The Roadway Safety Foundation honored the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) with a 2021 National Roadway Safety Award Oct. 6. The foundation lauded the TxDOT-sponsored, TTI-developed “Safer by Design” tool for use by roadway designers to assess the safety characteristics of rural highway design. Nearly 4,000 people died […]
design
TTI Becoming Known for Expertise in Retrofitting Bridges
Transportation research often focuses on finding safer and more efficient ways of doing things. A case in point is older bridges. Some features may need to be modernized to make older bridges safer and more reliable. “The nation’s infrastructure is wearing out,” says William Williams, an associate research engineer at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute […]
Helping TxDOT Build Better Bridges
BRIDGE TO THE PAST One often hears the phrase, “They just don’t build ’em like they used to.” It’s true of many things, including bridges. In Fort Worth, Texas, local historic preservation groups expressed concerns that historically significant bridge structures in the area could be endangered due to infrastructure upgrades demanded by modern traffic. In […]
Designing and Maintaining Tougher Roadways for Texas
Oil and gas production has increased dramatically in Texas in recent years, and every indication is that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future. The state now has 48 percent of all active drilling rigs in the United States. Many of these rigs are in the Eagle Ford Shale play in South Texas. Recent […]
National Crash-Testing Standards: TTI Makes a Big Impact with 18-Wheelers
At TTI’s crash facility, a fully loaded 18-wheeler traveling at 50 mph slammed into a concrete barrier placed on top of a retaining wall. The data from the unique crash test will prove vital.
Another TTI First: Broadcasting Crash Tests
On Sept. 26, for the first time in Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) history, a crash test at TTI’s Proving Grounds was broadcast live via the Internet to clients and stakeholders across the country. Providing live streaming crash tests was the brainchild of Dean Alberson, assistant agency director and manager of the TTI Crashworthy Structures […]
Testing Is Key to Roadside Safety
For the last four decades, TTI and TxDOT have ensured that wet-weather travel on the state’s 80,000 miles of roadways is safe — thanks to evaluating highly sophisticated and seldom-seen pieces of machinery.
Updated Geometric Design Research Report Released
A report that builds on research conducted by Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) researchers over a decade ago has recently been released. Transportation Research Board’s (TRB’s) National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 432: Recent Roadway Geometric Design Research for Improved Safety and Operations reviews and summarizes roadway geometric design literature completed and published from 2001 through […]
Road Design Training in Kosovo
TTI Contributes to a Unique Public-Private Partnership Good roads are vital to progress, especially in newly established and developing countries. After more than a decade of war and political unrest, Kosovo emerged as the world’s newest independent state in early 2008. But the country’s roadway infrastructure was severely deteriorated and in need of reconstruction. To […]
THEN: Application of Technology In Traffic Operations Research Goes Back to Earliest TTI Studies
(excerpt from “A Study of Freeway Traffic Operation” by Charles J. Keese, Charles Pinnell and William R. McCasland, 38th Annual Meeting, Highway Research Board, Washington, D.C., January 5-9, 1959) In 1956, the Texas Transportation Institute initiated a research project for the Texas Highway Department to correlate freeway operational characteristics with design features.…The study was made […]