| Abstract XXV |
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| Truck Travel Time |
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Developing Corridor-Level Truck Travel Time Estimates and Other Freight Performance Measures
The objectives of this research were to retrospectively study the feasibility for using truck transponder data to produce freight corridor performance measures (travel times) and real-time traveler information. To support this analysis, weigh-in-motion data from each of the twenty-two stations in Oregon were assembled, processed, and uploaded in the WIM data archive is housed under the Portland Transportation Archive Listing (PORTAL) umbrella at Portland State University’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab. Nearly 42,000,000 truck records were successful uploaded to the archive dating back to July 2005. Two separate algorithms necessary for this research were scripted, tested, and validated. The closest stations are 38.3 miles apart; the greatest are 258 miles apart. The first algorithm matched transponders between of all vehicles in a time window between the upstream and downstream stations. The second algorithm filtered these matches for through trucks. The filter was validated by comparing estimated travel times during a winter weather-induced delay. The analysis showed that corridor-level travel times for trucks for 2007 and 2008 could be generated from the archived data. To explore the feasibility using these same data for real-time traveler information, ground truth probe vehicle data were collected. Travel time estimates from the WIM data and the probes were used to establish a simple linear relationship between passenger car and truck performance. It was concluded that the long distances between stations was a primary challenge to directly adapting the WIM data to real-time use. Recommendations were given on increased sensor spacing and filter improvement. Finally, potential performance metrics for station level, matched trucks, and filtered matched truck data were shown
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| Bioengineering Stabilization |
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Monitoring of Bioengineering Stabilization Projects
Four sites with bioengineered stream banks were monitored for four years. Observations included quantitative measurements of stream discharge, stage and velocity. No bank erosion was observed to have affected the stream banks at any of the monitoring sites.
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| HCRH Oral History |
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Historic Columbia River Highway Oral History
The Historic Columbia River Highway: Oral History Project compliments a larger effort in Oregon to reconnect abandoned sections of the Historic Columbia River Highway. The goals of the larger reconnection project, “Milepost 2016 Reconnection Project” (http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/HCRH/), are to ‘remember,’ ‘restore,’ and ‘reconnect’ sections of the old historic highway. One of theses sections includes the area between Cascade Locks and Hood River, which was abandoned or destroyed as part of construction of Interstate 84 (I-84).
The objective of the Oral History Project was to capture oral histories surrounding the areas of Cascade Locks to Hood River. As part of the project, 19 people were interviewed who had either lived in the area, helped to build sections of highway or interstate, or who have helped to preserve the historic area. Much of the cultural history of this section of highway has been lost since its abandonment over 50 years ago. This research project was aimed at culturally reconnecting the highway and providing information useful to the overall restoration of the highway as a trail.
Included in this final report are recollections of the towns of Dodson, Bonneville, Cascade Locks, Viento, Sonny and Hood River, as well as memories of destinations along the Historic Columbia River Highway such as Crown Point, Multnomah Falls Lodge, Mitchell Point Tunnel, and others. Experiences from the highway builders and preservationists are also shared.
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| ConnectOregon Program |
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Analysis of the ConnectOregon Program Through Two Project Selection Cycles
The Oregon Legislature passed a law establishing the Multimodal Transportation Fund in 2005. The fund was part of what became known as the ConnectOregon program, with the purpose of making public and private investments in aviation, marine, rail, and transit. The legislation provided $100 million in state lottery bond revenues to fund the program. In 2007, the legislature provided another $100 million. For the $200 million available through ConnectOregon, a total of 181 project applications were received, and 73 were selected for funding. By June 30, 2009, 27 projects had been completed, and most of the others were under construction or in design. This report is intended to help inform other states considering a collaborative approach to multimodal transportation funding programs. The report is comprised of the following sections:
- an overview of ConnectOregon legislation and administration;
- procedures for submitting, reviewing, evaluating, and prioritizing ConnectOregon applications and for making final funding recommendations;
- a comparison of ConnectOregon I and ConnectOregon II results by region, mode, and size of funding request; and
a discussion of participant feedback and lessons learned.
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| Moisture Damage |
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Investigating Premature Pavement Failure Due to Moisture
This report details the forensic investigations conducted to identify the causes of pavement failures shortly after a rehabilitation activity on five interstate highway projects in Oregon, and the research efforts conducted to develop guidelines to minimize the risk of premature failures on future projects. One of the principal objectives of this research effort was to identify sources of moisture and other conditions that let to the early rutting problems observed along the five projects. Overall, improper tack coat or failure, permeable dense-graded layers, inadequate drainage, and, possible, inadequate compaction of dense-graded material, were all identified as the likely root causes of the observed moisture damage and consequential rutting problems. The other principal objective was to evaluate design, construction, and materials requirements that will minimize the risk of such failures for future rehabilitation projects so that guidelines could be developed for these processes. In this respect, this report contains guidelines for the following:
- Pre-construction site investigations to identify the potential for moisture-related problems.
- Pavement structural design techniques that have been effective in reducing the risk of failures related to moisture damage.
- Construction techniques that can reduce the risk of failure due to moisture damage.
- Materials selection and testing to assist in reducing the risk of failure due to moisture damage.
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| Fleet Replacement |
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Fleet Replacement Modeling
This project focused on two interrelated areas in equipment replacement modeling for fleets. The first area was research-oriented and addressed a fundamental assumption in engineering economic replacement modeling that all assets providing a similar service are equally utilized. It is shown that if assets providing a similar service are not equally utilized, than overall operational costs of a fleet increases. The second area addressed the need of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Fleet Services Section for a modern, user-friendly, well constructed and documented fleet condition model. The state-of-the-art in equipment replacement modeling and the research on effective prioritization measures computable from existing data is discussed. A new model is developed utilizing the highest value of (Age/Age standard)+(Usage/Use standard) as a measure to prioritize equipment. The model is described and it is shown through simulation that the prioritization measure utilized performs better than several other suggested measures. This project was conducted jointly with the ODOT Fleet Services Section and the ODOT Research Section.
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| Drainage Facility |
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Drainage Facility Management System
This research project identified requirements for a drainage facility management system for the Oregon Department of Transportation. It also estimated the personnel resources needed to collect the inventory to populate such a system with data. A total of 213 data fields were identified and defined. A pilot data collection effort indicated that the time to gather and enter the information on one culvert was approximately 3 person-hours. Extrapolating the pilot project to the entire Oregon highway system indicates that there are between 23,000 and 25,000 culverts to be inventoried. Based in part on this research project, the drainage facility management system is under development and an inventory of all the culverts is underway.
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| Environmental Durability |
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Environmental Durability of Reinforced Concrete Deck Girders Strengthened for Shear w/Surface-Bonded
This research investigated the durability of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composites (CFRP) used for shear strengthening reinforced concrete deck girders. Large beams were used to avoid accounting for size effects in the data analysis. The effort included determining the role of freeze-thaw, moisture, and fatigue on structural performance and developing analytical design procedures that account for durability.
The results showed that moisture infiltration behind the CFRP, combined with freeze-thaw, was critical in reducing shear panel stiffness and shear capacity. Long-term moisture exposure alone produced only a minor decrease in shear capacity. Freeze-thaw, combined with fatigue, had little effect on shear capacity if water infiltration was minimized. Fatigue caused some debonding, but the debonding was not significant enough to affect capacity.
Use of ACI-318 with ACI 440 provided conservative predicted shear strengths after environmental exposure. However, the ACI approach did not provide uniform levels of safety because the observed conservatism was built into the prediction for the unstrengthened base specimens but not for the CFRP contribution. Consequently, a recommendation of the research is to apply the environmental exposure factor at the final design step to limit the effective CFRP stress/strain. For locations with very large numbers of wet freeze-thaw cycles and extended exposure to continuous moisture, the environmental reduction factors should be reduced even further. To better predict the CFRP bond strength demands that can occur due to shear-moment interaction, a further check of the design should be made beyond those required by ACI-440.
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| Delivery Techniques |
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Development of a Decision Model for Selection of Appropriate Timely Delivery Techniques for Hwy Proj
This report describes Research Project SPR646 which explored the potential use and selection of various means for ensuring or increasing schedule performance of highway transportation projects at the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT).
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| Animal-Vehicle |
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Animal-Vehicle Crash Mitigation Using Advanced Technology - Phase II: system Effectiveness and Syste
This project was initiated in the fall of 1999. The results through the fall of 2005 (Phase I) have been documented in detail in an earlier report. The accomplishments of Phase I included the following: the identification of existing animal detection system technologies and their vendors; the selection of two of these systems for field tests; the deployment of the two selected systems (one in Yellowstone National Park in Montana, and one in Pennsylvania); the documentation of the experiences with system installation; the testing of the reliability of the systems; and formulating advice for the future development and application, including cost-benefit analyses. One of the two experimental animal detection systems (Montana site) proved to be able to detect elk (Cervus elaphus) reliably. However, as a result of steep slopes and curves, the system had blind spots where large animals were able to approach the road undetected. Therefore the warning signs could not be attached, and the effectiveness of the system in reducing vehicle speed and in reducing the number of collisions with large wild animals could not be evaluated.
In Phase II of the project, subject of the current report, system modifications reduced the blind spots so that the warning signs could be attached. Speed measurements showed that passenger cars, pick-ups, vans, and trucks with two units or more all had lower vehicle speed with the warning signs activated compared to warning signs off. The number of collisions with large wild animals was 58-67% lower than expected, but because of the variability in the number of collisions and only one year of post installation collision data, the researchers could not test whether this reduction was significant. The opinions on and experiences of drivers with the system were documented in interviews. A majority would have liked to see the US Highway 191 system stay in place (59%), and thought animal detection systems were a good idea, in general (71%). In accordance with an agreement with Yellowstone National Park, the system was removed in fall 2008, due to high maintenance, lack of spare parts and concerns about landscape aesthetics,. Finally, this report includes a recommended step plan for agencies considering the installation of an animal detection system alongside a road and recommendations for future research and monitoring of the reliability and effectiveness of animal detection systems.
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| Electro-Slag Welds |
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A Fitness-for-Purpose Evaluation of Fracture Critical Electro-Slag Welds
A fitness-for-purpose evaluation was performed on the electro-slag flange welds of the West Fremont bridge approach superstructures, per the request of FHWA. This evaluation required gathering knowledge of the material properties, fabrication defects and service loads pertaining to the weldments in question. The serviceability of the weldments was assessed based on the fatigue and fracture performance. It was concluded that the welds have sufficient toughness and fatigue resistance to remain in service with no retrofitting.
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| At-Risk Driver |
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Evaluation of the Oregon DMV Medically At-Risk Driver Program
Oregon is one of six states with requirements for mandatory reporting of drivers with medical impairments. In 2003, the state’s mandatory reporting program, administered by Oregon Driver Motor Vehicles (DMV) Services, was revised to cover an extensive range of cognitive and functional impairments. This report examines the safety risk of persons treated in Oregon’s revised Medically At-Risk Driver program. The incidence of crashes and traffic offense convictions before and after license suspension is documented and compared to crash and conviction incidence of persons treated in the DMV’s voluntary medical reporting program. Comparisons are also made to a representative sample of the state’s driver population. Structured interviews of program stakeholders were also undertaken to identify issues related to the program’s performance. The safety analysis and interview findings provided a basis for recommendations made in the report.
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| Least-Cost Planning in ODOT |
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Least-Cost Transportation Planning in ODOT
Least-Cost Planning or Integrated Resource Planning is used in the electric utility industry to broaden the scope of choices to meet service requirements. This typically includes methods to reduce the demands for electricity as well the more traditional electric generation options. Techniques have been developed to compare the cost of electricity generation with the cost of meeting service requirements by reducing electrical usage. In addition to cost considerations, utilities typically take account of uncertainty associated with forecasts and a variety of other considerations in specifying their least-cost plan.
The basic economic rationale, that users pay a price less than the cost of providing additional service, is the same between the utilities and transportation. However, there are also fundamental differences. Consumers are more concerned about the nature of the service for transportation, the use of the transportation system is affected by the quality of service provided, transportation modes have system or network relations that make it harder to treat sections in isolation, and transportation funding levels determine the amount of service to be provided. Hence, although least-cost principles hold promise to improve transportation planning, the techniques used in the utility industry can not be directly transferred to transportation.
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| Oregon's ACTs |
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Oregon's ACTs, Cross-Jurisdictional Collaboration, and Improved Transportation Planning
The Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) created Area Commissions on Transportation (ACTs) to improve coordination, help prioritize infrastructure investment, and provide input on statewide transportation issues. The structure of the ACTs is designed to provide a cross-section of input from the state, regional, local, private, and community sectors. A research project was initiated to: assess the role and experiences of ACTs, research comparative approaches in the state and nationally, and develop and assess options for improving coordination and increasing effectiveness. This study used interviews, an on-line survey, case studies from Oregon and comparative studies from three other states to assess ACTs and identify options. The findings reveal that ACTs have improved the state prioritization process and increased communication across the parties involved, but they face challenges in relation to cross-regional coordination, strategic investment decisions, and regional problems such as urban travelsheds. The study highlights a range of options for improving ACT functioning under its current structure, and more significant options that would require policy and structural changes.
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| SWARM System |
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Using Archived Data to Measure Operational Benefits of a System-wide Adaptive Ramp Metering (SWARM)
A System-Wide Adaptive Ramp Metering (SWARM) system has been implemented in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, replacing the previous pre-timed ramp-metering system that had been in operation since 1981. SWARM has been deployed on six major corridors and operates during the morning and afternoon peak hours. This report presents results of a “before” and “after” evaluation of the performance of two freeway corridors as part of ongoing efforts to measure the benefits of the new SWARM system, as compared to the pre-timed system. The study benefited from using the existing regional data, surveillance and communications infrastructure in addition to a regional data archive system. The evaluation revealed that the operation of the SWARM system, as currently configured in the Portland metropolitan region, produced mixed results when comparing the selected performance metrics to pre-timed operation. For the I-205 corridor, the results were generally positive. In the morning peak period, SWARM operation resulted in an 18.1% decrease in mainline delay and decreased variability in the delay. For the afternoon peak period, improvements were also found (a 7.9 % decrease in mainline delay) with the exception of moderately congested days which saw an 4.7% increase in mainline delay. On the OR-217, however, significant increases were found in overall average delay. In the morning peak period, delay increased 34.9% while in the afternoon period delay increased 55.0%. These conclusions, however, must be tempered because of lack of ramp demand data. If an assumption is made that ramp demand changes correspond with the measured freeway VMT changes, it is likely that ramp delay decreased under SWARM operation (i.e. more vehicles were allowed on the freeway which would equate to lower delay for vehicles on the ramps). Another important finding of this evaluation was that implementation of the SWARM algorithm resulted in significantly more data communication failures in the traffic management system. While this outcome is specific to the ODOT communication infrastructure and hardware, it was not anticipated. These communication failures have the potential to impact other traveler information programs that depend on the freeway surveillance data as well as the SWARM algorithm. Finally, one of the intentions of this research project was to encourage ongoing evaluation and continuous improvement of the ramp metering system and, in general, the overall freeway management system. It is clear from the analysis that meter activation times and rates are necessary to evaluate system performance. Incorporating additional logging capabilities into the SWARM system would make it easier to evaluate system operations on an on-going automated basis.
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| Roughness Index on HPMS Sites |
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Procedures Manual for the Determination of International Roughness Index on HPMS Sites in Oregon
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is required to provide an annual measure of pavement condition based on International Roughness Index (IRI). The main coordination of this process with FHWA is done by the Highway Division's Planning Section. The data will be collected using a Mays Ride Meter (MRM). The Research Unit of the Materials and Research Section is responsible for calibration and operation of the MRM. The Data to be collected is on various highways across the State as directed by the Planning Section.
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| Isotropic Reinforcing |
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Concrete Bridge Deck with Isotropic Reinforcing - Construction Report
Isotropic reinforcing is the placement of reinforced steel uniformly both longitudinally and transversely on the bottom and top of the bridge deck. It is an alternate to deck reinforcing designs based on the traditional “Westergaard” distribution of bending moments. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) approved the use of isotropic reinforcement for this project.
Isotropic reinforcing was place in the USBR Canal Bridge deck (Klamath Falls) and is being evaluated as an Experimental Features project. The bridge deck was constructed in December 1992 in two separate stages. While there were a few problems with this project, none were related to the isotropic reinforced deck being constructed, and will not affect the performance of this deck over time. The bid to install this deck was based on a cost estimate of $12.36/S.R. ($133.05/m²).
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| METRO RUMAC |
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Rubber Modified Asphalt Concrete (METRO RUMAC) Evaluation
This report covers the construction in 1991 of two test pavements using asphalt concrete modified with crumb rubber from scrap tires. The pavements are on arterial roadways in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area.
Both test pavements use a dense-graded rubber modified asphalt concrete (METRO RUMAC) development for the Metropolitan Services District (METRO) of the Portland metropolitan area. In this process, crumb rubber made from recycled tires is mixed with aggregate before the asphalt is blended into the mix. Adjacent to the test pavements, control pavements were paved with conventional asphalt concrete. The test pavements are compared to these control pavements.
The METRO RUMAC was successfully blended in both a batch and a drum mixing plant. In both cases, the plant’s exhaust gas opacity was an acceptable level. The rubberized mixes were placed and compacted by conventional equipment.
Experience on these projects showed that caution is needed in determining the mix properties by solvent extraction and in measuring pavement density by a nuclear gauge. Testing showed that two solvents commonly used in vacuum extractions dissolve finer particles of the crumb rubber. Using mathematical modeling, it was found that solvent dissolving rubber during the extraction had these effects on test results: it did not significantly affect the test results for the overall gradation of the mix, it had a significant effect on the asphalt content test results, and it invalidated rubber gradation and rubber content test results. To get accurate nuclear density test results, special care was needed when the gauge was seated on the surface of the METRO RUMAC.
After construction, both the METRO RUMAC test sections had appearance, ride values, deflection reductions, and surface friction values similar to there respective control pavements and typical ODOT dense-graded overlays.
The METRO RUMAC mixes cost about 1 ½ times more than their conventional counterparts. Most of this increase was due to the cost of the rubber and the expense of adding the rubber. At this time, it is not certain that the greater initial cost of these rubberized mixes will be offset by a commensurate increase in the pavement’s service life.
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