All posts by trac

This project is allowing the UW and WSDOT to cooperatively provide professional experience, training, and research opportunities to students from the UW\’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at WSDOT’s Traffic Management Center (TMC) and other WSDOT facilities. Under the supervision of WSDOT engineers, students are operating WSDOT’s FLOW system and helping to operate high profile systems such as the SR 167 HOT lanes, I-90 variable speed limits, I-5 active traffic management, centralized traffic signal control, variable messages signs, and ramp meters. With this project WSDOT gains technical assistance at reasonable cost, and students acquire valuable experience in a real-world setting.

Principal Investigator: G. Scott Rutherford, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Chris Thomas
WSDOT Project Manager: Doug Brodin
Scheduled completion: June 2017

To better inform its decision making about where to deploy and how to operate its traffic management systems, WSDOT needs information on the performance of its growing set of traffic management strategies.  It also needs better decision support tools that describe predicted and actual performance benefits.  These tools must provide integrated, real-time information that feeds each step in WSDOT’s business process, from initial needs identification through performance monitoring and reporting.

As part of ongoing work, TRAC has developed, improved, and operated a data archive and decision support system called TRACFLOW, and it produces a variety of performance measures that both WSDOT and TRAC staff commonly apply in a variety of analyses. However, that system does not answer basic question for all steps in WSDOT’s business process, nor are data currently well connected to its existing business process. The UW and WSDOT have also been developing a replacement traffic data archive and analytics platform called DRIVENet that is intended to add data elements and new capabilities and to dramatically speed up the computation of roadway performance statistics. However, that data system is not yet ready for consistent use. In addition, WSDOT is currently revising its business processes to support decision making that is both more data driven and multi-modal.  This creates the need for more, better, and different data, metrics, and analytical procedures.

This project will help the WSDOT in publishing its Gray Notebook and provide guidance in the continued development of DRIVENet and the transition from TRACFLOW, as well provide technical assistance on a range of other requested topics and assist in developing other performance measures that facilitate Department decision making.

Principal Investigators:
Mark E. Hallenbeck, Washington State Transportation Center, UW
John M. Ishimaru, Washington State Transportation Center, UW

Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Monica Harwood
WSDOT Project Manager: Doug Brodin
Scheduled completion: June 2017

This project is allowing the UW and WSDOT to cooperatively provide professional experience, training, and research opportunities to students from the UW\’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at WSDOT’s Toll Division. Under the supervision of WSDOT engineers, students are assisting in collecting, storing, and processing data related to the operation of WSDOT’s toll facilities. They are also preparing analyses to assist WSDOT engineers and drafting reports and presentations related to facility operation. With this project WSDOT gains technical assistance at reasonable cost, and students acquire valuable experience in a real-world setting.

Principal Investigator: G. Scott Rutherford, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Tyler Patterson
WSDOT Project Manager: Doug Brodin
Scheduled completion: June 2017

The share of trips taken by non-motorized travel modes has increased in recent years, in part in response to shifts in demographics and to population growth in urbanized areas. Increases in non-motorized travel reflect U.S. and state goals to reduce vehicle miles traveled and associated greenhouse gas emissions and to ease highway congestion. They also address national and local health directives to redress physical inactivity and obesity epidemics through active transport. However, increases in non-motorized travel have also raised important safety issues, as pedestrians and bicyclists constitute the most vulnerable road users. Indeed the number of pedestrians killed has increased since 2008 from 12 percent to 14 percent of all vehicle-related collisions. Therefore, tools are needed to identify locations with a high risk of collisions between motor vehicles and pedestrians or bicyclists so that gains in mobility, air quality, and health are not accompanied by higher rates of injuries and fatalities. This research will define hotspots for collisions along main street highways; identify environmental and economic predictors of locations at risk for collision; assess the effects of past WSDOT projects on collision locations; and produce an instrument to simulate the possible effects of future changes along main street highways on collision risk.

Principal Investigator: Anne V. Moudon, Urban Design and Planning, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Diane Wiatr
WSDOT Project Manager: Jon Peterson
Scheduled completion: November 2016

A public interest group, Long Live the Kings, is developing a research study, for which they are seeking legislative and grant funding, to assess the impacts of the Hood Canal Bridge on water quality and out-migrating steelhead.  WSDOT has been invited to comment on the study plan that is under development, but it does not have the necessary expertise to review the plan and provide substantive comments that will help ensure that the study reaches a science-based outcome to inform future decisions. Therefore, WSDOT is convening an Expert Review Panel comprising UW faculty well known in their professional fields to review the study plans and advise WSDOT accordingly.

Principal Investigators:
Mark E. Hallenbeck, Washington State Transportation Center, UW
Charles A. Simenstad, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, UW
Thomas R. Quinn, Astronomy, UW
Parker MacCready, School of Oceanography, UW

Sponsor: WSDOT

WSDOT Technical Monitor: Megan White

WSDOT Project Manager: Rhonda Brooks

End Date: July 2016

Fleet vehicles and equipment are important for delivering state highway agency programs, projects, and services, and they compose a major part of agency capital investments. Maintenance forces must be equipped with fleets of adequate sizes, but these assets also require significant resources for recurring maintenance to ensure their operational performance, reliability, and service level. Therefore, there is a trade-off between providing sufficiently sized equipment fleets and minimizing resource investments. In this context, proper management of these equipment fleet assets can significantly reduce costs and provide potential benefits in environmental stewardship. A major portion of the fleet management activities is devoted to measuring, monitoring, and reporting asset utilization levels while meeting highway agency needs. This research is developing utilization measurement models to facilitate the fleet management processes, with the objective of minimizing total costs while satisfying the agency’s equipment needs. The outcome will provide highway agencies with a timely and cost-effective decision-making procedure to determine the optimal fleet size and composition to maintain the desired level of service for state level operations.

Principal Investigators:
Leila Hajibabai, Civil and Environmental Engineering, WSU
Ali Hajbabaie, Civil and Environmental Engineering, WSU
Xianming Shi, Civil and Environmental Engineering, WSU

Sponsor: NCHRP
NCHRP Project Manager: A.N. Hanna
Scheduled completion: January 2020

Transit agencies are increasingly using electronic fare media to speed passenger boarding, reduce the cost of fare collection, provide various other benefits to their riders, and support more complex fare transactions. In this project, researchers are demonstrating how the use of the data collected with these electronic fare media—in particular, Puget Sound ORCA transaction data—can significantly benefit the transportation planning processes of both metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies. This project will focus on the development, testing, and implementation of a prototype methodology and tool set for converting ORCA transaction data into information that describes how a variety of key travel characteristics and other factors directly affect the use of transit in order to inform the regional transportation planning process. This project will then utilize that methodology to perform a number of key analyses to demonstrate the types of analytical outcomes and planning benefits that WSDOT and other agencies can gain from use of these data.  The resulting tools will enable WSDOT to directly measure the relative effectiveness of the state’s Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) program in encouraging transit use in a variety of urban forms. This in turn will allow WSDOT to more effectively target limited CTR funds within different parts of the urban area to achieve the maximum mode shift.

Principal Investigator: Mark E. Hallenbeck, Washington State Transportation Center, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Janice Helman
WSDOT Project Manager: Jon Peterson
Scheduled completion: December 2016

WSDOT currently uses freeway reliability measures as input to decision making for urban freeways and to analyses for major investment studies.  It wants to expand its ability to perform those analyses to other, less urban locations in the state.  This SHRP2 project is designed to build the system needed to incorporate the reliability of roadways into WSDOT’s planning, project identification, and prioritization processes statewide. This project will also be directly coordinated with the Department’s efforts to more fully integrate traffic systems management and operations (TSMO) strategies into its planning, project selection, and programming functions.  In addition, WSDOT is developing and deploying truck freight performance monitoring and reporting systems.  The software developed for this project will produce both freight performance measures and measures that report on overall roadway performance.  The resulting software and data system will provide WSDOT with new tools that allow it and the Puget Sound Regional Council to examine roadway performance throughout the state’s National Highway System.

Principal Investigators:
Mark E. Hallenbeck, Washington State Transportation Center, UW
Yinhai Wang, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW

Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Monica Harwood
WSDOT Project Manager: Doug Brodin
Scheduled completion: June 2017

WSDOT has long been a national leader in the deployment of transportation system management and operations (TSM&O) strategies.  However, currently, TSM&O tends to be adopted on an ad hoc basis within the Department.  No defined or consistent process systematically considers TSM&O strategies within the WSDOT’s programming and prioritization process, nor are TSM&O strategies routinely considered in corridor and regional plans. To address this issue, researchers are working to develop a draft business outline that describes how TSM&O should be included in WSDOT’s planning and programming process at the headquarters and regional levels, providing a framework for the development of corridor-specific operations plans. They are also developing guidance on each of the TSM&O strategies of interest to WSDOT. And they are creating a website that WSDOT staff can use to access that guidance and further information about each strategy. These products will allow WSDOT to more effectively integrate TSM&O into its business processes and fully consider and implement TSM&O benefits where appropriate. They will also help WSDOT staff select the appropriate TSM&O strategies, estimate the value of those efforts, and associate the strategies with performance metrics.

Principal Investigator: Mark E. Hallenbeck, Washington State Transportation Center, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Monica Harwood
WSDOT Project Manager: Doug Brodin
Scheduled completion: December 2017

Current models for forecasting freight movement in the United States have been developed primarily at the statewide level, along with a few regional freight forecasting models. This project is developing a national freight forecasting model for the FHWA. The model, the first of its kind at the national level, will support national freight policy making and planning. As a subcontractor to RSG, UW researchers are helping to identify the most useful and promising structures for a national model and are leading the evaluation of model components and their integration. They are also developing an approach to test the potential specifications for each model component and are contributing to the development of national sources of data for use in the model. The project will demonstrate the model in a software application.

Principal Investigators:
Anne V. Goodchild, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW
Edward D. McCormack, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW

Sponsors:
FHWA
Resource Systems Group

FHWA Technical Monitor: V. Mysore
Scheduled completion: July 2019