Speaking

Downtown Phoenix is rapidly changing. Nearly 100 active developments are underway, with concentrations in three high-growth areas. By 2025, a 66% increase in population, 61% increase in number of households, and 13% increase in employment are anticipated. There has also been a shift in travel modes within and to downtown Phoenix. 

The Downtown Transportation Study evaluated system improvements to address accessibility, circulation, and safety. A robust planning process that engaged the public including residents and business owners, interest groups, and city departments and leadership was utilized. Ultimately the planning process will lead to a final study document to be reviewed by City Council. Complex traffic analysis tools were developed to integrate travel modes and incorporate future transportation improvements already underway, such as light rail transit extensions. The session will share information on items such as:

• Stakeholder engagement process
• Complex traffic operations modeling (macro, meso, and microscopic modeling)
• Accommodating future unknown development (sensitivity analysis)
• Transit oriented development and parking challenges
• Intersection pedestrian scrambles and new HAWK locations
• Increasing travel within existing right-of-way
• Evaluating opportunity corridors for enhanced multimodal travel
• Ride-share considerations
• One-way to two-way street conversions
• Lessons learned

Three steel bridges located on a remote stretch of Interstate 15 in northern Arizona are currently the subject of a study involving inspection, load testing, long-term instrumentation and remote structural health monitoring. The project is being funded by the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) through a FHWA Accelerated Innovation Deployment Grant.

The purpose of the project is to utilize state-of-the-art structural health monitoring (SHM) systems to provide actionable information that will ensure the safety of the traveling public and provide real, practical data to assist ADOT in short-and-long-term decision making about these significant and remote bridges. The systems include strain gages, crack growth detection sensors, temperature sensors, acoustic emissions, traffic detection, and cameras with a remote data logging system transmitting data to a website. The website allows elements of the bridge to be monitored remotely by ADOT in real time, and the functionality of the website will also be demonstrated live. These bridges demonstrate widespread fatigue and distortion-induced cracking in primary steel members which has been monitored by conventional methods during past visual inspections.

The presentation will provide a status update on the project which began in 2016 and is ongoing through 2020. The presentation will include a history of the bridges, visual inspection efforts & documentation, analytical modeling work, load testing and instrumentation, instrumentation selection, fatigue analysis, site & other challenges, and long-term monitoring strategies, including development of the monitoring website. The presentation will include perspectives of ADOT, the bridge owner; Burgess & Niple, the prime bridge engineering firm; and BDI, the SHM specialists.

MCDOT completed the Transportation System Plan (TSP) 2035 in 2017 and subsequently began the TSP 2040 approximately two years later. TSP 2035 identified several project identification and programming needs; MCDOT completed over ten studies in the short time between TSP 2035 and 2040. This allows planning and prioritization of projects spanning additional need categories, such as active transportation and ITS. This presentation will discuss:

• Integration of ten need categories into their long range plan
• New data sets for planning and programming
• Scenario planning to test the future network
• Recommended investment choice for outer year programming flexibility
• Stakeholder engagement, including interactive map 
• Identification and programming for “complete” projects

MCDOT and B&N presenters will share lessons learned and implemented thus far in the planning process.