Bridge Improvement Funding Needs Expediting for Safety’s Sake, Industry Experts Say

February 28, 2022 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Federal funding for bridge-repairing projects is now critical to public safety, according to transportation experts at the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.

Now, these leaders are pushing for the Biden administration and Congress to allocate federal funding to improve these deteriorating bridges, as current funds available to states for bridge projects still fail to include full transportation appropriations outlined within the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

This legislation was passed in November 2021, and the most recent spending solution–which made funds available for certain surface transportation projects–ended in mid-February. Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, $27.5 billion was set to be offered to states for bridge repair needs throughout the next five years. However, if spending approval is pushed back, project start dates will be further delayed–perhaps to the detriment of driver safety.

“We urge Congress to act forthwith so that the American people can begin to realize the benefits of the historic investments in the bipartisan infrastructure law,” said president and CEO of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, Dave Bauer.

This funding is indeed historic, and considered nearly unprecedented by many transportation organizations, including the American Society of Civil Engineers. However, it still may not be enough for all the improvements truly needed throughout the country.

As ASCE’s president-elect Maria Lehman put it, the investment is a “major plus-up,” and “a great start, but it’s not the silver bullet.” In fact, the funding should have been released earlier, as “infrastructure is a system of systems,” Lehman continued. ”It’s the weak link that brings everything down.”

Although bridges deemed to be in “fair” condition can just undergo repairs, if a bridge is considered to be in “poor” condition, it needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Currently, 36% of all 224,000 American bridges either need repair or replacement–78,800 of those need full replacement, according to ARTBA’s 2022 Bridge Report, which analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Bridge Inventory database.

The states with the highest number of bridges classified as being in “poor” condition are: Iowa, with 4,504 such bridges; Pennsylvania,with 3,198; Illinois, with 2,405; Oklahoma, with 2,296; Missouri, with 2,218; New York, with 1,672; Louisiana, with 1,631; California, with 1,493; West Virginia, with 1,490; and Ohio, with 1,334.

“Our infrastructure is always there, doing its job,” said Lehman. “It’s not until something goes drastically wrong that people pay attention. Civil engineering failure is front and center because it’s important to people.”

Truckers should also be diligent in paying attention to bridge load postings, as this is a major aspect of overall bridge safety, Lehman added.

“Maybe it won’t collapse [if your truck has a heavier weight than allowed], but you are straining it,” she said.

Various organizational leaders collaborated on a letter sent to congressional lawmakers in February in an effort to persuade them to pass timely appropriations for the 2022 fiscal year, as a method of instilling “confidence in our residents as we navigate through the ongoing pandemic.”

The letter was signed by prominent members of the Council of State Governments, the International City and County Management Association, the National Association of Counties, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Governors Association, the National League of Cities, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

“The [Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act] represents a historic investment in our nation’s infrastructure, and Congress must ensure that these new resources are made available to state, territory, and local governments as intended under the law,” said the group leaders in their letter.

Additionally, local municipalities, along with state transportation departments, should find ways of boosting their funding availability by utilizing economies of scale. For example, choosing bridge improvement projects within one regional area could bring lower overall administrative costs, Lehman explained.

“It’s really important that we start to think of system solutions instead of one-off solutions,“ she noted.

ATRI Releases Top Truck Bottlenecks List, Chicago Ranks #6

February 26, 2022 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

The American Transportation Research nInstitute has released its 2022 list of Top Truck Bottlenecks, with some particular areas continuing to see little improvement.

Traffic across the country has returned to similar levels as before the pandemic due to more people returning to in-person workdays, as well as e-commerce and the overall demand for goods growing exponentially. Throughout 2021, rush hour speed averages for trucks dropped 11%, down to 38.6 miles per hour.

“ATRI’s bottleneck list is a road map for federal and state administrators responsible for prioritizing infrastructure investments throughout the country,” said Chris Spear, President of American Trucking Associations. “Every year, ATRI’s list highlights the dire needs for modernizing and improving our roads and bridges.”

The bottleneck list is compiled by ATRI’s assessment of truck-involved congestion levels at 300 different locations throughout the country’s highways. To collect data, ATRI utilizes truck GPS data and insights from more than a million commercial vehicles.

“The annual study from [ATRI], based [on] real-time GPS data, provides a timeline and actionable blueprint for prioritizing road and bridge funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill,” explained ATA in a tweet.

Chicago’s I-290/I-90/I-94 interchange, named the Jane Byrne Interchange, made sixth place on the list for the second year in a row. By the end of 2022, the city plans to complete the interchange’s $800 million upgrade.

The top worst freight bottleneck in the United States, for the fourth year in a row, was deemed to be the intersection of New Jersey State Route 4 and Interstate 95 in Fort Lee, New Jersey–this bottleneck has ranked near the top of ATRI’s list for more than a decade. Average rush hour speeds in this bottleneck were 22.4 miles per hour, down from 2020 by 28.2%. Average overall speeds were just 30.1 miles per hour.

In second place was the I-71/I-75 intersection in downtown Cincinnati, located along the Ohio River, north of the Brent Spence Bridge. This major bottleneck comes after a late-2020 bridge fire brought a shutdown as engineers rushed to fix such a heavily-utilized area. The major checkpoint brought about by the damage caused transportation officials in Ohio and Kentucky to consider a nearby companion bridge project, which would help ease traffic issues close to the Amazon hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Following behind is Houston’s I-45/I-69/US-59 intersection, which is two spots higher than its place on 2021’s list. Interstate 45 was likely to undergo reconstruction and rerouting through a $7.5 billion proposal, which was approved by the Texas Department of Transportation in 2021. However, the project will require the demolition of 340 businesses, 1,100 homes and apartments, and five places of worship–so it has understandably been met with heavy opposition from various groups.

Fourth and fifth place were both taken by Atlanta bottlenecks–one at the “Spaghetti Junction” of the I-285/I-85 North interchange in DeKalb County, as well as the I-20/I-285 intersection on the west side of the city. Behind Chicago’s sixth-place ranking was Los Angeles’ California state Route 60 and State Route 57 interchange, dubbed the “Diamond Bar interchange,” and in eighth place was Texas’ I-45/I-30 interchange in Dallas.

I-30 in both directions from downtown Dallas to I-634 in the city’s Mesquite suburb will be modernized and widened through a $1 billion project likely beginning in 2026, according to officials at the Texas Department of Transportation.

In ninth and tenth place were San Bernandino’s I-10/I-15 interchange and Chattanooga’s I-75/I-24 intersection, respectively. Chattanooga’s bottleneck is currently in the midst of a $12.6 million upgrade, the second phase of which is set to begin in mid-2023.

“We have seen, most recently in Pittsburgh, that the cost of doing nothing could also cost lives,” said ATA’s Spear, referring to the 10 people in Pittsburgh who were injured during the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge in late January. “It’s time to fund these projects and get our supply chains moving again.”

Truck Parking Woes Hinder Driver Recruitment

February 25, 2022 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Yesterday, we reported on the difficulties around truck parking availability that have been exacerbated by urban traffic challenges and the recent e-commerce boom. As frustrating as this issue has been for existing truck drivers, the lack of parking poses another problem for the industry: retaining and recruiting truckers during the ongoing truck driver shortage.

“There are people who want to be truck drivers, but sometimes they can’t become drivers because they don’t know where to park,” said Roehl Transportation’s vice president of driver employment, Tim Norlin. As residential truck parking has become more frequently banned in various cities, drivers may be deterred from joining the industry if they have nowhere to park while they’re at home.

This is a major challenge for drivers recruitment efforts, as many fleets have prioritized a focus on offering ample time at home for truckers. These conversations around truck parking availability typically begin early on in the recruitment process, Norlin added.

“More than half of our drivers are home every week,” he said. “If other carriers are doing the same thing, it is compounding that issue. We try to find out what [a driver’s] plan is, and if it is to park in the street in front of their house…it is getting more and more challenging, and it is not just [within] the major metro areas. A lot of smaller cities don’t want trucks in their parking lots.”

This is also doubly difficult on drivers who need especially safe areas to park in, such as female drivers; this problem is making recruiting women into the trucking industry as tricky as ever.

“Women are almost 50% of the workforce in general, but in trucking, they are 6.5-to-8% of drivers,” said Dan Murray, American Transportation Research Institute’s senior vice president. “They have told us time and time again–safety and security is their biggest issue. They need lighting, fences, and restrooms.”

Some mobile apps are coming into play to hopefully make finding available parking easier, such as Trucker Path; the app’s chief marketing officer, Chris Oliver, noted that parking on the East Coast has been more difficult than on the West Coast because of overall population density.

“There are certainly large metropolitan areas in both the East and the West, but the big difference is the space between those large metro areas,” he explained.

Through crowdsourcing information (like sending pop-up questions to ask about available spaces or if a lot is full), Trucker Path is able to offer real-time parking availability information directly to commercial drivers.

“This is made possible via geofences we’ve established around all of the known parking locations,” said Oliver.

In addition, American Trucking Associations, ATRI, and Natso, a truck stop-and travel plaza-representing trade association, have collaborated to create the Truck Parking Leadership Initiative, from which the app, Park My Truck, was born. In the app, rest areas, truck stops, and other locations are able to report the number of spaces available in their lots at any given time.

Everyone involved in the shipping process can help with parking challenges, from customers and receivers to distribution centers and shippers, noted Shawn Brown, Cargo Transporters’ vice president of safety.

“It is so huge that internally, we remind our customer service team of the importance of knowing ahead of time places [in which] we can and cannot park, so the drivers know,” he explained. “That is as important as the rate.”

Often, even if a trucker can park at the location of a shipper or receiver, there are not enough of the amenities a driver may need readily available. Because of this, industry members are urging that all parties honor delivery and pickup times as closely to the given schedule as possible.

“Just because you drive a truck with a sleeper berth, it doesn’t solve your problems for all of life’s basic necessities,” said president of the Minnesota Trucking Association, John Hausladen. “You need access to food, restrooms, and showers. If you’re not on duty, [you need to be] able to interact with others.”

Making known that safe, reliable parking is available will be a major key to boosting recruitment numbers, Brown added.

Drivers “can be more productive with their time away from home, make more money, and have less stress” when safe parking is available, he said. “A happy driver leads to reduced turnover, and [peace of mind] can bring more drivers into the industry.”

On the drivers’ part, trip planning should always include a plan for parking, as well, Roehl’s Norlin added.

“Don’t just drive to an area and hope to park,” he said. “Plan or know from experience where to park. It’s all about [security]. We need a gated, secured location for drivers to park, and it is getting harder and harder for drivers to find.”

Truck Parking Availability Issue Worsens Amid E-Commerce Boom, Lack of Funding

February 24, 2022 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

“There isn’t a day that goes by that a parking issue doesn’t come up, whether it is a driver that can’t find a place to park, or a customer won’t let them park,” said vice president of safety for Cargo Transporters, Shawn Brown.

Truck parking has remained a major issue for the entire trucking industry, an issue that has been significantly worsened by the coronavirus-induced boost in nationwide e-commerce. Additionally, a lack of parking funding in city areas, as well as various municipal mandates, have made the problem as severe as ever.

Hopefully, shipper solutions, technology-based methods, and private and public investments will help to ease the issue, some industry experts say.

“It is one of these issues that is going to be right there in our [faces] until we make a truly concerted effort to do something,” said senior vice president of the American Transportation Research Institute, Dan Murray. “There are no short-term solutions to fix it.”

Parking concerns worsen the closer a trucker is to a densely-populated, urban region, noted president of C.R. England, Brandon Harrison, as these areas see the most freight traffic.

“Late afternoon and evening hours continue to be some of the most challenging times for drivers to find parking availability,” he said.

The steep incline in e-commerce is pushing demand towards larger cities, which has exacerbated parking capacity issues–as has land costs and zoning restrictions, said ATRI research associate, Alexandra Shirk. States have continued to end up “on the other side of the fence when it comes to fighting or enhancing the truck parking opportunities,” added Murray.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s director of enforcement programs, William Elovirta, also chimed in, noting that urban planning development has begun focusing on parking space reduction in recent years.

“I don’t think we’re seeing a huge effort on the local and state [levels] for an organized push for truck parking in the same sense of the other priorities,” he explained.

Many industry members have been lamenting the idea that even though both the public and the government see the need to improve the nation’s bridges and roads, truck parking is often overlooked. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act initially allocated $1 billion toward parking funding, but the funding was ultimately dropped from the measure. Once the legislation officially passed, truck parking funding was not included.

“There is discretionary funding available that can be put toward trucking parking solutions,” added Shirk, who notes that it now seems parking funding is in competition with that of bridge and road projects.

The state of Minnesota expects around a 30% increase in federal funding from the infrastructure bill, and the Minnesota Trucking Association is currently advocating for funds to finally be allocated to truck parking capability, said the association’s president, John Hausladen.

“We’re hopeful that at least there is a pool to work with, but the fact that truck parking was not designated in any of those funds means it continues to battle with every other need,” he explained.

Additionally, cities like Minneapolis have been banning parking in residential streets, which can make matters even worse than they already are, Hasladen added.

“As a highly populated urban center, there isn’t a lot of available land to just create truck parking without some sort of incentives or government support that move it forward,” he said.

The trucking industry has actually begun looking toward private and public parking options alike, noted ATRI’s Murray.

“In a perfect world, we’d have perfect collaboration where the public sector helps the private sector expand capacity and manage capacity,” he noted.

Individual states should also start looking into methods of lowering private sector costs in regards to expanding or building designated truck parking areas–this may include land acquisition, maintenance assistance, or specific tax incentives, according to Tiffany Wlazlowski Neuman, the vice president of public affairs at truck and travel stop industry-representing trade association, Natso.

Natso also recommends that regulators begin actively exploring the potential effects of any new legislation on truck parking, such as the ELD mandate, which brought major changes to when truckers drive and when they park, as well as to the overall utilization of available truck parking.

Truckers Receive Live Traffic Alerts Through New Software in New Jersey, North Carolina

February 23, 2022 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Through a collaboration between Intelligent Imaging Systems, its subsidiary Drivewyze Inc., and INRIX transportation and data analytics firm, New Jersey is now offering a new method of warning truck drivers about any possible safety issues along a 600-mile highway stretch across the state.

“We’ve partnered with Drivewyze and INRIX to develop a real-time traffic alert system for commercial vehicle drivers,” said the New Jersey Department of Transportation in a tweet. “This program is designed to help reduce commercial vehicle crashes on New Jersey state highways.”

According to NJDOT, a fully loaded tractor-trailer needs about 66% more time to stop at an average speed than a passenger car, and rear-end crashes involving a vehicle stopped in line behind one initial crash tend to be common in secondary interstate incidents.

“The ability to alert commercial vehicle drivers to unexpected traffic conditions will improve safety for everyone driving on New Jersey’s highways,” said commissioner of NJDOT, Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti. “By warning drivers of congestion that is miles ahead, drivers of large commercial vehicles will have the extra time needed to safely slow down.”

Truck drivers will be able to receive alerts two to three miles ahead of an accident or slow down in traffic through Drivewyze’s app or in-cab alert technology. This kind of warning system will help truckers more easily avoid secondary crashes by giving them enough time to prepare to stop.

These drivers will be sent necessary notifications as they operate vehicles throughout New Jersey, including in areas such as the New Jersey Turnpike, the Atlantic City Expressway, Garden State Parkway, and other various highways. The notifications will include warnings for runaway ramps and mountain corridor steep grades, upcoming slow downs–especially when dangerous curves are involved, and signals when approaching a low bridge.

IIHS noted that both North Carolina and New Jersey’s Departments of Transportation utilized participation in the Eastern Transportation Coalition’s Traffic Data Marketplace to be able to implement Drivewyze’s systems into their state’s commercial motor vehicles.

“The New Jersey Motor Truck Association applauds the efforts to provide advance safety alerts to commercial truck drivers via Drivewyze,” said Gail Toth, executive director. “These efforts will help to keep our workplace–the highways–safer for all.”

The alert software has been successful, according to NCDOT’s public relations officer, Andrew Barksdale, who noted that more than 42,000 sudden slow down and congestion notifications have been sent to North Carolina Drivewyze users over the last four months. The states’ DOT is working to analyze the system’s overall safety benefits, as well.

Additionally, over the last few months, Drivewyze underwent a beta test by IIS to monitor safety alerts sent to the system’s users. In New Jersey, 104,000 alerts were released for 14,000 incidents, and 38,000 alerts were released in North Carolina for 7,000 incidents.

“Incidents in this case are either based on congestion (sustained traffic on a road segment for at least three minutes) or sudden slowdowns (temporary queue backups),” said Drivewyze spiderman, Doug Siefkes. “The queue backups could be for any reason: accidents, lane closures in work zones, [or] weather conditions.”

These alerts have an ability to bring significant safety boosts to North Carolina, New Jersey, and any other state which utilizes the software, said director of global communications for INRIX, Mark Burfeind.

Additionally, a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation crash-detection study used live traffic data from INRIX and Waze to crowdsource data from Waze’s connected users; the study found early on that this data outperformed data collected by Traffic Management Center employees, finding 86.7% of all reportable crashes in the state’s roadway network.

The study also found that work-zone and secondary crashes in heavy traffic congestion typically brought about more motorist injuries than other reportable crashes, and 46% of secondary crashes took place at least an hour after the initial crash.

The report explained: “The location of these crashes was of particular interest, with 32% of work-zone crashes and 49% of secondary crashes occurring more than two miles back from the origin point of congestion.”

Tesla’s Autopilot at Center of Fatal Crash, What Does This Mean for Driver Assist Tech?

February 22, 2022 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

We recently reported on two influential groups changing the way vehicles are rated by focusing on the safety of those with partially automated driver-assist systems. Now, these scores will incorporate these updates for all new vehicle models, starting in 2022, that utilize such technology. These changes come as prosecutors in California file two counts of vehicular manslaughter against a driver who ran a red light and killed two people while operating a Tesla on Autopilot in 2019.

The charges, which were initially filed in October, seem to be the first involving a felony against a driver using any partially automated driving technology in the United States. The 27-year-old driver, Kevin George Aziz Riad, pleaded not guilty.

Tesla’s autopilot system helps control speed, braking, and steering, and its misuse has been the underlying cause of various crashes and investigations. Although other criminal charges regarding automated driving systems have taken place, this case marks the first charge involving a commonly-used driver assist system.

In the U.S., there are currently 765,000 Tesla vehicles with the Autopilot system implemented onboard–a stark contrast from the tech involved in the charge of negligent homicide in 2020 involving an Uber driver who had been helping to test fully autonomous vehicles on public roads.

The recent Tesla crash involves much more widely-used technology, which is a major concern for transportation safety advocates. In the incident, a Tesla Model S was driving quickly when it exited a freeway, ran a red light in Los Angeles, and hit a Honda Civic at an intersection in Gardena. The driver and passenger in the Civic died immediately, while Riad and his passenger were hospitalized due to their injuries.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had sent investigators to the crash, and in January 2022, confirmed the use of Tesla’s Autopilot system as being utilized at the time of the incident. Riad’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.

Drivers’ overconfidence in driver assist systems has been at the center of many crashes–including deadly ones. Because of this, the National Transportation Safety Board, along with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, have been reviewing Autopilot’s misuse and consider it to be “automation complacency.”

“I think we are a lot further away from self-driving cars than tech companies and commercials would like us to believe,” said Levinson and Stefani’s Jay Stefani. “That said, there is a lot of great safety technology out there to assist drivers. Lane drift alarms, blind spot detectors, active forward collision avoidance systems, and back-up cameras and alarms are all examples of technology that has saved lives.”

According to Consumer Reports and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, studies have shown drivers often rely too heavily on their automated systems and pay little attention to alerts. Advertising for vehicles with these programs on board typically overexaggerate the systems’ abilities, as well.

Tesla’s autopilot system was launched in 2015, and in 2018, a Tesla driver died in a collision with a freeway barrier in Mountain View, California. According to the NTSB, the driver was allowing the system to operate while he or she played a mobile game.

“Keeping drivers focused on the road and the vehicle is critical for the safe use of partially automated driving systems,” said the president of IIHS, David Harkey.

Drivers often equate partially automated systems with self-driving vehicles, although no self-driving vehicles are available to consumers. When a driver ignores the monitor systems of a vehicle, their driving may be more dangerous than if they had been operating a vehicle without a partially automated system, Harkey noted.

“There are studies that go back probably 80 years that show humans are pretty bad about just watching automation happen,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Center. “It’s just too easy to get bored and let your attention wander.”

Tesla has responded to these issues by working to update its automated driving software to be able to more easily deter misuse, as well as to improve its Autopilot’s capacity to detect emergency vehicles.