Year - 2012
This report analyzes the use of social media tools by the New York region’s major transportation providers. It is focused on the effectiveness of their Twitter feeds, which were chosen for their immediacy and simplicity in messaging, and provided a common denominator for comparison between the various transportation providers considered, both public and private. Based on this analysis, recommendations are outlined for improving social media outreach.
Traditional paper and phone travel surveys are expensive, time consuming, and have problems of missing trips, illogical trip sequences, and imprecise travel time. GPS-based travel surveys can avoid many of these problems and are becoming increasingly popular in major cities worldwide. However, methodologies have not been developed to catch up with the enormous amount of data generated by the GPS.
Inappropriate traffic speeds are a major cause of traffic fatalities. Since driving is a task with a substantial contribution from vision, the use of lighting and visual information such as signage could assist in providing appropriate cues to encourage appropriate driving speeds. At locations such as sharp roadway curves, an overall reduction in driving speed might be desirable to prevent rollover crashes.
The economic vitality of the “Golden Horseshoe”, a densely populated and industrialized region which encompasses Southern Ontario, Canada and parts of New York State including the Buffalo-Niagara Region, is heavily dependent upon the ability to move goods freely and efficiently across the Canadian-US border. This highlights the critical importance of the Niagara Frontier International border crossing, one of North America’s busiest portals for travel and trade. This study had two primary objectives.
Safety and traffic flow issues are related to drivers selecting inappropriate speeds when driving. For example, at some curved interchange exit ramps, drivers may go too fast, increasing the risk of rollover crashes, especially for heavy trucks. At other locations, perceived 'bottlenecks' in roadway geometry may cause some drivers to slow down more than is appropriate, resulting in variations among vehicle speeds, and increasing the likelihood of traffic congestion, delays and rear-end crashes.
Safety and traffic flow issues are related to drivers selecting inappropriate speeds when driving. For example, at some curved interchange exit ramps, drivers may go too fast, increasing the risk of rollover crashes, especially for heavy trucks. At other locations, perceived 'bottlenecks' in roadway geometry may cause some drivers to slow down more than is appropriate, resulting in variations among vehicle speeds, and increasing the likelihood of traffic congestion, delays and rear-end crashes.
This report examines the policies and strategies governing the design and, especially, operations of bus lanes in major congested urban centers. It focuses on bus lanes that operate in mixed traffic conditions; the study does not examine practices concerning bus priority lanes on urban highways or freeways. Four key questions addressed in the paper are:
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, as of December 2008, of the 600,905 bridges 72,868 (12.1%) were categorized as structurally deficient (SD) and 89,024 (14.8%) were categorized as functionally obsolete (FO). Despite healthy economy during the period of 1995-2005, the numbers of SD and FO bridges were on the rise. It is very clear that the current bridge evaluation and maintenance policies are not working efficiently. The high numbers of SD and FO bridges should not be allowed to continue to rise.
Various plant produced Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) mixtures were evaluated and compared to identical plant produced Hot Mix Asphalt to assess their early life rutting potential. Along with laboratory permanent deformation testing, fatigue and moisture damage potential testing was also included. The test results indicated that the performance of the WMA was very similar to that of the companion HMA with differences in performance a function of mix type, RAP content, and production temperature.
Aggregates can be produced by crushing hydraulic cement concrete and are known as recycled concrete aggregates (RCA). This report provides results from a New Jersey Department of Transportation study to identify barriers to the use of RCA in new Portland cement concrete and to provide a recommendation as to whether this material should be permitted on Department of Transportation projects.
