Speaking

Engineering concepts. LOS. AADT. Travel Time Delay. Cross Section. High Injury Network. These are all concepts and acronyms transportation planners, engineers and safety experts work with every day, but they can be hard for the public to quickly understand not only what they mean but also why they are important.

This session will use real-life project examples across Ohio to discuss how planners can work hand in hand with engineers to develop strategies for translating complex engineering concepts into materials for public audiences by designing for diverse levels of understanding, determining when to incorporate supplemental information, deciding what accessibility standards should be considered and exploring alternative communication approaches. The result is an engagement and communication approach that both educates the public and gives them the tools they need to provide meaningful input on projects that impact them and their communities.

The Pleasant Valley Road Bridges Project showcases the delivery of multi-structure bridge improvements within the sensitive setting of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The project balanced infrastructure renewal with rigorous environmental stewardship, incorporating context-sensitive solutions to protect natural resources and meet permitting requirements.

Key challenges included maintaining traffic along a heavily used corridor and safely accommodating bicyclists and pedestrians. Innovative maintenance-of-traffic strategies and phased construction minimized disruptions while enhancing multimodal connectivity.

Bridge designs incorporated durable, low-maintenance materials and context-appropriate aesthetics to blend with the surrounding park landscape. This presentation highlights design innovations, environmental considerations and construction strategies that supported successful project delivery in a highly constrained and protected setting.

Active transportation projects in urban corridors often require designers to balance limited space, existing infrastructure, drainage standards, project costs and the safety and comfort of people walking and biking. While the Ohio Department of Transportation Location & Design Manual (Volume 2) provides critical drainage guidance for roadway corridors, applying that guidance to bicycle and pedestrian facilities requires thoughtful engineering judgment.

This presentation will explore how drainage design decisions can directly affect active transportation outcomes, focusing on bike facilities, raised crossings, shared use paths and open ditches and constrained right-of-way corridors. Design strategies will explore catch basin solutions in bicycle lanes, drainage design near raised crossings, ditch design in open-graded sections and ways to flex drainage design guidance. The presentation will also discuss owner coordination and how to adequately document deviations from maximum design guidance.

Attendees will leave with a framework for evaluating drainage solutions that support safe, buildable and cost-conscious active transportation improvements. The goal is not to lower the bar for drainage design but to apply engineering judgment in a way that balances drainage performance, user safety, constructability, cost and the overall purpose and need of the corridor.

Active Traffic Management (ATM) offers agencies a practical way to improve freeway safety, reliability and operations by using real-time data and responsive strategies such as part-time shoulder use, adaptive ramp metering, variable speed limits and speed harmonization. This presentation will highlight case studies and explore how ATM can be paired with geometric design considerations, including lane and shoulder width tradeoffs, design speed versus operating speed and stopping sight distance evaluations. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for optimizing existing infrastructure while preparing corridors for the future. 

Traffic signals are often viewed as a default solution for improving safety and managing traffic, but signals that no longer meet warrant criteria may create operational challenges, driver confusion and crash patterns that work against today’s safety goals. Over multiple projects spanning more than two decades, the City of Warren evaluated and removed unwarranted traffic signals as part of broader system upgrades. 

This presentation will examine how the city used the Ohio Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (OMUTCD) criteria, traffic data, public involvement and crash analysis to guide removal decisions and evaluate safety outcomes. The session will show how data confirmed where removal improved performance, identified locations needing countermeasures and supported conversations with stakeholders and the public.

Attendees will leave with insight into how agencies can right-size intersection control, document decisions, monitor safety performance and use crash data to communicate the benefits and limitations of signal removal. 

The Beach Road Bridge, completed in 2001, is a 203-foot cable-stayed span over Big Darby Creek in northern Franklin County, Ohio. Its design was selected to replace an older through-truss bridge while avoiding the construction of new substructure elements within the protected scenic river. Several key components—including the stay cables and the precast, post-tensioned lightweight-concrete superstructure—require specialized evaluation. Testing performed in 2022 identified grout voids, corrosion at anchorages and deterioration of the lightweight concrete. Laboratory analysis confirmed Alkali Silica Reactivity (ASR) as the primary cause of the concrete damage. A repair and preservation effort is currently underway, involving remedial grouting of tendons and anchorages, removal and replacement of deteriorated concrete and protective measures aimed at slowing further ASR-related deterioration. Construction is ongoing and is expected to be completed in summer 2026.

Attendees can apply insights from this presentation to strengthen evaluation and maintenance practices for cable-supported and post-tensioned bridges. The findings on ASR-related deterioration, tendon defects and anchorage corrosion can guide improved inspection planning, material selection and long-term preservation strategies. Attendees can also adapt the repair methods discussed to extend the service life and reliability of similar structures in their own agencies or projects.

Ramp metering is a proven Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) strategy that improves freeway safety and operations by regulating the rate at which vehicles enter the freeway system. Ramp meters help reduce crashes, minimize sudden braking and increase overall freeway capacity. ODOT operates approximately 40 ramp meters in the Columbus and Cincinnati metropolitan areas, where they are used to address congestion, improve traffic flow and enhance freeway operations during peak travel periods.

To support future deployment and modernization efforts, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) Franklin County Ramp Meter Study is currently underway. Early phases of the study have evaluated how other state DOTs implement and operate ramp metering systems while identifying potential updates to ODOT policies and practices. This session will provide an overview of ramp metering concepts and benefits, review the history and current use of ramp metering in Ohio and discuss potential future strategies for implementing and operating ramp meters across the state.

Three years into the six-year implementation of the Specification for the National Bridge Inventory (SNBI), the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) has successfully moved from initial planning to full-scale execution. Co-led by B&N's Mike Brokaw and Jared Backs from ODOT, the session explores the practical realities of transitioning Ohio's 45,000 bridge records into a modernized, data-driven framework.

Jared and Mike will address the challenges and questions: what is the SNBI, why did it change, how do component condition ratings work in practice and what are our practical next steps? 

This session will demonstrate how safety can (and should) be integrated throughout the entire project development process (PDP). In recent years, several research initiatives and presentations on how to better consider safety during the planning and prioritization process have been published, but carrying safety through to design, construction and maintenance work has been less prevalent. While we will address safety across all stages of the PDP, we will emphasize the later stages, where comprehensive safety integration is still less common.

Key applications to be discussed—and supported with real-world examples—will include prioritizing context-sensitive target speeds, pushing back on the design standards some engineers have been taught to rely on as dogma, designing roadways that align with human tolerance for risk and institutionalizing true Road Safety Audits as defined by FHWA—which extends beyond the early planning stages of a project.

Active transportation project performance is frequently shaped by routine design decisions related to intersection geometry, crossing treatments, speed management, curbside use and allocation of limited right-of-way. This session will help engineers, planners and agency staff explain active transportation value in contexts often misunderstood or framed as tradeoffs.

Using case-study examples, the presentation will examine demonstration projects, roundabouts, crosswalks and parking changes as tools for improving safety, comfort, access and connectivity. Topics include using quick-build projects to test concepts, gather feedback and build support; reframing roundabouts as speed management and safer crossings; evaluating when paint alone is insufficient and discussing parking through safety, access, curbside function and compromise.

Participants will leave with practical language and technical framing for familiar, sometimes controversial design scenarios.