the North Side. The historical McKees Rocks Bridge, which opened in 1931, is a steel trussed through arch bridge with three lanes. Pedestrian walkways are located on both sides of the trusses, and the bridge serves as a vital artery for industrial freight and commuters. The Fort Duquesne Bridge is a steel bowstring arch bridge that opened for traffic in October 1969. Taking nearly six years to construct, the bridge replaced the Manchester Bridge and spans the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh. It connects downtown Pittsburgh to areas to its north, east, and west and ferries commerce, travelers, and sports fans to the baseball stadiums on game days.

For more information on Pennsylvania’s State-owned bridges, visit: https://www.penndot.pa.gov/ProjectAndPrograms/Bridges/Pages/default.aspx.

Interesting Facts

For more interesting facts, visit the Federal Highway Administration on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/FederalHighwayAdmin,
https://twitter.com/USDOTFHWA,
https://www.linkedin.com/company/federal-highway-administration/posts/?feedView=all, and
https://www.instagram.com/federalhighwayadmin/.