Research News

Review and Summary of Pre-Wet Methods and Procedures

Pre-wetting is an important part of winter road maintenance operations. This project compiled a summary of pre-wetting practices, including equipment, materials, methods, and application rates, and identified the history of successes and failures that have contributed to current practices.

Snow and Ice Treatment Products Evaluation

The Maintenance Division of the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) uses different materials to reduce the negative impacts of snow and ice on state roadways. In addition to plowing, the use of chemicals and abrasives for highway winter maintenance operations is an essential strategy for ensuring a reasonably high level of service. This project addressed information gaps regarding the performance and impacts of these materials.

Design of Living Barriers to Reduce the Impacts of Snowdrifts on Illinois Freeways

Blowing snow accounts for a large part of the Illinois Department of Transportation’s (IDOT) total winter maintenance expenditures. This project developed recommendations for the design and placement of living snow fences to minimize snowdrift on Illinois highways. More effective and efficient snow and ice control operations could produce significant economic, environmental, and social benefits for the state.

Flume-Based Design Recommendations for Coarse Bands and Boulder Bars to Improve the Retention of Channel Shape in Stream Simulation Culverts

Fish populations have decreased in the Puget Sound area in part because fish barriers such as culverts have limited the ability of fish to swim upstream to reach their food supplies and spawning grounds. This project looked at better ways to maintain a common replacement for traditional culverts, stream simulation culverts.

Use of a Microwave Method to Prototype Electrically Conductive Concrete

The heavy use of various kinds of deicers has proved to have undesirable effects on the natural and built environments. As an alternative, electrically conductive concrete (ECC) pavements, which contain different types of conductive components, can melt surface ice and snow when an electric current is passed through the slab. This study explored additives that can increase the electrical conductivity of pavement materials as a replacement for traditional deicing approaches and also investigated a method for evaluating conductive mixes.

Hierarchical Priority-Based Control of Signalized Intersections in Semi-Connected Corridors

Connected vehicles, the internet of things, and smart infrastructure technologies support the exchange of real-time, highly granular traffic information among transportation network users, system operators, and the supporting infrastructure. This project worked to harness this emergent connectivity and to improve traffic mobility by optimizing the timing of signalized intersections.

Longitudinal Analyses of Washington State Student Travel Surveys

This project analyzed changes in the rates of active school transport captured in the 2016 and 2019 Washington State Student Travel Surveys and also evaluated the likely impacts of Safe Routes to School projects on rates of active school transport. It was part of a long-term collaboration between the University of Washington and the Washington State Department of Transportation to model the environmental determinants of active school transport (AST) in order to help support and promote AST and to ensure the safety of students traveling to school.

Seattle Obesity Study

This project assessed whether environmental, social, and economic variables could be related to diet, physical activity, and health behaviors. By looking at the built environment and its relationship to food shopping, diet quality, obesity, and related physical activity for residents, researchers sought to provide information to help public decision-makers create healthier environments.

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Guidelines for Obtaining AADT Estimates from Non-traditional Sources

Passively collected traffic data from sources such as smart phones, vehicle transponders, and vehicle tracking devices have great potential to determine traffic volume information such as annual average daily traffic (AADT). This project developed a guide that contains a comprehensive technical checklist and data quality acceptance criteria that highway agencies can use to purchase or test traffic volume estimates such as AADT from private sector vendors that base those estimates on non-traditional data sources.

Supporting a Living Flora of the Pacific Northwest, 2nd Edition: Expanding Online Resources and Updating Identification Keys with New Information

Flora of the Pacific Northwest, 2nd Edition, published in October 2018 by the University of Washington Herbarium, Burke Museum, provides users with dichotomous keys to 5,085 wild-growing Pacific Northwest native and introduced plant species. This project expanded the existing Flora 2nd edition website to include automatically updating distribution maps for all taxa in the book and produced revised identifications keys for families, genera, and species that have undergone taxonomic changes.

Washington State Transportation Center