AASHTO Journal, 25 July 2014
The Research Advisory Committee (RAC) of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ Standing Committee on Research (SCOR) recently announced its 2014 Sweet 16 High Value Research Projects.
Each year, RAC collects High Value Research highlights from state transportation departments across the nation to showcase projects that are providing transportation excellence through research. This year, more than 100 nominations were received from states to compete for the top spots. Regional RAC committees then selected four from their regions to comprise the Sweet 16. The list of 2014 Sweet 16 projects is as follows:
- Wyoming Department of Transportation’s “Managing Risks in the Project Pipeline” research, which is amounting to a savings of $90 million over a decade;
- Indiana Department of Transportation’s Joint Transportation Research Program, which looked at whether truck permit revenues were covering costs of highway damage;
- South Carolina Department of Transportation’s “Rate of Deterioration of Bridges and Pavements as Affected by Trucks” research, which also assessed the effects of overweight trucks on bridges and pavement in order to update SCDOT policy;
- South Dakota Department of Transportation’s pavement research project to determine which pavement types would and would not see increased damage upon allowing wide-based tires to carry the same loads as dual-tires;
- New Hampshire Department of Transportation’s “Performance of W-Beam Guardrail after Height Adjustment” research, in which NHDOT conducted a field evaluation of raising guardrails instead of replacing them after resurfacing roadways;
- Iowa Department of Transportation’s assessment and repair protocols for flood damage, which included the development of a “technical toolbox to evaluate hidden flood damage and recommend specific repair and mitigation strategies;”
- Missouri Department of Transportation’s research to find efficiencies in its load rating system, allowing the department to more precisely determine loading effects of trucks on culverts with various fill thicknesses;
- West Virginia Department of Transportation’s research on slope stabilization design and the creation of PSSLOPE, which helps engineers better model loads transferred to piles from the soil;
- New York State Department of Transportation’s research on field methods for determining lead content in bridge paint removal waste;
- Washington State Department of Transportation’s testing to use recycled concrete aggregate as a replacement for natural aggregate in new concrete pavement;
- Montana Department of Transportation’s testing and evaluation of recovered traction sanding material, which found cost savings in recycling traction sand applied to winter roadways;
- Maryland State Highway Administration’s research regarding an automated low-cost and real-time truck parking information system;
- Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s research study on improving mature driver safety addressing the challenge of mobility, which then created strategies and partnerships to address this;
- Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development’s series of research and implementation studies showing that placing edge lines on rural two-lane highways helps how drivers position their vehicles, therefore reducing crashes;
- Mississippi Department of Transportation’s Performance Evaluation of Roundabouts for Traffic Delay and Crash Reductions, which found a 38 percent reduction in crashes and a roughly $806,000 user savings;
- Kansas Department of Transportation’s test on the effectiveness of portable plastic rumble strips for short-term work zone safety;
Additional information on all Sweet 16 projects is available here.