Image courtesy ADVANTEC
Coachella Valley, Calif. agencies are striving to create a connected, high-tech road system.
From use of artificial intelligence to new asphalt mixes, stakeholders around the world continue to seek ways to build, maintain and operate roads and highways that are safer, more resilient and more equitable.
The European Union recently implemented requirements for environmental information on construction products, requiring reporting on lifecycle impacts such as global warming potential, recyclability and resource efficiency, noted Michael Gruber, a researcher at the Institute for Transportation Sciences at TU Wien, a university in Vienna. Speaking to attendees of the International Road Federation conference held in Long Beach, Calif., Dec. 8-11, he said his institution is working on software to create reporting for asphalt mixes.
Thierry Goger, secretary-general with the European National Highway Research Laboratories, also noted the European Union Circularity Circuit—a broad push for an economy of closed-loop systems of reuse, repair, and recycle with key initiatives such as circular construction in regenerative cities. His agency is using digitization to aid in determining new asphalt mixes, recycling cementitious materials for bridge slabs and reusing existing bridge elements on new structures. Other goals include adaptive lighting for bridge traffic flows, 3D printing for bridge elements and identifying “where circularity can be embedded” in a project’s lifecycle.
Eliot Wall, general manager of GAF, which provides asphalt coatings and sealants meant to create “cool pavements,” said its various U.S. projects include use of epoxy-coated acrylic coating with a solar reflective additive to keep pavement about 10 to 12° cooler than uncoated surfaces.
Other speakers described projects that use technology to optimize traffic signals and flows. The city of Arcadia, Calif., is piloting a cloud platform that allows traffic engineers to proactively optimize traffic signals for buses, ambulances and other priority vehicles, especially during major events, said Ravindra Kondagunta, CEO of Connected Signals, the technology provider.
The pilot program has resulted in time savings of 26% to respond to incidents and up to 35% to get to a hospital, he said.
Masoud Hamedi, data science director at Iteris, described its ClearGuide software that was used to manage traffic during an 11-mile, $650-million freeway reconstruction project in Arizona. On-demand camera imagery of road and traffic conditions, aided by AI, helped inform such decisions as giving the contractor a bigger work zone in one location and shifting construction closures to better times, such as after school dismissal.
Carlos Ortiz, CEO of ADVANTEC Consulting Engineers, described a pilot program to create a connected, digitized road network in Coachella Valley, Calif., working with 12 agencies and implementing 12,000 intelligent transportation elements across 12 corridors.
The elements include smart CCTV systems with analytics, cellular vehicle-to-everything (v2x) roadside units, changeable message signs and secured ethernet fiber optic communications.
Aileen Cho, ENR’s deputy editor for infrastructure, is a born-again Angeleno 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. She has been honored, solo or with ENR colleagues, with several journalism awards. For ENR, she has traveled the world, clambering over bridges, touring airports, and descending into tunnels. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun (bridge engineers aren’t far behind). She 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 Eagle Rock, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.
