President
Kumares C. Sinha, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
Purdue University
Sinha@ecn.purdue.edu

Vice President
Robert D. Stevens, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
Arcadis
rstevens@arcad is-us.com

Treasurer
Eva Lerner-Lam, Aff.M.ASCE
The Palisades
Group, Inc.
elernerlam@
palisadesgroup.com

Past-President
Robert R. Costigan, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE
Rcostigan8776@
woway.com

Larry Mugler, AICP, M.ASCE
Denver Regional
Council of Governments
lmugler@drcog.org

A. Essam Radwan, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
University of
Central Florida
aeradwan@mail. ucf.edu

C. Michael Walton, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
University of
Texas at Austin
cmwalton@mail. utexas.edu

Secretary
Jonathan C. Esslinger, P.E., F.ASCE
Transportation &
Development Institute
jesslinger@asce.org

In This Edition
T&DI National Teleconference Explores...

Reauthorization of TEA-21

A Message from our President

Safety Data Support Decision Making

84th TRB Annual Meeting

Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge Named 2004

You Asked...We Answered

Nominations

Reminder
28th International Air Transport Conference Reinventing Airports for the Challenges Ahead
July 25-28, 2004
Washington, DC

Automated People Movers 2005
Orlando, Florida
May 1-4, 2005
June 2004

T&DI National Teleconference Explores the Use of "Roving Security Inspections" to Make US Transit Systems More Secure

Madrid commuter train bombing by terrorists prompts Transportation Security Committee Initiative

The March 11, 2004 synchronized bombing of commuter trains in Madrid, Spain prompted the members of T&DI's Transportation Security Committee to sponsor a national teleconference on March 25 exploring the use of "roving security inspections" (RSI) as part of an integrated security strategy at transit agencies.

The RSI approach features unannounced, surprise inspections of vehicles and platforms, thus keeping terrorists and others with intentions of doing harm as much "on edge" about their targets as they would like to think the targets are about them. It eliminates the need to patrol every vehicle and platform every hour that transit operates, an approach that would be entirely too impractical and expensive.

A joint presentation was made by Eva Lerner-Lam and James Broder, transit security experts. Two seasoned transit professionals, Langley Powell (former President and General Manager of San Diego Trolley and San Diego Transit) and Pete Sklannik (Chief Operating Officer of the Trinity Railway Express) discussed the approach, and teleconference participants joined in the subsequent question-answer session.

The teleconference event, co-sponsored by the Transit Standards Consortium and The Infrastructure Security Partnership, was covered by a variety of news media, including the Oakland Tribune and Metro Magazine, and generated follow-on consideration by Department of Homeland Security and Amtrak personnel.

The Transportation Security Committee will continue to provide a forum for transportation professionals to discuss high-priority security-related topics in objective, apolitical and non-proprietary settings. For more information, contact Charles Barker, Chair of the Transportation Security Committee at charles.barker@halliburton.com.

The audio recording of this National Teleconference is available for sale. The cost is $75.00, plus shipping & handling for members and teleconference co-sponsoring organization members and $95.00, plus shipping & handling for non-members. For more information please contact Andrea Baker at abaker@asce.org


Reauthorization of TEA-21


By Jonathan Upchurch, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE
Professional Staff Member
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee


Reauthorization of federal highway and transit programs took another step forward on June 9th, 2004 as the first meeting of a House / Senate conference was held.

Going to "conference" means that the House and Senate will work to reconcile the two different reauthorization bills that have been passed in the House and the Senate. Based on experience in past reauthorizations, conferencing is a major endeavor that is likely to take several weeks. Although there is some commonality in the 982 page House bill (H.R. 3550) and the 1411 page Senate bill (S. 1072), there are also substantial differences. Most observers believe that it will take until at least the third week in July to iron out differences between the two bills.

The Senate named 21 Senators as conferees, coming primarily from the three major Senate committees that have a role in reauthorization. The House named 52 Members of the House as its conferees, 24 members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and 28 members representing nine committees that have claim to jurisdiction on some parts of the bill. The Member conferees are supported by staff from the various House and Senate Committees and from Members' offices. While there will be perhaps two dozen key staff deeply involved in conference, as many as 100 will have some type of role.

Based on the size of the two bills and the number of conferees and staff involved, it is clear that conferencing is a complex process.

Foremost among the issues to be reconciled is the overall funding level. The Senate's bill provides $318 billion over six years compared to $275 billion in the House bill. The White House is steadfastly resisting any number higher than the $256 billion it has proposed and has threatened a veto if Congress attempts to spend too much money. The House and Senate counter that the Highway Trust Fund is supported by user fees and that neither bill would increase the federal budget deficit. As the conference begins, the question is: "What level of funding is politically achievable?"

Another vexing issue is the "donor-donee" issue in the highway program. Highway user fees, such as the gas tax, that are collected within each state are sent to the federal government. Then, by formula, highway monies are returned to the states. Those states that receive less than their proportionate share of money back from Washington are "donor" states. They receive less than one dollar in return for each dollar sent to Washington. States that receive more than a dollar in return are "donee" states.

Donor states would like to receive a better return; they would like to receive their "fair share" of the money. This is a goal that is politically difficult to achieve because increasing the return to "donor" states generally means reducing the amount of money received by "donee" states. The donor-donee issue is yet another political problem to solve.

Significant program and policy differences also exist between the House and Senate bills. Differing proportions of dollars going to highways and to transit in the two bills must also be resolved.

House and Senate staff will attempt to find common ground and will recommend various compromises to the Member conferees. In the end, however, it will be the Members of Congress who make the decisions; this will be particularly true on the major issues.

Will a bill be passed? If so, when? What will be the level of funding? As of mid-June, the answers to these questions are not clear. Readers are invited to follow ASCE's "This Week in Washington" electronic newsletter, published each Friday at www.asce.org to follow the most recent developments.


A Message from our President

It's "Show Me" Time for the Institute!


At the beginning of our February Strategic Planning Workshop, newly elected T&DI Governor Eva Lerner-Lam said, "We got what we wanted (T&DI); now let's prove we were right."

In the 1990's, many ASCE members began to feel as though the ASCE organization was getting "top-heavy" and "unwieldy", leaving volunteers to do all the work with very little support and not much focus on the needs of the membership.

Partly in response to that general sense of frustration Institutes were created. The Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) was formally established in October of 2002, combining three transportation related technical divisions and the Urban Planning and Development Division. The T&DI currently has four technical councils, Planning and Development; Design, Construction and Maintenance; Operations and Safety; and Cross-Cutting. The Institute structure enables self-governance by related peer groups while maintaining a strong connection to the parent ASCE organization.

At the Strategic Planning Workshop, the leadership of the Institute worked hard to align the group's Mission, Vision, Objectives and Strategies, and these were then disseminated to the councils and constituent committees by their representatives at the workshop. The adopted Strategic Plan report will be posted on our website at www.tanddi.org.

Now, using Eva Lerner-Lam's words, it's "Show Me" time—each of us needs to stand up and find ways to prove we were right in creating T&DI. All we needed was an efficient, responsive platform for our volunteer work, right? Well, we have that platform now. Let's use it, and help ourselves and our colleagues with all the knowledge, sharing and camaraderie we said we'd have, "if only..."

Remember that T&DI belongs to its members and if it does not serve their needs, then we must change it to meet those needs. I would very much like to hear from you about your suggestions, comments or any items you want to share with your transportation and development community. You can reach me at sinha@purdue.edu.

Kumares C. Sinha, Ph.D., P.E., F. ASCE
President


Safety Data Support Decision Making


The Iowa Traffic Safety Data Service (ITSDS) is helping Iowa's local agencies take the guesswork out of roadway safety decision-making. The service, which provides free crash data analyses and mapping services, was the brainchild of Reg Souleyrette, Ph. D., P.E., M. ASCE, Professor of Civil Engineering at Iowa State University and Associate Director of the University's Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE); Joyce Emery, Program Manager in the Iowa Department of Transportation's Office of Traffic and Safety; and Mike Laski, Director of the Iowa Governor's Traffic Safety Bureau. Professor Souleyrette is chair of T&DI's Planning and Economics Committee.

Background
On average, about a hundred people are injured daily in vehicular crashes in Iowa. To reduce those numbers, traffic engineers and other safety personnel are systematically investigating some critical questions. Where are crashes happening? Why? Which high-crash road segments should be improved first? How? Where can inexpensive safety strategies, like improved signing, have the most impact?

Answering such questions requires mega-giga-tera-peta-exabytes of data. The Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT) is a leader in collecting statewide safety-related data and sharing it across jurisdictions. Answering these questions also requires computer-based tools for integrating and analyzing all that information. The Iowa DOT has developed increasingly sophisticated generations of such tools (e.g., Traffic and Criminal Software, or TraCS; Safety Analysis, Visualization, and Exploration Resource, or SAVER), making Iowa a national model for technological and institutional integration of safety data.

But local agencies—who own the majority of Iowa's road miles—can't always keep up with the data or the technology. Not all county engineers, for example, have a crash data analyst on staff, or the time or know-how to use the tools themselves.

How the service works
Since 1999, the ITSDS has been conducting small- and large-scale roadway safety analyses, on demand, for local agencies. Requests reflect a variety of interests: law enforcement, engineering, child safety, policy/legislation, etc. Requests for data reports and/or analyses (90 requests in 2003 alone) are submitted by phone or e-mail.

Graduate students at CTRE do most of the legwork. They collect appropriate data, employ analysis and display tools, and provide results in convenient formats, often detailed geographic information system (GIS) maps that graphically display layers of data.

Emery says the ITSDS provides local agencies with sound bases for roadway safety–related decision making. For example, recently Michael Ring, P.E., Principal Traffic Engineer for the City of Des Moines, Iowa, requested an analysis of crash frequency and types along a specific section of Aurora Avenue, a four-lane, undivided roadway. He compared the resulting crash data tables and maps to "before" data from similar Iowa corridors that, after being converted to three-lane roads with center turn lanes, had experienced reductions in crash numbers and severity. The city is planning to convert the Aurora Avenue segment to a three-lane roadway with a center turn lane later this summer.

Hossein Naraghi, who will soon receive an MS degree in civil engineering at Iowa State, analyzed the data for Ring. It was a time-consuming, but not complex, project, according to Naraghi. "Every request is different."

CTRE's Research Engineer and ITSDS Manager Zach Hans, P.E., says the ITSDS is possible because of a very proactive highway safety community in Iowa and the extent of crash and roadway data available in the state.

The ITSDS is supported by the Iowa Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, Iowa Department of Public Safety, and the Iowa DOT.




Reg Souleyrette, Ph. D., P.E., .M.ASCE
T & DI Planning & Economics Committee Chair


84th TRB Annual Meeting

Call for Papers: Solicited and unsolicited papers for presentation and/or publication as part of the 84th TRB Annual Meeting must be submitted directly to TRB via the online paper submission website by August 1, 2004.

All papers submitted to TRB for presentation at the Annual Meeting and/or publication in the TRB series are peer-reviewed. The deadline for submission of the full paper is August 1. Visit TRB's website at www.TRB.org in early June when the Paper Submission site will be available. To assist in preparing paper(s), please visit: Information for Authors. The present information relates to the last meeting, but contains valuable information that will aid in becoming familiar with the paper process and in preparing papers. The Participant Guides and Information also provide valuable information.



Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge Named 2004 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement


The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, the crown jewel of Boston's multi-billion-dollar Central Artery/Tunnel project, was named the 2004 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) by ASCE. Presented at the fifth annual Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) awards dinner, the award celebrates the project's significant contribution not only to the advancement of civil engineering, but also to the local Boston community. The world' s widest cable-stayed bridge was chosen from a field of seven finalists, which were selected from the initial 24 nominations.

Also honored at the OPAL dinner is the Louis Berger Group, Inc., with a special Improving the Quality of Life award for their repaving of 389 km of war torn roads in Kabul-Kandahar, Afghanistan



ASCE Standards Available for Instant Download


New ASCE Digital Standards Store now provides secure online delivery of select ASCE Standards in an electronic format.

You can search, browse, order and instantly download individual ASCE standards in PDF format when you need them!



You Asked……We Answered


T&DI recently received a request to list the affiliation(s) of the winners of the 2003 LTPP Contest (The March newsletter listed only the winner(s) name). The following list reflects not only the name(s) but also the affiliation of these winners:

Undergraduate - First Place, Mark P. McDonald, Auburn University
Graduate – First Place, James T. Smith, University of Waterloo, Second Place, Ricardo Oliveira de Souza and Silvrano Dantas Neto, University of Brasilia
Partnership – Venkatesa Prasanno Kumar Ganesan, Pennsylvania State University, Shelley M. Stoffels, Pennsylvania State University, Janice Arellano, PennDot, Dennis Morian, Quality Engineering Solutions, Inc.
Curriculum – Susan L. Tighe, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Waterloo




Award Nominations Due Soon


Nominations for the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize are due to ASCE no later than October 1, 2004. The deadlines for nominations for other national awards given through T&DI are as follows: Robert Horonjeff Award, October 1, James Laurie Prize, November 1, Frank M. Masters Transportation Engineering Award, November 1, Wilbur S. Smith Award, November 1 and The Francis C. Turner Lecture Award, November 1. Nominations should be sent to the Honors and Awards Department, ASCE, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, VA 20191



Growth in Institute Membership


The institute membership as of May 2004 was 13,014, an increase of 457 new members since May 2003. All ASCE members can be a member of one institute as part of their Society membership. Additional institute memberships are $20 per year. Institute only membership in T&DI is $125 per year. For more information on T&DI membership visit www.tanddi.org.



Reminder


ASCE and T&DI ballots are in the mail! Please remember to cast your vote! In addition to voting for President-elect the ASCE ballot contains the amendments to the ASCE constitution regarding restructuring of the Society's governance. If approved by the membership the restructured governance structure will include two Board members elected by Institute members. T&DI's ballot contains the candidates for the Board of Governors for the four year term beginning October 1, 2004.


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