Mike on Traffic

Miovision Special - 10% Off at www.CountingCars.com

I didn't want to get lost in the clutter of Cyber Monday, so I'm going with Thankful Tuesday.  Type in "Miovision" as the coupon code at www.CountingCars.com to get 10% off the following turning movement count solutions:

• COUNTpad
• COUNTcam 40
• COUNTcam 120
• PC-TAS
• PC-TAS/COUNTpad Office Package
• COUNTcam 120 Starter Package
• Video Counting Starter Package 40
• Video Counting Starter Package 120

Miovision has a good system if you want to completely outsource your turning movement counting and can afford their rates.  Our system is a much more cost effective way to use video though - allowing you to utilize your own staff, keep control of your videos, control when the counting gets done, and reduce your OVERALL expenses by more than 50%.

With the CountingCars.com system, you video the intersection (up to 40 hours with the COUNTcam 40 or 120 hours with the COUNTcam 120 - clever naming, I know), you watch the video with PC-TAS video viewer/counting software, and you do the count with the COUNTpad (do up to four classificaitons, bikes, peds, and u-turns as well as the standard movements). 

The killer features of the PC-TAS/COUNTpad system are:

• the FASTER/SLOWER toggles so your people can be extremeley efficient while staying accurate
• the PAUSE button so you can take a break (anyone who's counted in the field will see the genious of being able to take a bathroom break)
• the SAVE/CONTINUE feature so you can stop midcount at the end of the day and come right back to the second you left off the next day
• count during regular business hours, Monday through Friday, from the comfort of your office

Go to www.CountingCars.com to check out our different products.  Please email me at mspack@countingcars.com or call me at 952.926.0916 if you have any questions about our products (including our rental/demo services).

Note - the "Miovision" code is good through the end of 2011.  Thanks!

Utah DOT's Innovative ThrUTurn Intersection

The Utah state DOT has come up with a creative solution to fix a congested intersection and an even more creative video to explain the problem/solution.  I am very impressed with the video below (prepared by the transportation engineering/planning firm Avenue Consultants).  Check out the project website for more information on the through/u-turn project.  For a lot more background on the ThrUTurn concept, check out http://thruturnintersections.org/. 

Traffic Data Inc. in the Star Tribune

There's an article in today's Star Tribune regarding the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise system.  Pat Doyle, who wrote the story, called me multiple times and frankly made me a little anxious.  The article is about businesses who are owned by white women who get the DBE status, but may have male family members working in the business.  The article states:

Traffic Data Inc. provides detailed traffic count information for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), the Met Council, counties and cities. The firm began in 2001 and got DBE status the next year.

Mike Spack, who worked as a traffic engineer for Maple Grove, said his wife, Jane, owned the firm "and I was helping her out" but she "quickly became a stay-at-home mom and I took over."

Traffic Data lost its DBE status in 2005. "Involuntary removal/owner not controlling business," Met Council records show.

"They said, 'It looks like Mike's running the show, not Jane,'" Spack recalled. "It was a collaborative idea. Where one starts and the other one doesn't is interesting."

As with anyone who's talked with the media, you know they don't always tell the whole story.  Here's how I tried to describe it Pat:

We started TDI in 2001 while I was a full time employee at Maple Grove and Jane was leaving teaching to stay at home with our daughter Maria.  We came up with counting cars as a part-time business to make a little money on the side.  Jane owned it and helped run it, but of course it's my industry and my contacts. 

We explained this gray area explicity to Pat Calder at the Met Council through the application interview.  We weren't sure ourselves whether or not we should be DBE certified (even though colleagues were pushing me to get the status).  In 2002 she didn't see any issues with how we were setup and put us in the DBE system.

A series of events later, I was working in TDI full time by 2005 and Jane was mostely a stay at home mom.  We explained the situation to Pat Calder in 2005 (they regularly check-in with the DBE firms).  She advised it sounds like we are no longer a DBE and we didn't disagree.  Pat said the easiest course of action was to let our DBE status expire at the end of the year but it was our choice and we could apply for renewal.

We opted to let the status expire (remeber we weren't sure if we should have been a DBE in the first place).  So, I think our situation was a little more nuanced than "Involuntary removal/owner not controlling business."  I think the terminology in the Star Tribune article implies this was a much bigger deal than it actually was.

As Pat Doyle points out in his article - the DBE system is very nuanced (murky?).  I do see value in the DBE system and support it.  One reform I'd like to see though would be term limits.  Accoding to the Small Business Administration, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years.  Couldn't one argue a small business is no longer disadvantaged if it's been in business 7-10 years (I know multiple DBE businesses that have been around for more than 15 years)?

Expert Witness Do's and Dont's

Tort law (at least in Minnesota) is very clear that road authorities have the right to place medians on roads to limit access to cross streets or driveways.  I routinely get called by lawyers and property owners trying to fight this type of project.  Nine times out of ten I tell them there's nothing I can do to help them (in the majority of these cases the median closure makes sense from a traffic engineering perspective and I assume the road authority has done their due diligence).

A few months ago I was hired in one of these cases, but it had a twist so it was the 1 out of 10 I work on.  The median had already been put in and the gas station who's driveway was closed is suffering.  The lawyer thought he might have found a loophole and they were in arbitration with the county over the project.

All I did was count the cars coming in/out of the site over 24 hours (thanks to our COUNTcam video systems) and then compare that to what we would expect for traffic generation at the site based on the ITE Trip Generation Report.  I was just benchmarking if the site was underperforming from a traffic perspective.  Turns out the site is only generating about 50% of the traffic that would be expected from a typical gas station.

This was a technically straightforward, factual study.  My client then had me present my study at the arbitration hearing.  I routinely present to city councils and county boards, but this was my first time as an expert witness in a "court hearing."  It went fine, but I found being cross-examined was more stressful than testifying at a public hearing (maybe it's just an experience level).

Now that I've been an expert witness, here's my top 10 do's/dont's for testifying (they apply to presenting to city councils too):

1. DO give your credentials.
2. DO tell the truth.  Stick to the facts.
3. DON'T speculate.  Answer "I don't know" when you don't know.
4. DON'T volunteer information.
5. DO stop talking if interrupted.
6. DON'T use jargon.
7. DO take your time to think.  Make sure the lawyer is done with their question.
8. DO answer with a yes or no when asked a yes or no question. 
9. DON'T answer questions you don't understand.  Ask for clarification.
10. DO cite sources when describing technical analysis.

 

Photos/Observations of Traffic from New York City

A few weeks ago Jane and I were lucky enough to spend a long weekend on Manhatten (thanks to our folks for watching our kids!).  Go to flickr (here) for a bunch of photos I took of intersections and bike/pedestrian treatments (and yes I deserve some grief for being a geeky traffic engineer).  I would have liked these photos when I was working on the painted bumpouts in Pine Island, MN - feel free to use them.

Several traffic observations:

• Holy cow that's a lot of bike/ped vehicle traffic mixing.  New Yorkers eek every ounce out of the system by jaywalking, merging late, running yellow lights.
• We only saw one fender bender.  I thought our cabbie was going to get us into a couple just getting to our hotel from JFK.
• The signal systems are tiny.  They must be a lot cheaper than the systems in Minnesota.
• Signal controllers look quite old and I heard the clunking of a mechanical controller.  The system is so saturated, I really don't know if operations could be much improved with updated signal controller technology.
• A lot of innovative treatments (see photos) to improve life for bikes and peds.
• We used the subway a lot and loved it.  Amazing how crowded they were even on a weekend.
• Should have warn a pedometer.  We were on our feet for 10+ hours a day.
• And yes, I walked all of the way across the Brooklyn Bridge and back (I don't know how any civil engineer could skip that).
• Kind of hard to talk about congestion in Minnesota now that I've experienced New York City.
• Non-traffic but worth noting - The 9/11 Memorial was amazingly well done.

 

Roundabout Rule of Thumb for Preliminary Layout

Roundabouts are becoming increasingly popular.  Given their operating characteristics, I think they're better than traffic signals for controlling traffic at the main entrance into most developments.  Signals work best at intersections that have high traffic volumes over 8+ hours a day.  A lot of entrances into major developments (whether they're residential, commerical, or office) have big peaks in traffic for a few hours of the day, but often don't have sustained traffic throughout the day.  At off peak times roundabouts cause a lot less delay than signals.

A lot of the civil designers and landscape architects who put together the site layouts for major developments don't have experience with roundabouts.  Below is a sketch that can help site designers put together a rough layout for the entrance intersection (info is based on a class I took taught by Ourston Roundabout Engineering).  There's a lot of tweaking that will happen in the final design of the roundabout, but just knowing the rough diameter of the circle is enough to move ahead with the internal design of the site.

App for Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices

TrafData has come out with another interesting App for the traffic engineering community.  It looks like an easy way to move through the FHWA's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.  Below is a video from Gary Shoup about the new product.  At $1.99 it's a steal.  This drill down method on an iPhone or iPad is so much easier than wading through pdfs.

I don't think I'm going to buy it though.  Minnesota has it's own version of the MUTCD and I'd be leary of grabbing one of the few items that isn't consistent with the Federal version. 

There are a lot of resources out there that would be very handy to have on my iPhone.  Here are a few I can think of:

• MnDOT's Temporary Traffic Control Zones Layouts Field Manual
• The Highway Capacity Manual
• MnDOT's Traffic Safety Handbook
• Actually - all standard specifications, standard plates, and design manuals.

And a couple of tools that would be useful:

• A type of quick screen menu for building and then conducting surveys.
• I don't think the iPhone's gps is accurate enough, but I'd love to be able to do accurate travel time runs with it.

Lessons Learned - Experience from Minnesota's first Multi-Lane Roundabout

I saw Joe Gustafson, PE, PTOE of Washington County give a great presentation at last week's NCITE meeting.  He talked about the County's experience with Minnesota's first two lane roundabout (at least the first roundabout with two lanes on all approaches). 

Joe shared his powerpoint (Download Roundabout 2-Year Study NCITE Oct2011) with me and also pointed me to an online edition of the presentation (this was a rehash of a presentation he originally gave at TRB).  If you work with roundabouts, I highly recommend you watch the 20 minute online edition of the presentation.  Per minute, it's the most informative roundabout training I've had (and I've sat through more than 60 hours of seminars and classes on roundabouts in the last 11 years).

A few highlights -

• Compared to a nearby signalized intersection that is very comparable in traffic volumes and entering roads, the roundabout adds about 12.5 seconds of control delay to the average through movements in the p.m. peak hour while the signal adds 29.5 seconds of delay to comparable through movements.  The left turns operate even better - 18.1 seconds of control delay at the roundabout versus 43.7 seconds at the signal.  The roundabout is operating a lot better during rush hour than the signal.
• No injury crashes, no wrong way crashes, sideswipe crashes are rare, crashes where cars run into the center island are rare.  However there have been 140 fender benders in the four years since it opened.  City of Woodbury police is keeping a separate, detailed record because most of the crashes don't even get reported to the Department of Public Safety. 
• Fender bender rate is high.  There is a systematic failure of people coming into the roundabout to yield to the people in the inside lane who are legally exiting the roundabout (see picture).  Joe has a great explanation of the crashes in the online edition of his presentation.

Lessons Learned -

• Our industry needs to be consistent with our message - entry and exit maneuvers are through movements at a roundabout (not merges or turns).
• Don't build more lanes than needed.
• Don't refer to the "circle" as one road.  Think of it as four different intersections, each one made up of two crossing one-way streets (see diagram).
• Roundabout signs - use standard turn arrow signs, but tweak by adding a dot representing the roundabout (don't try to use "fish-hook" and other confusing signs).
• Use 8 inch stripes at exit lanes for better visibility.
• Do a lot more human factors testing on methods for conveying that the entry into a roundabout is a straight movement (not a merge or right turn).

Joe - thanks for the great presentation and for sharing your materials with me!

Real World Sign Retroreflectivity Tests

Thanks to federal regulation, all agencies need to keep an accurate sign inventory and ensure their signs meet certain retroreflectivity requirements (translation - know what signs you have and make sure the signs reflect enough light at night so motorists can see them). 

Robert Wunderlich (City of Garland Texas Senior Managing Director of Transportation/Engineering along with being ITE's International President) posted the following test results on ITE's Traffic Engineering Council bulletin board on the ITE Community page (if you're a member of ITE you really should get plugged into the ITE Community page - it's a great resource).  Thanks Robert for letting me share this!

Dear Colleagues:

Thanks to our friends at the City of Denton, Texas, we had the use of a retroreflectometer (RRmeter) for the past two weeks. 

We used it to see if we could use some leftover Engineer Grade (EG) materials to make comparison panels or calibration signs and I did a little nighttime measuring in my neighborhood.

New Engineer Grade Test Results

Color	Min	EG measurement
White	120, 50, 35	123-125
Yellow	75	76-78
Red	7	17-18
Green	15	15

So, we have a lot of what we need already. Most of the paper exceeded these values.  We had to dig for some of this. We're looking for some older white signs that might be closer to the 50 and 35 values.  Most of the new EG white was around 100 cd/lx/m2.  It's hard to find new EG red lower than 17 or 18, but stopping's pretty important so setting a threshold around there is probably OK.  Most green is above 15 but we found a portion of a roll that measures 15. 

Rolls tend to vary considerably and it absolutely impossible to determine what the RR value will be just looking at it during the day.

Field Measurements

I highly recommend taking a RRmeter out during the night and checking signs.  It brings these values to reality and there's no substitute for going out and understanding what they mean.

Mr. Robert's Neighborhood (not in Garland, by the way)

I found New Hi-Intensity sheeting exceeds the minimums by an order of magnitude.  Signs really have to be quite bad to not meet the minimums, although the 3:1 white:red ratio gets some otherwise acceptable signs.  I will say that these signs do not reflect a bright, deep fire engine red (like a new Hi-Intensity one does) but it's not going to get confused with any other color either.

Quite frankly, I believe that any sign that doesn't meet these minimums would be judged unacceptable by any of us or our sign crews.  In fact, our crews probably would have much higher thresholds than the minimum.  Lot's of old EG signs still meet the minimum (even when they've been egged, and boy, there's a lot of that out there)  There's no way to tell what a sign will reflect at night by looking at it during the day.  Some signs that look pretty crappy in the day meet the RR mins.  Not saying that we should keep crappy looking signs up.  Also, I will say that even for the stop signs that didn't meet the minimums, it would be hard to say that you didn't know what you are supposed to do there (i.e., stop)  It's red, its octagonal, and it's not invisible (I mean really).

9-year old Hi Intensity Ground Mounted Street Name Signs (in Garland)

10 years ago, we started a comprehensive replacement of our really crappy (there's that technical term again) street name signs.  We finally got some funding when the Public Safety folks said they couldn't find the fires and the crooks cause they couldn't see the signs.  (See, we are part of Public Safety!)

Today, we checked a few of the signs in an area replaced in the second year.  These are hi-intensity beaded sheeting signs.  Our green RR values ranged from 43 to 47 (with no correlation to whether the sign was south-facing)  The ground-mounted green minimum is 15 and a 10 year-old sign made from the same material that has been up in our sign shop measured 66. 

The white values ranged between 210 and 236 (minimum 120).  The like-new sign in the shop measured 304.

So, we've had some deterioration but we're still well above the minimums.  The warranty is almost over and the signs will continue to function adequately.  The durability testing results I've seen indicate that the deterioration does steepen, but I'm betting we get 10 more years out of these signs.  We'll see (so to speak)

We did this project over about 5 years, and we plan to get more data to see what the deterioration has been.

Lite Research Summary (what I think I know now)

RRmeters are pretty cool.  Gotta get me one.

We are in pretty good shape with our street name signs.  Will they last till 2018?  I'm thinking they will, but eventually we will need to replace them, and we've got a ton of them.  Not an emergency.

Warranty does NOT equal sign life.

I'm not going to blanket replace.  I can't see replacing functioning signs.

If the white is good on a stop sign, it's pretty likely the red will be ok.

I'm concerned about the yellow warning signs.  I'm also concerned that most of them weren't needed in the first place and now we gotta replace 'em.  (fer crying out loud, maybe we should just take them down)

More when I have it. 

That's all for now.  Gotta go watch the Rangers win Game 3 of the ALCS.

Robert

P.S.  Please check out Paul Carlson's excellent RR FAQ's.  Paul is a leader in this field and has a very practical take on this.  He's been a great help to me in understanding what is and what ain't the requirements.

-------------------------------------------
Robert Wunderlich P.E.
Sr. Managing Dir.- Transportation/Engineering
City of Garland
Garland TX
robert4ite@gmail.com

Self Assessment of Traffic Signals for National Traffic Signal Report Card

Improving signal timing has about the best benefit/cost ratio of any improvement the traffic engineering community can make.  Back in 2005, a bunch of agencies collaborated to put together the National Traffic Signal Report Card.  The second edition was released in 2007 and now the group is polling all agencies involved with traffic signal timing to assemble the third edition. 

According to the report card, the United States went from a D- in 2005 to a D in 2007.  The 2007 report highlighted case studies of how agencies could make small (cheap) changes to raise their grades several levels.  Traffic engineers need to use reports like these to educate their policy makers on the huge traffic management benefits of having well maintained traffic signal operations so budgets can support these efforts.

If you are involved with traffic signal timing, I hope you'll spend the time to fill out the assessment here.