Purdue News
Purdue News
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March 1, 2004 Purdue Road School examines funding, environment, safetyWEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The 90th Purdue University Road School – the oldest conference of its kind in the nation – will tackle a range of major transportation issues facing Indiana, from highway congestion to safety improvements, federal funding and pollution to setting new speed limits. The two-day conference, which begins March 10, is an annual event expected to draw more than 1,500 state and local government officials, engineers, traffic experts, contractors and consultants. All conference sessions will take place in Purdue's Stewart Center on Wednesday and Thursday, March 10-11. The event is free and open to the public. A major focus of the transportation conference will be federal funding, which is a critical issue to many state and local highway officials, as well as to contractors and private industry, said Kumares Sinha, Road School chairman and the Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue. The six-year federal funding bill, known as the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, or TEA-21, expired in October 2003. Federal lawmakers are considering a spending package that would reduce funding to Indiana. The state depends heavily on millions of dollars in federal money each year for road projects, and the spending bill's anticipated renewal is of major concern to Indiana lawmakers, Sinha said. Another focus of this year's meeting will be the Indiana Department of Transportation's "Hyperfix" project to repair a portion of a combined section of interstates 65 and 70 leading to downtown Indianapolis. The highway segment, which is used by nearly 175,000 vehicles daily, was rebuilt last summer. "The bottom line is that it was a resounding success and has become a model for applications in other parts of the country," said Sinha, director of the Joint Transportation Research Program at Purdue. Sinha and Bob McCullouch, a research scientist in the School of Civil Engineering, are working with other researchers to produce a report evaluating the effectiveness of the Hyperfix project. The project was unusual because the entire section of highway was closed while work continued around the clock, seven days a week. A more conventional approach would be to keep part of the highway open during construction so that motorists could continue to use the road. Closing the highway resulted in the work being completed in 55 days, compared to the 180 days it would have ordinarily taken. During the project, workers repaired about 30 bridge decks and 35 "lane miles" of highway. Purdue researchers surveyed commuters and business owners, finding that downtown businesses and travel to downtown were not significantly affected by the work; it took about 10 minutes longer to get downtown for people who chose to drive alternate routes. Sinha said an important component that helped commuters deal with the closure was a "Hyperfix Park & Ride" program created by several agencies so that drivers could park in designated areas and take shuttle buses directly downtown. Researchers did find one problem: "Night construction did not work as well as daytime work because of a lack of consistent supervision," Sinha said. "The quality was not consistent because they had difficulties finding people to volunteer for night work. "However, we did not find any significant problems resulting from this glitch." Another unusual feature of this year's Road School will be a presentation detailing the sometimes emotionally charged interactions between the late Charles Ellis, a Purdue civil engineering professor from 1934 to 1946, and colleagues involved in the Golden Gate Bridge project. Ellis, who is now widely believed to be the span's original designer, was fired during the project and never given official credit for his critical role. A May 3 nationally aired Public Broadcasting Service program about the Golden Gate Bridge will touch on Ellis' role in the project. James Alleman, a Purdue civil engineering professor, will speak about "the fascinating career of Charles Ellis" during a session that begins at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. Alleman studied telegrams between Ellis and his colleagues on the bridge project. The missives, which are stored at Purdue, tell "a really human story," he said. "There is a lot of behind-the-scenes emotion about what happened and allegations of improprieties and so on that really never got into the press," Alleman said. "As you track those telegrams, you can just feel the agony that he was going through of trying to do a good job, and yet his boss was not really willing to give him any credit nor willing to pay much attention to his ideas." Other Road School highlights include: • Opening remarks at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday by J. Bryan Nicol, INDOT commissioner, who will talk about the state of the state's transportation system. The opening session will be in the Loeb Playhouse. In another talk during the opening session, Tony Giancola, executive director of the National Association of County Engineers, will give a local government perspective on issues being discussed in Washington regarding the reauthorization of the federal funding bill, TEA-21. • A talk and panel discussion during a session from 10:15-11:45 a.m. on Wednesday during which officials from INDOT and the Federal Highway Administration will discuss the latest updates on state and federal funding and a new state gasoline tax. • A presentation during the Wednesday morning session by Ronald Heustis, a project manager in INDOT's contracts and construction division, who will talk about the challenges involved in moving streams, creeks and wildlife during the reconstruction and relocation of Interstate 70 at the Indianapolis International Airport. The talk will include background about the $150 million project; discussion about the relocation of two miles of creeks, which involved construction of new stream channels; a review of a habitat conservation plan for the Indiana brown bat, which required planting 345 acres of hardwood seedlings for bat habitat; and extensive erosion control measures taken on the project. • A talk during the Wednesday morning session by Gary Mroczka, chief of INDOT's design division, detailing how officials from INDOT and Indianapolis city government worked together to solve problems posed by the Hyperfix project. Officials will again discuss the project during a session from 10:15-11:45 a.m. Thursday entitled "Hyperfix: Coordination and Construction of 33 Bridges and 35 Lane Miles in 55 Days." • A presentation during the Wednesday morning session by Suzanne Karberg, communications specialist for the School of Civil Engineering, regarding "netiquette." The talk will cover issues including whether e-mail is a help or a hindrance, whether it saves time, how to use e-mail effectively, when e-mail is the correct medium to use and when it is inappropriate, and ideas to help stop unwanted or frivolous e-mail messages. • Traffic-signal talks during the Wednesday morning session by Indianapolis city officials and consultants. The talks will include preventive maintenance, future technologies and "all those routine problems that become traffic maintenance nightmares," said John Burkhardt, administrator in charge of maintenance services for the Indianapolis Department of Public Works. • A presentation during a session from 1:30-3 p.m. on Wednesday about "The ABCs of Federal Funding," which will include details about how the state receives its funding and the match requirements, guidelines, application procedures and project selection process. • A presentation during the Wednesday afternoon session by Alleman, who will speak about a new "constructed wetland" that will be used to treat sewage at a rest area on Interstate 70 east of Indianapolis and north of Greenfield. Governments are increasingly using so-called low-flush toilets in public facilities such as rest areas. Because these toilets use less water than conventional toilets, the waste is more concentrated, presenting problems for municipal treatment plants. Constructed wetlands may help to solve this dilemma because they are an environmentally friendly way to treat sewage before it is sent to municipal treatment centers, Alleman said. Sewage from lavatories in the rest area will be piped into a shallow gravel bed containing special plants. The sewage will be broken down by bacteria growing on the plants' roots. • Talks during the Wednesday afternoon session by officials from Tippecanoe County and Purdue, who will discuss a new federally funded program to set "rational speed limits." Officials working on the 28-month project funded by the Federal Highway Administration will conduct surveys to learn drivers' concerns about safety and other issues and collect data documenting the speeds generally driven, traffic volumes and related factors on roads targeted in the study. The study will determine how fast 85 percent of the drivers travel on each road targeted. Then new rational speed limits will be set based on this "85th percentile" speed, along with other factors including history of auto crashes, the number of driveways present and "road geometries." The project will include a public awareness and education campaign and increased enforcement by sheriff's deputies to make people more aware of the consequences of speeding and alert drivers that their speeds are being monitored. Talks will be presented by Maria Drake, associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Transportation Safety at Purdue, and Cindy Coddington, Tippecanoe County's traffic supervisor. • A "Mock Right-of-Way Trial … Everything You Wanted to Know About Right-of-Way but Didn't Want to Learn in Court," during a session from 1:30-3 p.m. on Thursday. The session will bring together three attorneys and experienced current and former county officials to conduct a staged trial to re-enact issues that state and local transportation employees must grapple with nearly every day, said moderator Charlie Alvey, an associate with Bernardin, Lochmuller & Associates Inc., a professional planning, engineering and environmental firm based in Evansville. • Talks during the Thursday afternoon session by Purdue engineers, who will present updates in research aimed at creating pavements and tires that produce less noise than conventional materials and designs. Highway noise is a major nuisance nationwide, with cities spending millions of dollars to build sound barriers between highways and homes. The Road School, held annually at Purdue since 1913, was the first state highway conference in the nation. The program brings together all levels of transportation-related professionals, from the Federal Highway Administration in Washington, D.C., to the smallest municipalities in the state, said Karen Hatke, program coordinator for Purdue's Joint Transportation Research Program. The Road School is sponsored by Purdue's School of Civil Engineering, which maintains a Road School Web site, and the Indiana Department of Transportation. Detailed information about this year's Road School is available online. Writer: Emil Venere, (765) 494-4709, venere@purdue.edu Sources: Kumares Sinha, (765)494-2211, ksinha@purdue.edu Karen S. Hatke, (765) 494-9310, kshatke@ecn.purdue.edu Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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