Stormwater flooding has emerged as a major challenge in urban areas due to its widespread and adverse impacts on transportation and the normal functioning of the economy. It can also cause loss of life. To predict the depth and duration of flooding at a specific locale, one could use the tools developed for river flooding (due to backwater). These include accurately mapping the terrain and running hydrologic software such as SWMM or HEC-HMS followed by hydraulic engineering software such as HEC-RAS. However, due to the high number of flooding locations, such a task is cost prohibitive.

One of the most important aspects of transportation planning is understanding employment information of businesses and organizations. Information such as location of employment, size of organization or business in terms of employees, sales, can provide valuable input to understanding travel patterns and human activities. Visualizing this information along with several administrative, transportation and infrastructure facilities provides key contextual information to transportation planning agencies.

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 New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) is seeking to optimize vehicle/equipment washing practices with respect to: • Compliance with Federal and State requirements for the discharge of wastewater • Environmental and economic sustainability • Corrosion-related vehicle/equipment maintenance costs and vehicle/equipment longevity To further this goal, vehicle washing and housekeeping practices, wash water recycling systems, using rinse/wash water as a brine ingredient, and how different washing methods affect vehicle/equipment corrosion will be examined during the course of th

This project will determine the technical feasibility and potential energy savings of light emitting surface (LES) technologies for roadway lighting compared to light emitting diode (LED) and high-pressure sodium (HPS) systems. Based on the research results from this project, NYSDOT may install LES luminaires on a pilot basis to evaluate field performance over time which may then lead to a broader scale installation along the State highway system to replace existing HPS/LED luminaires, or as part of future new highway lighting installations.

Roadways, while critical infrastructure, reduce hydrological and ecological conductivity, altering or restricting the natural flow of water and movement of plants and animals. In particular, water flow is likely to be altered by the fill used to construct the road, the structure itself, sedimentation which subsequently accumulates along the road, and by changes in surface water routing governed by the sizes and locations of culverts. These impacts can cause unnatural fluctuations in water levels which may be harmful to maintaining rare fen habitats.

Swallow-worts (Vincetoxicum spp.) are aggressive invasive plants imperiling the biological diversity and impacting the economy of New York. These plants threaten rare and endangered species, alter ecosystem function, interfere with commodities, and can dominate state highway rights-of-way. Beyond local scales, mechanical and chemically based control approaches are largely ineffective, impractical, and expensive for swallow-worts.

Recently, roadside rights-of-way have been proposed as habitat for pollinating insect conservation, such as in the US federal pollinator plan focused on monarch butterflies. However, whether highway roadsides are an effective site of biological conservation of monarchs or other pollinating insects has yet to be rigorously tested. Moreover, the as of yet limited research of road impacts on invertebrates indicates that roads may be harmful.