Currently, asphalt mixtures are design using volumetric concepts to determine optimum asphalt content levels with no means of verifying mixture performance prior to field production and placement. A new design methodology called Balanced Mixture Design (BMD) promotes the use of evaluating and design asphalt mixture using rutting and fatigue cracking methods and criteria to achieve an optimum asphalt content that will result in an asphalt mixture performing well in rutting and fatigue cracking scenarios – thereby “balancing” the asphalt mixture performance.

The goal of this project was to take a critical look at how new technologies used by transit riders can transform transportation, particularly to assess what riders do after they obtain travel information. The smartphone application, Transit App, which provides real-time transit and shared mobility information, was used in this research. The Transit App dataset has the potential to demonstrate how real-time travel information can be used to improve transportation evaluation and planning.

One of the primary goals of USDOT is to make the U.S. transportation system the safest In the world. In order to fulfill this goal, it is important to understand how to improve highway safety for all users – including those users that may have different sensory inputs than the general population. In fact, some highway users belong to groups with special needs that have not been studied previously. The purpose of this research was to initiate collection of knowledge regarding deaf and hard of hearing drivers.

According to the EPA, 28% of all 2011 GHGs for the US are from transportation related sources.1 These are the second largest sources of GHGs in the US after electricity. The US is also the second highest CO2 emitter after China.2 These emissions are primarily from burning fossil fuels for transportation usage. While vehicles have become more environmentally friendly with lower emissions, there has still been a steady rise in GHGs from these modes of transportation. The EPA estimates that there has been an increase of 18 percent GHG, which is most likely due to more vehicles on the road.

Recent growth in ecommerce has quickly impacted the distribution of parcel deliveries in urban areas, with residential deliveries accounting for a rapidly growing share of freight movement. Through field observation and development of a simulation model, this study aims to investigate the characteristics of parcel delivery activity in a heavily residential area of Manhattan, New York City, and to investigate the expected traffic impacts of double parking parcel delivery vehicles.

The high uncertainty associated with emergency situations such as blasts, fires, and structural failures makes it extremely difficult to develop evacuation plans that can accommodate in advance every possible systematic failure that may occur in the predetermined tenable evacuation paths. The unpredictability of human decision making under stress adds to the complexity of the problem. It is important to build evacuation paths in real-time.

The rapid emergence of direct-to-home delivery models has quickly changed the spatial and temporal distribution of both individual travelers’ trips and of urban goods movements. A growing number of household and consumer products now being delivered directly to homes rather than being picked up in retail stores. For commercial carriers, this new last-mile is often expensive, as small shipments must be moved to geographically dispersed residences, often within increasingly constrained time windows.

In the present study, roadway luminaires using light emitting surface (LES) technology were compared in terms of photometric performance to roadway luminaires using high pressure sodium (HPS) lamps and light emitting diode (LED) sources. Measurements of light output and electrical power use revealed that the LES luminaires performed similar to the high end of the range of LED luminaires used for comparison. Spectral metrics were similar to those of LED luminaires with the same correlated color temperature (CCT).

The final product of this research is an enhanced Mobile Application platform that receives travel time information, parking information and transit/shuttle schedule information in real time for the Routes 1 (from I-295 to Garden State Parkway) and 18 (from New Jersey Turnpike to Rutgers University – Piscataway, NJ) corridors, specific to certain destinations such as colleges and/or large employment destinations. The application enhancements were designed so that other corridors and/or destinations could be added to the system by the owner of the application.

Extreme weather conditions play a vital factor in the deterioration of the national transportation infrastructure including pavements. Freezing and thawing of the pavement sections is one of the most critical processes resulting from these extreme weather conditions. In addition to negatively impacting the structural integrity of the pavement layers, frozen pavement surfaces increase highway risks and decrease mobility of people, goods, and first responders.