Intelligent Vehicles, Tools and Collaboration Hot Topics At Transportation Meeting

From automated vehicles to infrared bars that check for uniform temperatures in paved asphalt, the transportation industry is embracing high-tech tools and concepts. The current two-year federal legislation called MAP-21 promotes many such initiatives, including enhanced intelligent construction data, to help builders and operators achieve greater efficiency, reliability and safety in moving people and goods.

MAP-21 also includes an emphasis on improved freight networks—a watershed inclusion that inspired multiple sessions at the Transportation Research Board's 92nd annual meeting on Jan. 13-17. The sessions consistently featured representatives from air, marine, road and rail interests, unlike most mode-specific sessions.

"For all modes, all business models are changing," said Jim Crites, executive vice president of operations for the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. "We welcome dialogue with other modes so that all our regions can benefit." Fran Inman, a California Transportation Commission member, noted that air, marine, road and rail industries "are all in this together. We're all wearing the same jerseys … and we're also interwoven with energy solutions."

In fact, intermodal traffic is the fastestgrowing segment of the rail industry, said John Gray, senior vice president of policy and economics for the Association of American Railroads. The Class 1 railroads spent $13 billion on capital improvements in 2012, compared to $5.9 billion in 2003, building infrastructure "even through the recession," Gray said.

More high-tech sessions addressed advancements in specific areas such as asphalt paving. Brett Stanton, corporate technical services manager for Payne & Dolan Inc., described experiences with infrared bars attached to the back of a paver. Each bar has 12 sensors, GPS, cabling and a computer to check for areas in the pavement that vary in temperature. Such temperature inconsistencies can cut in half the designed life of an asphalt-paved road.

"The bars offer continuous mapping and recording in real time," unlike density tests, infrared guns and cameras, he noted. "But they are expensive, and there is a learning curve." The setup may hamper the paver operator's mobility, he added.

Some of TRB's most-attended sessions covered the future of autonomous vehicles, which are regulated in California, Nevada and Florida but legal elsewhere. Along with Google's fleet, other experimental autonomous vehicles are poised to enter the market.

These next-generation vehicles and advanced transportation modes will have to include adequate high-visibility pavement markings for the vehicle sensors to "read," dedicated lanes for autonomous transit, and shared vehicle and communications infrastructure.

Aileen Cho, ENR's senior transportation editor, is a native of Los Angeles and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many of her experiences with engineers and contractors have inspired material for her alternative theater productions way, way off Broadway. For ENR, Aileen has traveled the world, clambering over bridges in China, touring an airport in Abu Dhabi and descending into dark subway tunnels in New York City. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun. Aileen is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Long Beach, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

Jim Parsons is a freelance writer who covers the industry from metro Washington, DC.

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