For this research project, Guin has plotted travel time in relation to ramp meters, showing when traffic begins to build and how modifying ramp wait times can be used as a tool to control highway congestion levels. Through his work, travel times can be reduced by up to 24%, and several research posters have been produced.
The Georgia Department of Transportation has been very supportive of Guin’s research. For more information on his current projects, please follow the links below. These ten projects cover diverse sectors within the fields of civil and transportation engineering, and are impacting the state of transportation as it is currently known.
On Tuesday, September 24, 2014, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and the Georgia Transportation Institute (GTI) jointly hosted the second annual GDOT/GTI Transportation Research Poster Session.
Th event was held at GDOT headquarters, One Georgia Center, at 600 West Peachtree St NW in Atlanta. All transportation researchers at GTI’s member universities, including Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Southern Polytechnic State University, Mercer University, and Albany State University were invited to display their active and recently-completed research projects sponsored by GDOT.
To view a poster gallery of all posters from the 2013 and 2014 poster session, click here.
The headquarters of the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is situated mere blocks from a top research institution, the Georgia Institute of Technology. But there’s more to the connection between GDOT and Georgia Tech than close proximity.
Since GDOT came into existence in 1972, it has continually worked to better the state’s roadways and transportation systems. Its robust research program supports transportation research conducted at universities across Georgia. GDOT has sponsored over 100 research proejcts at Georgia Tech, spanning a wide variety of subdisciplines within the transportation industry.
WABE 90.1 FM recently spotlighted the collaboration of Georgia Tech professor Wayne Daley, Jonathan Holmes of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and David Jared, of GDOT, in producing a revolutionary road-repairing robot.
The instrument, known as Roadbot, has taken over 10 years to develop, and these efforts have culminated in the creation of a prototype bot, capable of sensing a crack, photographing it, and computing how to apply asphalt to repair the crack. Fully automated, Roadbot is capable of repairing cracks at five times the speed of conventional manual repairwork.
Roadbot works its magic on a section of highway (Jonathan Holmes, GTRI)
To read more on the project and WABE’s article, click here.
First-year Ph.D. student Atiyya Shaw has won support for her studies from the International Road Federation as a class of 2016 fellow.
The award, announced this month, includes a grant to help Shaw continue her full-time studies in the 2015-2016 academic year and attend the Road Scholar Program in Washington D.C.
According to the federation, “The [fellowship] program enhances the professional curriculum of graduate students in fields related to the development of better and safer roads and their ability to meaningfully improve transportation in their home countries.”
“Scientific research and progress are dependent upon a constant source of innovation and young talent in a profession that hinges on the seamless passing of intellectual and philosophical approaches from teacher to student over time,” Shaw wrote in a recent conference paper. “Researchers, therefore, inherit a duty that is implicit in their work: to train, mentor and inspire those who have chosen to pursue educational advancement within their fields.”
“I have a passion for research and teaching, and I hope to make a difference by guiding, educating and inspiring the next generation of engineers,” said Shaw, whose research focuses on transportation safety and operations under Associate Professor Michael Hunter.
The fellowship is the second award to come Shaw’s way in recent months; she won the 2014 Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship from the Women’s Transportation Seminar in October.
On Sunday, November 2, 2014, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article discussing the upcoming vote by Clayton County citizens on whether to allow the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) to expand into their county. The proposed plan would include eight new bus routes, with the first six routes in place by early 2016, and the other two within the next four years. Rail routes would be negotiated in the next few years with Norfolk Southern.
Included within the article were opinion pieces by Dr. Catherine Ross, director of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development and deputy director of NCTSPM. She said that “joining MARTA could be a catalyst for development and redevelopment in Clayton County; it’ll make people want to live there, move businesses there, shop and work there. That’s economic development.”
Imagine sharing the highway with cars driven by computers rather than people.
Google is rather famously experimenting with such self-driving vehicles. And a Georgia General Assembly study committee is weighing the issues around allowing these driverless cars on the state’s roads.
The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Michael Hunter has served as an expert witness for the committee and outlined some of the issues in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution guest column Oct. 7.
Read Hunter’s perspective below, and read what other guest writers had to say on the AJC’s site:
Like many of you, I am excited about the prospects for self-driving or driverless cars. It seems every day, there is another story about their tremendous potential. I look forward to when I will be able get in my car, tell it to take me to Georgia Tech, and spend the rest of the trip searching the Internet, watching “Game of Thrones,” checking Facebook, taking a nap or maybe even getting some work done. Maybe I will even be able to send my car off to get my groceries and pick up the dry cleaning without me.
I don’t know if this future is 5 or 25 years away, but it certainly seems to be coming.
Skeptics often question if people will be willing to ride in a vehicle that drives itself. I personally doubt this will be a significant issue, particularly for millennials. However, I do believe there are other hurdles in the acceptance of this technology that are not receiving nearly as much attention, but may be more important.
For example, how will human drivers of other vehicles interact with driverless vehicles? The user of a driverless vehicle has made the choice to get into the vehicle. However, if driverless cars are allowed by local laws, other drivers on the road are not being given a choice about interacting with them. I am much more concerned about how these other drivers may alter their behavior when interacting with driverless vehicles, than I am with people being willing to use driverless vehicles.
In this regard, we are about to enter a grand experiment. Today, whether changing lanes, merging into or exiting a freeway, or pulling out of a driveway, drivers are constantly interacting with other drivers. It is fair to say that when engaging in these driving maneuvers, at times, some people can be aggressive. So, what happens when a set of vehicles always gives way when the other vehicle is sufficiently aggressive? Will driverless vehicles enable a form of “bully driving” among the rest of us?
For instance, when traffic is heavy and I need to merge onto I-285, while I am still on the ramp, I pick a target vehicle that I will attempt to merge in front of. If there are driverless cars on the roadway, why would I not pick a driverless car every time? I know if I am sufficiently aggressive, the driverless vehicle’s safety programming will cause it to give way and let me in front. What happens when the three cars behind me on the ramp also take advantage of the same behavior? Suddenly the driverless car — and all the vehicles behind it — are brought to a stop while everyone cuts in front of them.
Would this happen? I don’t know about this exact scenario, but I also don’t believe we should assume drivers will treat driverless cars the same as cars with an actual person driving.
The above is only one of many potential driver behavior issues we will face as driverless cars go from a novelty to an everyday experience. Will driverless cars result in the “hassle” of driving being greatly reduced and unintentionally incentivize significantly more travel by auto? Will pedestrians and cyclists alter their behavior when interacting with driverless cars? Should driverless cars strictly follow traffic law — for example, driving 55 mph on the interstate?
Will infrastructure maintenance costs increase? Will potential congestion improvements on freeways result in congestion increases on surface streets? How does the availability of driverless vehicles transform our transit systems? Will entirely new demands not even being considered today materialize? How will the vehicle ownership model change? Who will pay for any added infrastructure costs related to driverless vehicles?
We could fill pages with questions about the potential pros and cons related to driverless cars. I believe that, while the timeline remains highly uncertain, they are likely an innovation that is unstoppable. I also believe the benefits will be many.
Overall, this technology represents a great opportunity for individuals and society. However, we must not become blind enthusiasts; we have to recognize the potential downsides. If we are proactive today in planning and building our infrastructure and creating legislation with driverless vehicles in mind, we may be able to avoid many of the potential downsides while realizing the many benefits.
Michael Hunter is an associate professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with a focus on transportation operations and design.
A Georgia House of Representatives committee is studying what hurdles the state would face if it allowed driverless cars on roadways. Associate Professor Michael Hunter was a key witness at a hearing last week, outlining some of the engineering and traffic problems that will have to be solved if lawmakers decide to allow the autonomous vehicles.
Thorny legal and engineering issues lie ahead before self-driving cars can be let loose on Georgia highways, members of a legislative study committee heard during testimony Thursday.
Transportation planners and traffic enforcement agencies will face at least several decades of highways forced to serve “mixed fleets,” fully autonomous vehicles and completely driver-controlled cars on the roads at the same time, said Mike Hunter, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“Until you guys are ready to tell people they can’t drive their [driver-controlled] cars, the system is going to be based on people,” Hunter told a study committee formed by the state House of Representatives to examine the challenges involved in legalizing self-driving vehicles.
Hunter outlined a series of scenarios likely to occur with mixed fleets that would prevent self-driving vehicles from fulfilling one of their chief goals: reducing traffic congestion by letting cars cluster closer together.
“How close will you let a driverless car get to a non-driverless car?” he asked. “If you allow the same following distance that’s allowed today, you won’t increase [traffic] capacity and reduce congestion.”
Likewise, Hunter warned of driverless cars causing “rolling roadblocks” by driving the speed limit – as they’re programmed to do – on Atlanta’s Perimeter Highway.
One of Google’s self-driving cars. GT’s Dr. Michael Hunter told Georgia’s lawmakers last week that they will have to confront a number of tricky issues if they decide to allow such vehicles on the state’s roadways. (Photo coursety of Mariordo via Wikimedia Commons)
Four researchers from Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering have received this year’s Charley V. Wootan Award from the Transportation Research Board (TRB), recognizing their work on evidence-based transportation asset management. The research team will also be honored with a Certificate of Award, to be presented at the Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lecute.
The Wootan Award honors the best paper in transportation policy and organization submitted to the TRB each year.
The winning paper proposes a framework for collecting evidence to docume
nt how well transportation asset management interventions accomplish their intended purposes. Ph.D. students Margaret-Avis Akofio-Sowah and Janille Smith-Colin, in their third and fifth years of study, respectively, worked on the research with Jamie Montague Fischer, who finished her doctorate this month, as well as Professor Adjo Amekudzi Kennedy. In compiling the paper, students worked closely with a panel of asset management practicioners to identify key themes and areas of focus.
The project, supported by the Georgia Department of Transportation, will ultimately lead to the development of an evidence-based database for managing transportation infrastructure. The team has already put in a follow-up paper for the 2015 TRB meeting in January that outlines the design of that database and how it could be used.
NCTSPM is pleased to announce the selection of a Georgia Tech graduate student to receive the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program Scholarship.
Denise Smith is a native of Landover, Maryland, and she received her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineeirng from Vanderbilt University in May 2011. In August 2011, she began her career as a graduate student at Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. As a student in the Transportation Systems Engineering Program, Denise has a research focus centered on freight transportation modelling and environmental analysis.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program offers substantial scholarship support to underrepresented minority students who are beingging their doctoral work in engineering, natural science, and mathematics. Since its establishment in 1995, the program has provided support to more than 900 minority students.
It often takes a basket lift, hammers and chisels, and lots of safety equipment when a work crew inspects one of the nation’s 600,000 bridges.
The federal government requires such analyses every two years for each of those spans, a costly and time-consuming endeavor.
But what if we could install sensors that would deliver data wirelessly on a bridge’s condition, allowing transportation engineers to monitor its health all the time?
The technology has the potential to be a game-changer in nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Research and Technology.
“In this country, the average age of our bridges is 42 years old. They’re getting older and older, and there’s no budget to fix them all,” said Yang Wang, a CEE associate professor who’s leading the project.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates it will take more than $20 billion a year for 15 years to eliminate the nation’s backlog of deficient bridges. In its 2013 infrastructure report card, ASCE also noted governments are currently spending just $13 billion.
The wireless sensing devices Wang has been developing could help those governments make decisions about the most critical needs.
A Martlet wireless sensing node developed by Wang and Jacobs’ team. Users can fit this base unit with a variety of different circuit boards that connect to various sensors. (Photo Courtesy of Yang Wang.)
“The idea is to have low-cost systems that can be instrumented on the bridge and monitor the bridge’s condition so that we can use the limited resources [we have] on the most dangerous situations,” Wang said.
Wang has been working with CEE professor Laurence Jacobs on the project, along with collaborators from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Wireless sensing nodes in the BWIM/NDE system are placed on the bridge. They transmit data to a local gateway, which sends the data to researchers or transportation engineers via a cell-phone network. (Illustration Courtesy of Yang Wang.)
The sensing nodes cost just a few hundred dollars each, and they eliminate an expensive spider web of cabling and data processing for traditional sensor systems. The wireless nodes instead transmit their data to a small local gateway nearby that sends the data directly to researchers or engineers over cellular networks.
Those legacy systems are most often used now for significant “landmark” structures, Wang said. But his cheaper wireless technology could mean wider deployment.
“It would be impossible to instrument less-significant structures, everyday structures [right now]. That’s the motivation for our research, to develop those low-cost wireless sensing devices so that more and more bridges can be instrumented,” he said.
The project gets at the infrastructure-health problem another way, too, actually weighing the vehicles that traverse the bridge. Their data about the structure’s real-time response to traffic feeds a sophisticated computer model of the bridge, allowing for the calculation of gross vehicle weights and axle loading.
Researchers use a detailed model of the bridge and data from new wireless sensors to calculate gross vehicle weights and axle loading in real time. (Illustration Courtesy of Yang Wang.)
These data are called Bridge Weigh-in-Motion (BWIM), and they allow authorities to track—and police—overweight trucks.
That could help save money for local governments, allowing for fewer of the weigh stations common alongside highways and reducing wear and tear on roads and bridges in the first place.
Even with all the savings, however, Wang’s sensor systems probably won’t eliminate the need for trained eyes judging how the nation’s bridges are faring. They’ll just inform the process—and make it cheaper.
“We’re not trying to say we’re going to replace human evaluation,” Wang said. “I think there’s a certain value to human eyes, [which can see problems] that may be difficult for sensor to detect. But this can provide information so that there’s more data available for us to evaluate the bridge’s health.”
First-year Ph.D. student Atiyya Shaw has won support for her studies from the International Road Federation as a 
