All posts by trac

WSDOT/UW Intern Program, Toll Division

For over a decade the University of Washington (UW) and WSDOT have worked cooperatively to provide professional experience, training, and research opportunities to UW Civil and Environmental Transportation Program students at WSDOT’s Toll Division. Under the supervision of WSDOT engineers, these students assist in collecting, storing, and processing data related to the operation of WSDOT’s toll facilities, as well as in speed studies, data analysis, report writing, field work, and other tasks as assigned. This arrangement helps WSDOT further staff the Toll Division office in Seattle at a reasonable cost while also helping UW students gain valuable experience and prepare for a future in transportation engineering.

Principal Investigator: Yinhai Wang, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Tyler Patterson
WSDOT Project Manager: Doug Brodin
Scheduled completion: June 2025

Improving Mobility for Disadvantaged Communities through Innovative Transit Approaches: a Comparative Cost Evaluation

Transportation planners and policymakers need an effective and flexible method for estimating and comparing the costs of increasing transit access to more people, especially those living in disadvantaged communities located in urban peripheries or rural areas. To increase mobility, public transportation agencies typically add a transit line, normally with a fixed route and fixed schedule. However, this approach is not economically efficient for communities outside of high-density urban areas. An alternative is to partner with private providers of mobility services, especially ride-hailing companies, a practice known as transit incorporating mobility on demand (TIMOD). This research will compare the costs of three alternative approaches to improving mobility and accessibility for residents of several representative disadvantaged communities located outside of a major metropolitan area or in a rural area. Those alternatives will be driving a car, taking a bus on a fixed route connecting directly to a destination, and using TIMOD service provided through partnership between local transit agencies and ride-hailing companies. To conduct this comparison, the research team will develop a standardized method for the state, transit agencies, cities, counties, and non-profits to use in comparing the costs and benefits of traditional and innovative public transportation solutions. This will allow them to more effectively make decisions about allocating limited funding for different transit operations challenges anywhere in the state and beyond.

Project Investigator: Qing Shen, Urban Design and Planning, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Justin Nawrocki
WSDOT Project Manager: Jon Peterson
Scheduled completion: June 2025

Maintenance Practices for Complete Streets

In Washington, the state’s Complete Streets directive requires that certain projects be built, operated, and maintained to enable safe and convenient access to destinations for all people, including pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders. In response, the state is filling in the transportation network with construction of shared-use paths, sidewalks, and protected bicycle lanes. Lateral separation from motor vehicle traffic may be necessary and supplemented with vegetation, raised curb buffers, traffic barriers, or other features. These types of facilities have maintenance needs that may differ from those of motor vehicle lanes, such as specific needs for debris removal, snow clearing, or maintenance of vegetation. To help WSDOT in most effectively designing and building Complete Street facilities, this project is determining the most critical active transportation facility issues that WSDOT maintenance staff will face. Such issues may include how maintenance considerations affect the selection of design and materials, which active transportation facility design best practices can simplify maintenance, and the equipment and labor needs for active transportation facility maintenance. To find answers the researchers will interview WSDOT maintenance staff as well as national complete street experts who have experience with different kinds of settings, environments, and active transportation. The result will be recommendations on best practices for the maintenance of complete streets.

Principal Investigator: Don MacKenzie, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Ursula Sandstrom
WSDOT Project Manager: Jon Peterson
Scheduled completion: September 2024

RAP Reset – Responsibly Optimizing Recycled Materials Use in Asphalt Concrete and Pavement Performance Life

Concerns with the durability and performance of asphalt concrete that contains recycled materials have recently become the focal point of the asphalt industry. The goal of this research was to improve the performance of asphalt concrete pavements that contain recycled materials in Washington state.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory from Construction of WSDOT Roadways

Recent emphasis on actions to reduce large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has pushed most state departments of transportation to develop strategies to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of the materials that they utilize. To assist WSDOT, researchers at the UW Carbon Leadership Forum assessed and analyzed the GHG emissions of WSDOT’s current material practices and explored opportunities to decrease them.

ORCA Data for Planning

A large portion of all transit rides in the greater Puget Sound region are paid for with the One Regional Card for All (ORCA) electric transit fare card. TRAC researchers have developed a business intelligence system that takes advantage of data from the ORCA system to allow transit agencies to analyze farecard transactions and better understand transit travel.

Design and Testing of Modular Expansion Joint Noise Mitigation Strategies

While expansion joints are a necessary component of bridges, they also contribute to noise pollution. This study investigated the design and feasibility of strategies to mitigate noise caused by modular expansion joints on Washington state’s Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (SR 520 bridge) over Lake Washington.

Developing a Multi-Criteria Prioritization Tool to Identify Promising Locations for Transit-Oriented Development on WSDOT-Owned Park and Ride Sites

By planning and implementing transit-oriented development (TOD) projects, public agencies can promote environmentally responsible and socially equitable transportation services while also making important contributions to alleviating the affordable housing shortage. This project developed a planning support tool that WSDOT can use to cost-effectively identify the most promising park and ride sites on which to focus its TOD efforts.

Approaches to Target Setting for PM3 Measures

With transportation performance management (TPM), transportation agencies use roadway performance information such as reliability and delay to help make investment and policy decisions to achieve transportation system performance goals. The purpose of this project was to provide examples of different options available to state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations for setting the roadway performance targets required for performance management.

Facilitating Analysts’ Use of Traffic Data from the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) Program

This study was designed to improve the experience of users of Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) data by enhancing the traffic data included in the LTPP database and making it easier for researchers to find and select the traffic data they need for their specific analyses.