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Current Issue | Previous Issues | Subscribe January 2008 - Vol. 6 No. 1

University of Minnesota, Mn/DOT presenters at TRB Annual Meeting

Transportation system planning, emergency evacuation, traffic simulation, and pavement design will be among the topics covered by presenters from the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) at the Transportation Research Board's 87th annual meeting, January 13-17, 2008.

University of Minnesota faculty, researchers, and graduate students will be represented at a variety of panels and poster sessions throughout the five-day event in Washington, D.C., that brings together researchers, students, and professionals from around the world.

University of Minnesota faculty, staff, and students will include:

• CTS Staff:
  Gina Baas, Robert Johns, Laurie G. McGinnis
• Civil Engineering:
  Adam Danczyk, Gary A. Davis, Andrew Drescher, Paul Hambleton, Xiaozheng He, Kimberly Hill, Lev Khazanovich, David Levinson, Panos G. Michalopoulos, Andrew Odlyzko, Henry X. Liu, Wenteng Ma, Mihai O. Marasteanu, Carly Turgeon, James Saif Jabari, Nebiyou Tilahun, Derek Tompkins, Mugurel Turos, Feng Xie, Bereket Yohannes, Shanjiang Zhu
• Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs:
  John S. Adams, Xinyu (Jason) Cao, Frank Douma, Steve Frooman, Jessica Horning, Lee W. Munnich, Carissa Schively, Elizabeth Wilson
• Northland Advanced Transportation Systems Research Laboratories (NATSRL):
  Bibhu Aryal, Taek M. Kwon
• Minnesota Traffic Observatory:
  John Hourdos, Chen-Fu Liao
• Geography:
  Francis Harvey
• Center for Sustainable Building Research:
  John Carmody
• Metropolitan Design Center:
  Lance M. Neckar
• Applied Economics:
  C. F. Runge

Policy & Planning

Second Access to Destinations conference features national and international perspectives

Like its predecessor, the second Access to Destinations Conference held in August 2007 featured research findings from around the world. Researchers presented a number of new approaches to studying issues at the intersection of transportation and land use, together with examples of how the results of accessibility research are being put into practice.

This CTS-sponsored conference came nearly three years after the inaugural gathering, explained Robert Johns, CTS director, in his opening remarks. That event helped launch the Access to Destinations Study, an interdisciplinary research and outreach effort led by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek to measure accessibility for the Twin Cities region. Levinson is an associate professor and Braun/CTS Chair of Transportation Engineering at the University of Minnesota; Krizek is an associate professor at the University of Colorado (previously with the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs).

CTS has prepared a proceedings of the 2007 conference (1 MB PDF), available on the Access to Destinations Study Web site. The proceedings includes detailed coverage of all general session presentations and panel discussions, as well as overviews of the numerous research papers and presentations delivered during the technical sessions. The proceedings of the 2004 conference (3.4 MB PDF) is also available.

The public portion of this year's conference began with international perspectives on accessibility, moderated by John Adams, associate dean of the Humphrey Institute. Adams was a key researcher in the Transportation and Regional Growth Study, an earlier CTS-led effort.

The first presenter was Kay Axhausen, professor with the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Throughout recorded history, he said, societies have sought to improve accessibility in order to capture the lower costs and greater prosperity it generally brings. The story of the last 50 years in Switzerland is no different, as it rebalanced its investments toward suburbs and Alpine areas. This policy has started to run its course, however, as marginal gains are decreasing as the country reaches accessibility "saturation," he said. "Shrinking Switzerland further is becoming an increasingly costly way of supporting economic growth."

As space "shrinks," Axhausen continued, the reach of individuals expands. His recent research looked at the distances between the homes of "social network members." The distribution shows a large portion of people close by, he said, but with a "very long tail" of others. Leisur—including travel for maintaining social networks" is the fastest growing market in transportation and now makes up 40 percent of total travel in the United States and other industrialized nations.

The second speaker was Hong K. Lo, professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Transit attracts more than 90 percent of the 11 million daily trips in Hong Kong. All transit services are operated by private companies according to commercial principles and without direct government subsidies. "This is a very important fact and key result," he said. Ninety percent of daily trips in high—density Hong Kong are made by public transit.

What government does, however, is regulate a hierarchy of public transit services, control land use, and discourage auto ownership. Growth is directed to high- density neighborhoods, typically around stations along major rail or subway lines. New private cars are subject to a first registration tax from 35 to 100 percent of the vehicle cost. And the fuel tax for unleaded gas in 2002 was almost eight times higher than in the United States.

The third speaker, Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago, took a historical tack on sprawl and accessibility.

Sprawl is as old as cities themselves, he began, and for good reason. From the earliest times until very recently, living at the center of most cities meant congestion, pollution, and highly unsanitary living conditions for most residents. "As every new group could afford to move out, [it] did so," Bruegmann said, whether in ancient Rome or 18th century Paris.

The advent of the railroad—and public transportation—made it possible to vastly increase the outward migration. To Bruegmann, changing the built environment for the transportation system is the "tail wagging the dog"—land patterns remain for 100 years but transportation technology is likely to change in a decade. "We can't see that these urban landscapes are the middle-class settlement of the world because we put this denigrating name [sprawl] to it," he concluded.

The three researchers then participated in a panel discussion of the implications for research and practice, moderated by Johns. They were joined by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek, co-organizers of the conference, and two national experts: Sam Seskin, transportation planning director with consultant CH2M Hill, and Anne Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership.

The conference continued with a day and a half of technical presentations for invited participants. Selected conference papers will be published in the Journal for Transport and Land Use, a new journal under development by Levinson and Krizek with assistance from CTS, launching in 2008. Coverage of these research presentations is available in the conference proceedings.

– Pamela Snopl

Transportation Infrastructure

Low temperature pavement cracking research benefits from new testing methods

Northern winters are hard on asphalt pavements—with cold temperatures come high thermal stresses, leading to cracking and widespread deterioration of road quality. As a result, Minnesota and other northern states spend millions of dollars every year repairing and replacing pavements. University of Minnesota civil engineering professor Mihai Marasteanu is leading a research program, in cooperation with three other Midwest universities, aimed at developing material test methods and pavement analyses aimed at developing a test that will better predict low temperature cracking performance and will potentially save local, state, and federal transportation agencies money in the process. The research is supported by the Minnesota Department of Transportation and other state transportation pooled funds

Recently, Marasteanu and the research team have focused their efforts on developing new experimental techniques that will support the development of better- performing pavements for cold-climate applications. Currently, there is no national consensus on the best methods to use in developing the next generation test methods to better select materials; the Minnesota researchers' work aims to fill that need and facilitate the development of new standards.

The researchers investigated two sets of samples. The first set of samples were cored and sawn from existing pavements with well documented performance, and the second was made up of specimens prepared in the laboratory using a test matrix of different binder grades, binder contents, air void levels, and aggregate type. These test samples were studied using both traditional and new testing protocols.

A key innovative feature of this research was the use of modern computational fracture mechanics models. These models were used to simulate cracking behavior and compare predicted fracture performance with observed behavior for the asphalt pavement samples.

A final research report on the study, including a complete description of the research methodology, findings, and conclusions, has been published by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT).

Investigation of Low Temperature Cracking in Asphalt Pavements (Mn/DOT 2007-43) is available from the CTS Web site.

Intelligent Transportation Systems

Transportation seminar series mixes policy and technology studies

The Fall 2007 Advanced Transportation Technologies Seminar Series featured University of Minnesota faculty and visiting researchers presenting their recent ITS-related work on a variety of transportation topics.

Held each year during the fall semester, the seminar series features researchers from the University of Minnesota and other transportation research centers, as well as research leaders from the transportation industry. The seminars are free and open to the public, and qualify for professional development credit. The seminar series is also a required part of the Graduate Certificate Program in Transportation Studies. Video webcasts of the seminars are also available on the ITS Institute Web site.

Assistant professor Elizabeth Wilson of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs presented her recent research into the transportation implications of school choice in urban and suburban communities. She examined the different transportation patterns that arise in school districts with different school choice and transportation policies, giving particular attention to the role of parental attitudes and the potential impacts of policy decisions—such as pollution from buses.

Wilson also explored the possibilities for technological intervention to help solve school transportation problems. Barriers to the employment of new planning technologies, she said, are systemic and institutional. Planning for the transportation demand caused by school choice, she found, is an issue embroiled in political norms and social justice issues.

Louis Tijerina, a human factors researcher and driver distraction expert with the Ford Motor Company, presented an overview of recent research on driver distraction caused by the use of electronic devices, and on the more general issue of interface design for driving safety at a November 13 seminar. At Ford, Tijerina participated in the development of Sync, a new in-vehicle interface system that is designed to allow drivers to control both vehicle systems and consumer electronic devices using a primarily voice-based interface. (Note: due to technical difficulties, audio and video for most of Tijerina's seminar is not available.)

The burgeoning popularity of cellular phones, PDAs, and other mobile electronic devices has sparked heated debate about the potential for increased crash risk due to driver distraction. Media interest in the dangers of cell phone use while driving was especially attracted by the results of an epidemiological study of cell phones and driver distraction, which appeared to show that talking on a cell phone created as much crash risk as driving with an elevated blood-alcohol level. More recent research, however, has called some of these results into question.

Determining what aspect of cell phone use—dialing, conversation, or other factors—produce this elevated risk is an important step toward designing better interfaces, said Tijerina. According to the data Tijerina reviewed, the act of looking away from the road to dial a number appeared to be much more risky than actually holding a typical conversation; looking away from the road is also a risky behavior when it comes to adjusting the stereo system or other in-vehicle controls. This is one of the motivations for the voice interface feature of Ford's Sync system, he said.

Srinivas Peeta, director of the NEXTRANS Center at Purdue University, presented a December 4 seminar on methods for modeling the complex interdependencies among civil infrastructure systems. The rapid growth of large urban centers, coupled with the expansion of networks providing transportation, energy, and communications, presents enormous new challenges to infrastructure managers, Peeta said. Recently, natural and man-made disasters have led to cascading system failures in many areas, highlighting the need to understand how multiple interdependent systems interact with each other.

Peeta's proposed a "System of Systems" approach to modeling these interactions, in which the various infrastructure systems are modeled as components of a multilayer infrastructure network, connected through physical, functional, budgetary, informational, and market interdependency factors. This modeling approach, Peeta asserted, will give researchers and infrastructure managers a clearer perspective on complex problems, enabling them to better manage both normal operations and crisis situations.

The Advanced Transportation Technologies Seminar Series will resume in Fall 2008. More information is available on the ITS Institute's Web site.

Transit, Bicycling, and Walking

TCRP research publications available online

The federal Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP), administered by the Transportation Research Board, provides practical transit research to address technical and operational issues. TCRP emphasizes putting research results into the hands of organizations and individuals that can use them to solve problems.

Recent TCRP publications include:

• Improving ADA Complementary Paratransit Demand Estimation (TCRP Report 119)
• Paratransit Manager's Skills, Qualifications, and Needs (TCRP Synthesis 71)

Journal of Public Transportation

The Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2007, published by the National Center for Transit Research at the University of South Florida, includes these articles, available at www.nctr.usf.edu/jpt/journalfulltext.htm:

• A Methodology for the Estimation of Value-of-Time Using State-of-the-Art Econometric Models
• Service Quality Attributes Affecting Customer Satisfaction for Bus Transit
• Electronic Service Quality: Public Transport Information on the Internet
• A New Performance Index for Evaluating Transit Quality of Service
• Segmenting Preferences and Habits of Transit Users and Non-Users
• Benchmarking Transit Research in the United States
• Trends in Transit Bus Accidents and Promising Collision Countermeasures

Safety

Cultural factors seen as crucial to improving rural safety

In rural areas of the United States, the goal of reducing traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries presents a different set of challenges than in urban areas, according to researchers with the University of Minnesota's HumanFIRST Program. Researchers Mick Rakauskas and Nic Ward recently completed a study of rural and urban "safety cultures," an effort that they hope will support the development of more effective safety interventions to reduce the large number of crashes in rural areas. The research was supported by the Minnesota Local Road Research Board.

The researchers surveyed drivers in three urban and three rural Minnesota counties about their driving habits and their opinions of safety practices such as seat belt use and speed limit compliance. The results demonstrated statistically significant differences between the two groups, which could help inform the development of new safety programs. A final report on the research is available from the Center for Transportation Studies.

Although rural areas are culturally diverse, the report notes that rural residents typically exhibit some of a set of cultural characteristics including strong informal social control, high density acquaintanceship, conservative and deterministic views, mistrust of government, and reluctance to share internal problems. While it would be misleading to speak of a single rural (or urban) safety culture, understanding broad patterns of attitude and behavior is important to addressing problems effectively.

Cultural factors are passed down from generation to generation, with children picking up their parents' attitudes. In the case of driving, children absorb their parents' perspectives before they are old enough to get behind the wheel themselves. As a result, attitudes and behavioral norms are strongly rooted and difficult to alter—even in the face of concerted efforts to change the way people think about traffic safety. For example, rural drivers in the study generally ascribed less risk to driving without seat belts.

The research paid particular attention to one icon of rural life, the pickup truck. Prompted by data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicating much lower levels of seat belt use among pickup drivers, the researchers found that rural pickup drivers saw less risk in not wearing safety belts compared to urban pickup drivers; rural drivers also wore belts less frequently than their urban counterparts.

With cultural factors in mind, the researchers suggest, safety advocates and policy makers should continue to work together in developing rural safety programs that work with rural culture, rather than against it. For example, rather than attempting to change behavioral norms through "top-down" regulation, a "bottom-up" approach that focuses on increasing the perceived risks of dangerous driving behaviors might be effective. If risk perceptions can be changed, rural communities are likely to discourage unsafe practices through their strong social networks.

At a breakfast meeting of stakeholders in the Toward Zero Deaths program, Ward presented several examples of how cultural factors can influence the effectiveness of traffic safety programs.

Ward told the audience that driving-related deaths often have a huge social impact in small rural communities, particularly when they involve young drivers. Because the social fabric of these communities is tightly knit, such tragedies often touch almost all the area's residents. However, he continued, it is this very cohesion and sense of community that often makes it difficult to focus educational efforts on these crashes—community members may feel that efforts at education stemming from a recent loss of life are simply too painful for the families and friends of the victims. This emotional resistance to focusing on the deaths of friends and loved ones, while natural, can hamper efforts to improve community awareness of issues such as speeding or drunk driving.

Another potential obstacle to the implementation of traffic safety programs in rural areas, Ward said, is a deep-seated culture of skepticism toward perceived governmental intervention in local affairs. Policies and programs that are seen as being imposed by a remote authority—whether in the state capitol or the White House—are likely to be greeted with suspicion by many rural residents who resent "big government" regulations. In the survey results, rural drivers consistently saw less utility in safety interventions than urban residents.

Ward also highlighted political considerations frequently encountered in small communities that can hamper the adoption of tough enforcement or educational efforts. An outgrowth of the close-knit structure of rural communities is the fact that many law enforcement and political figures face stiff opposition when they "rock the boat" by introducing aggressive enforcement or educational efforts. For a rural sheriff or small-town mayor, this opposition can take the form of fewer votes on election day, creating a powerful disincentive to address known problems. Ward went on to say that this observation should not be generalized to all rural areas, and that many local law enforcement officers and politicians have proven to be extremely supportive of aggressive efforts to improve road safety.

Rather than looking at rural cultural characteristics as an obstacle to achieving better traffic safety, Ward concluded, stakeholders should approach the issue of safety cultures as another factor that can contribute to successful implementations. Only by understanding the psychological and cultural factors that affect traffic safety in rural areas will it be possible to achieve profound reductions in driving-related fatalities and serious injuries.

Upcoming Events

January 13–17

Transportation Research Board 87th Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. See www.trb.org/meeting.

February 13

CTS Winter Luncheon, Radisson University Hotel, Minneapolis. "The Future of Vehicle Safety," Ronald Medford, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Contact Julie Grazier, 612-624-3708, cceconf5@umn.edu.

February 14

12th Annual Minnesota Pavement Conference, St. Paul. Contact Shirley Mueffelman, 612-624-4754, cceconf2@umn.edu.

May 20-21

19th Annual CTS Transportation Research Conference, St. Paul RiverCentre, Minnesota.