Briaud

Next year, TTI Research Engineer Jean-Louis Briaud will learn if he will become president of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE). Briaud, a Texas A&M University Zachry Department of Civil Engineering professor and holder of the Spencer J. Buchanan Chair in Civil Engineering, has become renowned worldwide for his work in soil mechanics and foundation engineering.

ISSMGE is an 84-member society representing
18,000 individual members. It works to promote cooperation among engineers and scientists for advancement in the field of geotechnics as well as its engineering and environmental applications. The elections will take place Oct. 4, 2009, in Alexandria, Egypt.

“It is exciting to have a chance to serve all my colleagues on the international scene, to get an appreciation of the geotechnical practice and culture in different countries and to further develop communication between countries,” Briaud says. “If there are any Aggies out there with good ties to the geotechnical leaders of the member countries, I sure could use some help.”

Professor Briaud developed a website (https://ceprofs.tamu.edu/briaud/) that details his experience and presents his vision for ISSMGE.

TTI center to study increased waterway travel

TTI’s Center for Ports and Waterways (CPW) has been selected as the contractor for a $100,000 National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) contract that will determine the feasibility of increasing freight traffic on our nation’s waterways.

“The North American marine highway system is underutilized at a time when the nation’s roads and freight systems are at near-maximum levels,” says CPW Director Jim Kruse. “Increasing waterway freight transport is essential, considering that freight traffic will need to double in the next 25 years to accommodate our growing population. By shifting our emphasis to short sea shipping, it will help in numerous areas, from congestion to pollution.”

The research project will evaluate the obstacles for increasing short sea shipping. In part, Kruse and his staff will produce a white paper that proposes strategies to overcome those current barriers.

CPW released a report this year for the National Waterways Foundation and the U.S. Maritime Administration highlighting the benefits of moving cargo by water. For example, barges move a ton of cargo 576 miles for each gallon of fuel expended. That’s a much better average than railroads (413 miles) and trucks (155 miles).

Shunk remembered for professionalism, caring

The former manager of the Urban Analysis Program at the Texas Transportation Institute, Gordon A. Shunk, died Nov. 5, 2008, after a lengthy struggle with frontal temporal lobe dementia.

Shunk’s career in transportation forecasting and modeling spanned
35 years after he received his Ph.D. from Purdue University. His work included duties with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in Berkeley, California, the North Central Texas Council of Governments (where he was director of transportation) and 13 years with TTI before retiring in 2003.

“Gordon was known for his professionalism and his ability to communicate on a very human level despite his precise, technical work,” says TTI’s Montie Wade, a colleague of Shunk. “Even during the time of his illness, he expressed concern about his co-workers and their well-being.”

An honorarium on Shunk’s behalf was held Jan. 12 at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., highlighting his engineering work.

Visiting scholar brings China to TTI

Mobility researcher Jianping Sun is one of the first visiting scholars at TTI.

From her home in Beijing, China, Jianping Sun travels the 8.5 kilometers to her office every day to the Beijing Transportation Research Center (BTRC) where she’s worked as a mobility expert for four years. She’s one of about 50 employees at the center, which was established in 2001. Her 5-mile commute takes nearly an hour each way. “The mobility in College Station is much better,” she laughs.

In her first trip to the United States, Sun arrived at TTI on Sept. 6, as a visiting scholar working in the Mobility Analysis Program, alongside Shawn Turner and Teresa Qu. According to Turner, Sun is one of the first visiting scholars at TTI, “but because of our international efforts, I think we need to do this more often. These one-on-one personal interactions do a lot to foster our relationships with experts in other countries.”

Agreeing, Sun says, “At BTRC, we all know of TTI. Actually being here is impressive because you have so many employees and so many fields of study.”

TTI first worked with BTRC in 2006 on a congestion evaluation project, but the collaboration on several topics has continued since then. Sun hopes to work with the Institute again. “In the future, I think BTRC will be better known because of our work with TTI.” She finished her work in College Station and traveled home to Beijing at the end of November.

TDS Summit showcases teen driver safety

U.S. Representative Ciro Rodriguez speaks at a press conference to announce a decline in teens deaths related to driving.

In the first Teens in the Driver Seat (TDS) Summit, the peer-to-peer education and outreach program included 48 different schools from 35 cities. With 200 attendees, the Oct. 24-25 summit in San Antonio highlighted students and their accomplishments in presentations, breakout sessions and video interviews.

“I think the summit hit a home run,” TDS Director Russell Henk said afterward. “Many of the teenagers said they were grateful that the event and the TDS program gave them a voice on this issue…something they say they are not used to, but are excited about and very much welcome.”

TDS is a TTI-developed program that pinpoints the causes of most teen car crashes. The in-school program has grown across Texas and is now beginning in Georgia and Connecticut, with two other states considering the program for their schools.

Prior to the event, U.S. Representative Ciro Rodriguez held a press conference to announce a 27 percent decline in fatal accidents involving teen drivers in Texas from 2002 to 2006, a decline that is more than twice the pace of the national average. “Effective laws and parental involvement are essential,” said Rodriguez. “But laws and parents will never be enough. We need teenagers to drive the message—just as they’re doing through Teens in the Driver Seat.”

Rodriguez and Maria Teresa Cerqueira of the World Health Organization, both strong supporters of TDS, were among the speakers at the summit, which was held at The University of Texas at San Antonio.

The summit’s breakout sessions included both adult and teenager “tracks,” all specifically geared to them. HEB grocery stores and Fiesta Texas sponsored door prizes, which included iPods and tickets to the Fiesta Texas theme park.

The second annual TDS Summit will be held next year in El Paso.

Ike changes lives of TTI Houston, Galveston employees

When Hurricane Ike was approaching the Texas coast Sept. 11, staff members in the TTI Houston and Galveston Offices were preparing to secure their facilities and head home to protect life and property. But for some of the 25 Institute employees at 701 N. Post Oak, it meant that work was just beginning.

In advance of the storm, Darrell Borchardt and Jonathan Tydlacka led the deployment of traffic count equipment at almost 50 locations across the Houston region to provide traffic data along hurricane evacuation routes. To support Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) staff at Houston TranStar, Borchardt, Tony Voigt and Mike Vickich monitored the regional traffic sensor network as evacuations commenced.

After the storm, Vickich and Kathy Tran managed critical updates of public information to the TranStar website. At the request of TxDOT and the Harris County Office of Emergency Management, Tydlacka and the Houston Office field crew staff—including Paul Adamson and Michael Davis—transported and set up TTI’s data collection trailer at Houston’s Reliant Park so that emergency management personnel could remotely monitor the flow of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supply trucks in and out of the city.

“While many of us in the Houston Office were busy boarding up our homes and preparing our families for the worst, we were also doing the best we could to continue to help our sponsors collect and disseminate traffic and emergency management information to decision makers and the public,” says Voigt, program manager for the Houston Research and Implementation Office. “Ike impacted all of us in the Houston Office in various ways. Most of us sustained damage to our homes and were without electricity for a week or so.”

The basement and elevators of TTI’s Houston Office building received water damage from the storm but were repaired so that employees could return to work by Sept. 22. The TTI office on the Texas A&M campus on Pelican Island reopened Thanksgiving. Two employees live in Galveston and have offices on campus. Ryan Taylor temporarily relocated to the Arlington Office. Linda Cherrington worked out of her home.

“I was one of the very fortunate,” Cherrington says. “My home was not damaged, electricity came back quickly, and I have Internet access. So, I’m working as most residents here are cleaning up and trying to get their lives back to normal.”

Ike also had an impact on numerous employees living in the Navasota, Somerville and Caldwell areas due to electrical outages.

For more about TTI’s involvement in preparing for Hurricane Ike, see “Houston versus the hurricane” in this issue.

The results of a recent two-year research project yielded a set of guidelines for traffic control near schools.

SCHOOL SPEED LIMIT 20. That’s one sign we’re all likely to pay attention to. But those who don’t may potentially put children at risk.

Some may think that making school speed zones longer is the answer. Or maybe it’s flashing lights or a lower speed limit. To find the answers, the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) conducted a two-year research project for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

“We took a closer look at how and where TxDOT installs school speed zones,” says Kay Fitzpatrick, TTI senior research engineer. “We looked at what the different TxDOT districts were doing, as well as what other states were doing.”

Researchers also gathered speed data at 22 sites in Texas. They used the data to create relationships among the posted speed of the school zone, the length of the school zone, the amount of time the school zone was active and the actual speed of vehicles in the school zone.

The research team evaluated the various techniques and developed guidelines for traffic control near schools. “The guidelines give us more detail on what devices and techniques work best for school zones,” says Omar Madrid, the TxDOT project director. “It will help us make school zones uniform and provide guidance for more effective traffic control designs.”

For example, transportation agencies may feel local pressure to install more speed zones around schools, or to extend the speed zones over a longer area or time period. These approaches may not be the most effective techniques, however.

“Now we have research that says speeds increase as you drive through the school zone,” says Fitzpatrick. “If you have a 1,000-foot school zone, that doesn’t mean you will have the same speed throughout the entire 1,000 feet.”

Research showed that average speeds increase one mile per hour for every
500 feet driven. A longer school zone would produce more variability in actual driving speeds. School zones may not even be necessary if there are already signalized intersections or stop signs in place to stop traffic so school children can cross the street. The research also showed that the “buffer zone” is unique to Texas. The buffer zone begins with a school warning sign and ends with the school speed limit sign, transitioning into the actual school speed zone. The guidelines give more definition for the use of these buffer zones.

With solid research behind the guidelines, transportation agencies now have better arguments for why we should manage the length and time that the school speed zone is active. Better school speed zones should equal more people obeying the warning signs, meaning better safety for adults and children in the area.

A guidebook for concerned parents and administrators are currently under development.

You’re driving down your neighborhood street, maybe past an elementary school where parents are picking up their kids. You’re conscientious and slow down, even beyond the school zone speed limit. And you notice the dangers — children crossing the street between parked cars, several drivers competing for one parking space closer to the front of the school and too few crossing guards to manage the chaos. Shouldn’t someone do something about this situation?

Now, maybe you can.

“Safe Communities” is a program that partners grassroots interest with local, state and federal support to help improve transportation-related safety in local areas. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has made a commitment to work with cities and towns through its Safe Communities Service Center, which provides information to Safe Community coalitions around the country. Armed with tools, strategies and the desire to make a difference, small, medium and large U.S. cities are effecting positive change at the local level. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is implementing NHTSA’s vision in the Lone Star State, with the assistance of the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) in coordinating existing and new traffic safety coalitions.

“Texas Safe Communities takes the program pioneered by NHTSA and puts it into action in towns as diverse as College Station and Dallas,” explains TTI Assistant Research Specialist Irene Rodriguez, who serves as coordinator for the Safe Communities effort in Texas. “Essentially, we serve as an information clearinghouse for advocates who want to make transportation safer in their own little corner of the world.”

Rodriguez sees her main role as being an advocate for the advocates — getting the word out to city planners, engineers and concerned citizens who simply need specific information on how to make things happen locally. The new Texas Safe Communities website will be launched in the spring and will serve as a portal for positive change.

The site will consist primarily of resources that local safety proponents can use to plan, develop and implement improvements. Success stories from other communities, news related to Safe Communities issues and instructions for applying directly to TxDOT for funding will also be available.

Set in the context of NHTSA’s larger mission, it’s easy to see why the efforts of individual champions at the local level are so important. It’s one thing to create safety standards and distribute them for implementation and enforcement. It’s quite another to make effective change for the better.

“The key to success for this program is the ability of coalitions, partners and agencies to share best practices. Also, active participation and commitment by top community officials and a plan that outlines highway and traffic safety priorities and activities for the community are essential,” explains Chris Willrich, Safe Communities program manager in the Traffic Safety Section at TxDOT.

TTI researchers evaluated the effectiveness of LED backplates around traffic signals.

Visitors to downtown Houston, Texas, have probably seen Houston METRO’s “Red Line.” It’s a 7.5-mile stretch of light rail transit (LRT) that links the Central Business District with Midtown, the Museum District, the Texas Medical Center and Reliant Park. What visitors might not have noticed is how some motorists seem to ignore vehicle-train safety.

A number of crashes have occurred on the Red Line involving passenger and light-rail vehicles, with one crash resulting in a fatality. Since driver distraction and inattention seem to be contributing factors to the crashes, Houston METRO and the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) are evaluating technologies that could make those crossings safer.

“This is a three-year evaluation designed to test technologies that supplement standard traffic control devices at the LRT crossing. The goal is to reduce the kinds of driver behavior that may lead to crashes,” says Tony Voigt, program manager for TTI’s Houston Office for Research and Implementation. “If we can help drivers pay better attention to what the signals, signs and pavement markings are already telling them, we can help keep drivers, pedestrians and transit riders safer.”

Houston METRO asked TTI to assist them in evaluating technologies that help prevent motorists from creeping into the LRT grade crossing, running red lights or making a right turn on red onto Main Street, a prohibited maneuver. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requires properly assessing the effectiveness of these technologies as part of its experimental approval process.

“We looked at red-light running because it can correlate to the potential for crashes at those intersections,” explains Associate Transportation Researcher Jonathan Tydlacka, TTI’s key technical expert on the project. “If we can identify technologies to help reduce red-light running, in theory the number of crashes would likely come down as well.”

Specifically regarding the encroachment issue, TTI evaluated the effectiveness of an illuminated stop bar, which is a line of red light-emitting diode (LED) lights placed in the pavement in front of the traditional white painted stop bar. The red pavement lights turn on when the traffic signal indication is solid red but are off at all other times. As an additional countermeasure, researchers evaluated the use of a red LED outline on the backplate around the traffic signal head to see whether or not drivers paid more attention to the signal with the outlined backplate in place. The red outline on the backplate is illuminated only when the traffic signal indication is red.

The research team found that the illuminated stop bars reduced right turn on red violations. The LED backplates tended to reduce red-light running a noticeable amount and reduced some of the right-turn-on-red violations as well. Researchers will conduct another year of evaluation at the original test locations before completing a final report, which will include analysis of crash data at the intersections for two years before and three years after the test devices were installed. The safety performance during night versus day will also be studied in further analysis. The five years of data provides an adequate context for evaluating the potential efficacy of the devices.

“Currently we have TTI evaluating the real-world effectiveness of these technologies, and based on their findings, it has been very effective to date,” says Walter Langford, Houston METRO’s senior project manager of traffic signal programs. “Once all the data is analyzed, we will use the information to proceed to the next step in the process of incorporating these items into the Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices as a standardized safety device.”

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and population trends are the primary activity measures for estimating mobile source emissions. As seen here, historical growth is expected to continue for the foreseeable future in Texas.

As the old saying goes, you shouldn’t compare apples to oranges. But sometimes evaluating them together can yield interesting information about fruit in general — as long as there’s a valid way to accurately assess the two relative to one another.

Each of Texas’ 254 counties is different from the others, from highways to air quality. To protect the public health, the Federal Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set limits on the amount of certain air pollutants. Air pollution can cause various health threats, from simple throat inflammation to respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Areas that exceed EPA standards are said to be in “nonattainment.” These areas risk losing federal funding if they fail to demonstrate compliance within a given period of time.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is responsible for ensuring that Texas meets EPA standards, but until now, the agency had no way of reliably tracking air quality trends across the state. To support TCEQ, the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) has created a first-of-its-kind methodology that allows the direct comparison of Brewster County, in arid West Texas, to Orange County on the mouth of the Sabine River.

“With the tool developed by TTI researchers, TCEQ can identify mobile source air quality trends that are county specific but methodologically consistent,” explains Dennis Perkinson, program manager for TTI’s Transportation Modeling Program. “In short, our model allows the agency to project the potential pollution in a specific county and then compare that county with others statewide.”

TTI created the methodology to cover all counties, whether they’re currently in nonattainment or not. The model covers 50 years, from 1990 to 2040, to capture data from both the early emissions control programs and the expected effects of new vehicle standards, as well as growth in the number of vehicles on the road. Researchers rely on actual or estimated vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as the primary activity measure for making predictions of on-road mobile source emissions. For future analysis years, VMT becomes a function of historical VMT and the population projections supplied by the Texas State Data Center.

“These analyses of long-term trends support a proactive approach to air quality management that can help preserve the environment and protect public health, from Houston to Wink, Texas,” says Perkinson. “Small towns and big cities — everyone wants clean air.”

The real value of the methodology is that it provides consistent estimates, which means better analysis is possible on a larger scale. And better analysis can lead to smarter policies for the Lone Star State.

“It is our hope that this analysis will make it easier for TCEQ to examine the big picture of air quality throughout Texas,” says Perkinson.

Take a walk down most busy urban streets and you’ll see any number of traffic devices to help keep pedestrians and bicyclists safe — pavement markings, crossing signals and warning signs. What you don’t see is what goes on behind the scenes.

Several traffic safety devices need sensors that can detect pedestrians and bicyclists reliably and accurately. The effectiveness of these safety measures depends on how well the sensors actually work. Recently, researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) developed a real-world test bed to evaluate pedestrian and bicyclist sensors, with funding from the Southwest University Transportation Center.

Intersection-Based Sensors

At some intersections, pedestrians can push a button, which tells the signal controller to provide a walk signal. With accurate sensors, pedestrians wouldn’t even have to do that.

Detecting a pedestrian, the signal controller could give the walk signal and even extend the pedestrian walk time, which would be especially useful for people who walk slower than average, such as the physically disabled and the elderly. The signal controller could also provide an advance warning to pedestrians or motorists of potential conflicts.

TTI Research Engineer Dan Middleton worked on the project with Research Engineer Shawn Turner. “A more important application of the sensors is at places where there are no signals, such as at a crosswalk or unsignalized intersection,” says Middleton. “On a busy street, a pedestrian will wait for a gap. But the longer the pedestrian waits, the more likely he or she is to take more risks and start the crossing in a short gap of traffic.”

At these areas, sensors can trigger flashing beacons to warn motorists that pedestrians are in the crosswalk or intersection. Motorists would have time to slow down and stop for pedestrians, especially in high-speed areas.

Trail Counters

Transportation agencies need data on the number of pedestrians and bicyclists using crosswalks, sidewalks, paths and trails. Traffic counts can tell them the potential crash exposure for a given trail and if the trail needs further safety enhancements.

“If agencies make improvements, they want to be able to show that fewer people are getting injured,” says Turner. “However, once the improvement is in place, more people may be using the trail because they feel safer. Just looking at the number of crashes before and after an improvement can be misleading. We need to look at the crash rate, which accounts for more (or fewer) people crossing the street after the improvement.”

With the current emphasis on promoting alternatives to vehicle travel, especially modes that have less of an impact on the environment, agencies are taking a closer look at including pedestrians and bicyclists in their transportation plans.

“We need to study walking and bicycling in the same way we study vehicles,” says David Ragland, the director of the Traffic Safety Center at the University of California-Berkeley, who is also doing research into the pedestrian and bicycle modes of transportation. “We have a set of requirements in place to measure vehicle volumes, and we need the same for pedestrian and bicycle counts. Those measurements are used for resource allocation, as well as risk assessment and planning.”

Steven Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board delivers remarks during the opening session.

TTI Director Dennis Christiansen speaks to the assembled crowd during the opening session of the 82nd Annual Transportation Short Course.