PacTrans News
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September 28, 2022
UAF Steel Bridge Team Places 2nd at Nationals
Over the years, PacTrans has been a strong supporter of our consortium partner universities’ student competition teams. This past year, a team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks took second place in the 2022 Student Steel Bridge Competition finals, the best showing for UAF in more than a quarter century.
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September 28, 2022
OSU’s David Hurwitz Discusses Recent Trends in Increased Traffic Crashes on MPR News
Recently, PacTrans Associate Director and OSU Professor of Civil and Construction Engineering, David Hurwitz, took part in a Minnesota Public Radio news segment titled, How can we make Minnesota’s roads safer? Professor Hurwitz was joined by Brian Sorenson, the state traffic engineer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and Colonel Matt Langer, the chief of the Minnesota State Patrol, to discuss the recent rise in traffic crashes.
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September 28, 2022
UAF’s Billy Connor Travels to Point Lay to Explore Effects of Thawing Permafrost
PacTrans has funded a handful of different projects from the University of Alaska Fairbanks that look at various aspects of permafrost over the past several years. Most recently PacTrans’ Associate Director from UAF set out to Synthesize a best practice manual on Designing and Construction of Roadways and Airports over Permafrost. As average global temperatures continue to rise, permafrost is thawing at a fast rate, wreaking havoc on the infrastructure that is built up in and around it.
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September 22, 2022
OSU Hosts Third Annual National Summer Transportation Institute
This summer, PacTrans consortium partner, Oregon State University, hosted their third annual National Summer Transportation Institute (NSTI). In all, twenty-one, high-school age students had the opportunity to spend a week on the OSU campus, learning about a variety of transportation related disciplines, free of charge.
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September 22, 2022
A PacTrans Student Research from WSU Publishes new Work on Highway Animal Crossings
A PacTrans student researcher from Washington State University’s School of Economics, Wisnu Sugiarto, recently had some research published in the Transportation Research Record on highway animal crossings. This work intended to quantify whether the addition of these structures had an added financial benefit, beyond the benefit to animal populations and migratory health. The paper found that these crossings appear to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions in Washington state, saving roughly $235,000 to $443,000 every year per structure. Sugiarto said, “Wildlife crossing structures not only benefit the ecosystem but may also improve road safety.”
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