Nighttime Visibility for Safety
Nighttime pedestrian fatalities are three times higher than daytime rate fatalities, resulting in 76% of pedestrian fatalities occurring at night. Increasing nighttime visibility can reduce crashes at rural and urban intersections by 38% using well-designed lighting. A key focus of this innovation is lighting, including the design, maintenance, and technology advancements to improve pedestrian crossings near activity locations, such as schools, parks, transit stops, and sports complexes. Enhancing visibility in these high-activity areas with cost-effective and proven lighting and traffic control device countermeasures can save lives.
Next Generation TIM: Technology for Saving Lives
More than 6 million reportable crashes occur each year in the United States, resulting in 2 million injuries and more than 30,000 fatalities. Additionally, there are over 32 million disabled vehicles and countless incidents of roadway debris. These events put responders and motorists at risk of secondary crashes. The Next Generation Traffic Incident Management (NextGen TIM) programs promote emerging technologies to advance safety and mitigate incident impacts to clear incidents collaboratively, safely, and quickly. NextGen TIM feeds a larger TIM role in the Safe Systems approach, by creating a safe working environment for vital first responders and preventing secondary crashes through robust TIM practices. This innovation aims to provide new tools, data and training mechanisms to protect everyone on the road.
Strategic Workforce Development
The demand for highway construction, maintenance, and operations workers is on the rise while the industry is also seeing a rise of emerging technologies that will require new skills. This innovation aims to attract and retain workers in highway construction jobs and provide them with the necessary training to fill these vital jobs. Increasing the highway construction workforce can help communities thrive while solving one of today’s most persistent national transportation problems and offers an opportunity to recruit underrepresented groups, including minorities and women, to jobs that can change their lives.
Enhancing Performance with Internally Cured Concrete (EPIC2)
Cracking in concrete is a limiting factor in achieving long-term concrete performance. When this cracking occurs at an early age, it leaves the concrete and embedded reinforcement exposed to degradation, reducing the service life of the structure. Unlike conventional curing where water is supplied on the concrete’s surface, internal curing provides a source of moisture from inside the concrete mixture, improving its resistance to cracking and overall durability. This innovation aims to alleviate shrinkage cracking and has the potential to substantially extend the service life of concrete bridge decks and enhance the performance of pavements and repairs.
EPD’s for Sustainable Project Delivery
Environmental product declarations, or EPDs, document the environmental impacts of construction materials such as concrete and asphalt during their life cycle. This tool helps support procurement decisions and quantify embodied carbon reductions using life cycle assessments for sustainable pavements. It also helps agencies reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in their construction projects. EPD's provide an opportunity to reduce negative environmental impacts by transforming the project delivery process and encourage the demand and supply of products that promote more sustainable use of resources and create less stress on the environment. Agencies can leverage the use of EPDs to support decision-making throughout the project delivery process, such as requesting EPDs at material installation to establish and develop benchmarks for current designs and projects.