Speaking

Thoroughfare planning, once focused solely on managing congestion and maximizing vehicular efficiency, is undergoing a transformation to align with evolving transportation priorities. Traditional approaches to thoroughfare planning optimized motorist experience, often emphasizing vehicular level of service and roadway capacity. Today’s thoroughfare planning should begin with understanding land use context and how our roads can support our desired growth patterns, improve safety and support multimodal options. Jurisdictions across Ohio are turning to this more flexible planning approach to address issues of equity, access, safety concerns, environmental and fiscal sustainability, and building places where people want to be. We’ll share this new lens of thoroughfare planning at multiple scales – from small to midsize cities such as the City of Gahanna up to countywide plans such as Licking and Fayette Counties. 

The use of a Design-Build (DB) contract on a new gateway bridge into downtown Cambridge, Ohio, drove innovations that led to an efficient and economical design and construction. The GUE-209-08.550 project was an Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT)-let, two-step DB project to replace an existing five-span, 848-foot-long, fracture-critical, twin steel girder bridge over Wills Creek and the Genesee and Wyoming railroad. The proposed bridge is an 863-foot-long, five-span, curved steel girder structure on pile-supported cast-in-place abutments and 75-foot-tall concrete piers on drilled shafts and spread footings.

This presentation will include designer and contractor perspectives discussing how innovative home plate footing design was developed to minimize material costs and avoid existing subsurface foundations, how a buildable unit design approach enabled early material procurement to meet the schedule and challenges that had to be overcome such as demolition, substructure design, girder erection, railroad coordination and site flooding.

To advance implementation of a Safe System Approach, FHWA initiated a project to identify Safe System solutions for highway safety improvement projects. Two tools have been developed to measure alignment of the Safe System in projects and policies. Additionally, the Safe System Design Hierarchy characterizes engineering and infrastructure-based countermeasures and strategies relative to their alignment to the Safe System Approach. Real applications will be used to demonstrate the tools and the findings from this effort.

This presentation will be shared with Cory Hopwood, PE, RSP2I, of Cambridge Systematics. 

The Clark County-Springfield Transportation Coordinating Committee (CCSTCC) wanted to locate where single-lane roundabouts would improve safety, efficiency, and mobility across Clark County. Future project development will utilize a list of "Top 50" intersections. Using a statistical methodology and publicly available GIS data, the team listed key screening criteria and a weighted ranking to analyze a majority of the intersections across the county. Using a dynamically weighted system, the team could create different priority scenarios and see in real-time intersections that continually come to the top of the list regardless of the scenario. Public feedback captured through an interactive ESRI webpage and survey provided additional data points to identify intersections for roundabouts. Preliminary layouts at the top 10 locations were developed to provide costs and confirm implementation feasibility.

Some of the many challenges encountered when planning bike trails include site accessibility, field visit documentation, surveying and design costs and environmental impacts. Innovative applications of drone technology and GIS software can be used to overcome these obstacles and create well-thought-out bike trails at a manageable cost. This presentation will explore various projects throughout central Ohio where B&N has utilized ArcGIS, high-accuracy GNSS positioning receivers and unmanned aerial aircraft to find innovative solutions for projects traditionally completed using only CADD software, for clients such as the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department, Metro Parks, CCSTCC and the Union County Engineer. The union of modern technology with established roadway and bridge design techniques helps find the balance between designing constructible projects, reducing impacts to trees and waterways, and optimizing trail user experience. 

The traveling public is demanding increased mobility while displaying less tolerance for delays, increased travel times, and inconvenience because of congestion. This demand is forcing designers to become more creative with the maintenance of traffic (MOT) during construction.

This presentation will highlight some innovative strategies to add to the MOT toolbox, including freeway re-alignment, the use of interchange ramps to divert traffic and even new interchange configurations through several case study examples. It will also identify best practices other states are implementing, such as Smart Work Zones, Use of ITS and Zipper Merges, as they strive for safer and more efficient work zones. The audience will leave this presentation with a toolbox of innovative strategies for maintaining traffic through work zones that maximize travel time reliability without compromising safety. 

Organizational culture, or encompassing shared attitudes and values, greatly impacts employee retention. Recent studies show that culture has up to 10 times more influence than compensation. Too many teams operate in Thermometer mode, a reactionary strategy where the culture only reacts to the environment it is in. The best leaders operate in Thermostat mode, where they know the temperature they are trying to set as a leader and a collective team. No matter what is happening in the external environment, they proactively set the temperature they desire. This presentation explores the definition of workplace culture and focuses on key drivers of diversity, job security, and recognition, to improve the culture and drive creativity, innovation, and talent through the organization. It will talk through the four calibration topics of mission, vision, values, and strategy, using real-world case studies and examples to highlight best practices for achieving a thermostat culture.

FHWA has expanded the criteria for eligibility for SS4A Planning and Demonstration funding, and we have an innovative example to get your gears spinning for the next funding cycles: The City of Peoria, Arizona, utilized a GIS-based solution for planning, engagement, and education for Safe Routes to school. Funding could be pursued to develop a plan, a GIS inventory and create similar tools to enhance your existing or future safety plans.

Can't Have Innovation Without Education! 

How can YOU help with education? This presentation will explore some of the gaps in transportation education and highlights its importance for all ages. It will also give examples of how individuals and organization can make a change by looking inwards, then outwards and finally some out-of-the-box ideas on how to spread transportation education outside of the transportation field. 

The collection of reality data with a UAS with a digital twin has proven to be a valuable tool in augmenting traditional inspections by utilizing remote visualization. As technology improves, these advancements, with digital twins, can assist inspectors.

This presentation will highlight how B&N partnered with Bentley Systems to use these tools to augment existing workflows to perform detailed inspections and provide valuable data insights to their clients on multiple projects.  This includes drone photo acquisition, 3D reality mesh creation, photo navigation alongside the 3D model, inspection forms with georeferenced issues, mobile tools used in the field, and the integration and visualization of remote sensors. The tools and associated workflow enhancements reduced time spent in the field, improved worker safety and produced a more comprehensive data-rich deliverable than traditional methods.  In addition to highlighting the tools used in the inspection workflows, the presentation will cover other tools currently in development, including artificial intelligence-assisted defect detection.