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CEE Transportation Researchers Tackle Critical Topics at 95th TRB Annual Meeting
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) faculty and student researchers weighed in on topics of critical importance at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 95th Annual meeting, held in Washington, D.C., Jan. 10-14, 2016. The University of Maryland’s participation in the TRB resulted in dozens of UMD-led committee/sub-committee meetings, workshops, presentations, and tentatively accepted publications. Additionally, the National Transportation Center at the University of Maryland (NTC@Maryland) and CEE organized a special networking reception on Jan. 11, drawing nearly 200 transportation researchers and industry representatives. Photos from the reception are available online. Among the myriad topics addressed at this year’s TRB were high-speed rail, resilience of networked infrastructure, and new tools for visualizing and communicating performance at national, state, and local levels. Airplane and car are the dominant modes serving demand for long-distance traveling in the United States; however, high-speed rail is estimated to become available across the country in 2030. Recognizing this, CEE Professor Ali Haghani, and CEE Associate Professor and NTC@Maryland Director Lei Zhang, and CEE graduate student Moschoula Pternea set out to investigate the impact of the high-speed rail entry in the transportation market for long distance trips. In their TRB presentation, “Optimal pricing for high-speed rail under competition with airplane and car: The Case of the Northeast Corridor,” the group discussed how they examined the topic from the railway operator’s perspective by applying revenue management techniques in order to determine optimal fares for each origin-destination pair and trip purpose. Their findings suggest that higher prices should be charged for pairs with high demand, while an increase in railway speeds leads to an increase in the average fare. In collaboration with Eyal Levenberg of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Reza Faturechi of JetBlue Airways, CEE Professor Elise Miller-Hooks and CEE graduate student Ali Asadabadi tackled the importance of quantifying the resilience of a network of pavements in their paper, “Resilience of Networked Infrastructure with Evolving Component Conditions.” The team carried out calculations by modeling network performance under a set of possible damage-meteorological scenarios with known probability of occurrence. Their findings show that resilience is impacted by the condition of the infrastructure elements, their natural deterioration processes, and prevailing maintenance plans. Along with G. Zhang of the Federal Highway Administration and Shawn Turner of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory’s (CATT Lab) Michael Pack, Michael VanDaniker, and Nikola Ivanov discussed tools and ideas for visualizing, exploring, and communicating performance. VanDaniker, Pack, and G. Zhang showcased interactive web-based visualizations for exploring and downloading modeled hourly passenger and truck vehicle miles traveled (VMT) data by road classification, along with fatality data. Ivanov and Pack then demonstrated tools and methodologies developed to help federal, state, and local agencies understand their performance, establish targets, and compare performance from year-to-year across multiple agencies. Afterwards, Turner and Pack showcased real-world pitfalls of not using highly standardized definitions for performance measures across the industry. A comprehensive list of CEE-led committees/sub-committees, workshops, presentations, and paper and poster titles is available below: Committees/subcommittees chaired included:
Workshops/presentations given at the TRB 94th Annual Meeting included:
Paper and poster titles included:
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