Category Archives: Engineering
For my Highway Safety graduate level course at NC State, I conducted a field study at the intersection of Glenwood Ave and Peace St in Raleigh, NC. The study evaluated the current status of field conditions, conflicts, previous collision reports, and recommended a few counter measures that might reduce conflicts at the intersection.
I’m really enjoying the class. If you’re interested in reading the study, I’ve attached it to this post.
Not a very intriguing post, but a funny one anyway. Projects across the US are stalled to finish because of a shortage in line-marking paint. That’s kind of funny, right? Link: Shortage of paint for highway stripes
I was browsing TED earlier today (Technology, Engineering, Design), and found a few things I wanted to share. The first being a completely new road sign concept and I find it fascinating! It’s called the “Take Turns” sign, and unfortunately, due to the semantics of the English language, it may confuse you at first.
It doesn’t want you to “turn”, but to alternate vehicles when needed. Envisioned by venture capitalist Gary Lauder, the concept is half stop sign, half yield sign. When there are no cars on an adjacent side street you can drive freely, but if there are vehicles on the side street, all vehicles must stop and alternate, a la four way stop.
Perfect for scenarios where roundabouts would work but don’t fit! Continue reading
This morning I attended a virtual workshop seminar hosted by the ITE entitled “Traffic Demand Forecasting”. Focused on local modeling and surveys taken by transportation engineers, the workshop was very informative on what models and tools are currently being used and their effectiveness.
One piece of information that I thought was especially useful was the detailed focus of the “4-Step Method”. We all learned it in school: Generation, Distribution, Mode Choice (split), and Assignment. But it never occurred to me that one can obtain a pretty good (and quick) estimate by eliminating Mode Choice completely in an area with little public transportation. Ehem, paging North Carolina.
Another thing that didn’t occur to me was the concept of “blind spots” in traffic analysis. Sure it may seem easy to assign average annual daily traffic to a specific route, but route directness never seems to come up (how direct a route really is). Or how about sidewalk completeness. These are things that are hard to factor and difficult to anticipate.
Very informative seminar overall. Thanks ITE!
If you’re a member of the ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers), you should be pretty hyped about the upcoming Technical Conference and Exhibit in Savannah, GA that starts on March 14th. Because I can’t make it, I was very excited to find out that two of the seminars will be broadcast live over the web.
One seminar focuses on labor laws impacting consultants and the other explores local travel demand modeling and sustainability. If you’re a member, click here to register for one or both of the seminars.
Oh the joys of Gantt Charts. I’ve done them by hand. A lot of them. And then I used Excel for a while, which was tolerable. I even learned how to schedule in Primavera and Microsoft Project, both of which worked very well. But when I was in school, the most practical and friendly method I found for use on a team project was Google Spreadsheets.
Yes, Google Spreadsheets. It’s great on a student budget because it’s free. Google Docs became the location of your files, and if you can connect to the internet and login, you have access to your project. But by far the best feature of the Google Docs Suite was the collaboration element. With the ability to have multiple contributors editing at the same time, this was how we scheduled and estimated construction projects. It just worked. Flawlessly.
Now, out of stage left comes Tom’s Planner. It seems someone had the idea and initiative to take the concept behind online document collaboration and craft it into a sophisticated planning app like MS Project or Primavera.
More information on the app can be found at Tomsplanner.com. The details on pricing are few and far between, but I can definitely see Microsoft watching this very closely. Who knows, maybe Google will decide to buy it. After all, they’re just about buying everything right now.
Via LifeHacker
What does it mean when the economy discourages investing, designing, and building? A general lack of development interest, which is exactly what we’re seeing here in the U.S. It shouldn’t be a surprise. If you see a lack of employment in the engineering and design sector, it usually means the pipes are sealed on new projects and the lights are off on new construction.
Well, in terms of supply and demand, this means that demand for construction materials is at a large low at the moment, and with an increased supply, it seems prices have dropped significantly. An article posted in The American Surveyor today caught my attention. The U.S. Labor Department released a producer price index (PPI) report on the 20th of October saying construction materials prices are down 8.2 percent since September 2008. Continue reading
It should be of no surprise to anyone in the transportation industry to see state transportation departments short on cash at the moment. To make matters worse, previous legislation (pre-recession) was planning on cutting back funding, ultimately nullifying some attempted cash influx that was expected to come from stimulus.
The unemployment rate in this sector is still waiting to see the light at the end of this tunnel because of a lack of projects, ultimately caused by a lack of funding and state budget concerns.
What’s being done about it? It seems the good folks at AASHTO have written a nice letter to the US House and Senate, urging them to repeal the $8.7 billion rescission of funding. So, If you’re looking for a job in this sector, definitely keep tabs on this as it develops. Maybe you should write your local congressman!
For the full story, or to read the letter sent to congress, see this AASHTO press release.
Did you know that some Departments of Transportation are installing automated tweeting scripts to their traffic reports for use on Twitter.com? If you live in North Carolina, check out @NCDOT, and if you’re in the Raleigh area, get your traffic reports from @NCDOT_Triangle and some from @NCDOT_I40.
One of the great things about our information age is the ability to not only get information quickly, but from a variety of sources. Here is an article that was written when NCDOT enabled these features last month.
If you live in another state, run a search on your Department of Transportation and see if they Tweet. Find out, and share in the comments below! Oh, and please don’t tweet and drive.
With the technology we’ve had up to today, it’s been very difficult to account for the weathering of our bridges, buildings, and other structures. State Departments of Transportation spend millions of dollars every year in testing, but current methods include many assumptions and are not always accurate. Thus accidents happen like the collapse of the Minneapolis I-35 Bridge that crosses the Mississippi.
New sensors to monitor performance are starting to become more common, but they only help if the sensor is placed at the source of a potential problem. I remember when I was working at the Constructed Facilities Laboratory at NC State, we would place sensors on key areas of beams and columns and test them for failure. Fortunately, we knew where each column and beam would fail, but bridge-systems are slightly more complicated.
New funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Michigan DOT is being spent on next-generation monitoring systems like “skins”. These skins can be painted on or exist in a layer of concrete. New wireless technology will help bring the cost of these systems down significantly, and wireless sensors have performed well in the East. You can read the full article that goes further in depth at Scientific American.