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Conceptual questions can be used to improve student's understanding through interactive engagement and formative assessment; however, there is a lack of developed conceptual questions in transportation engineering. This paper reports on the development, implementation, refinement, and evaluation of conceptual questions about traffic signals that include students rating of confidence in their solution. Based on student and practicing engineer traffic signal misconceptions, 94 conceptual questions were developed and implemented by 10 public university instructors. Five patterns of student responses were identified in terms of correctness and student confidence: all correct, all confident, all lack confidence, correct-confident combined with incorrect-lacks confidence, and correct-lacks confidence combined with incorrect-confident. Furthermore, the experiences of instructors using conceptual questions with students were considered through semi-structured interviews. Conceptual questions about fundamental aspects of traffic engineering were most frequently selected, conventional multiple choice questions were the most popular type of questions, and enriching exam materials or creating challenging discussions were the primary goals of implementation. While every participant expressed that they will use the material again in the future, potential barriers to adoption remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The addition of interchanges, traffic signals, or unsignalized driveways to an arterial corridor increases crash risk and decreases travel speeds. As adjacent vacant land is developed, however, private landowners often desire direct access to the arterial route. Because the Virginia Department of Transportation has the authority to allow direct access provided no immediate adverse impact would occur, arterials in high-growth areas tend to have an increasing number of intersections as demands for direct access grow. This study investigated the feasibility of using the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to limit corridor access (e.g., grade-separated interchanges or at-grade intersections) through four administrative mechanisms: (1) including the limited access requirement as a condition in the record of decision; (2) effecting a contract (the Federal-Aid Project Agreement) that stipulates limiting access as a requirement; (3) implementing a supplemental agreement between interested parties that indicates how the character of the corridor shall be maintained; and (4) documenting the corridor-preservation conditions that remove the requirement of an Environmental Impact Statement. Factors that limit the effectiveness of these mechanisms include (1) the source of funds for the project; (2) the extent to which environmental concerns remain constant after the NEPA process is concluded; (3) the willingness of agencies to exercise the authority they are accorded through NEPA-related agreements; and (4) the passage of congressional legislation that enhances or restricts the scope of NEPA. Case studies of projects in Virginia where the NEPA process has helped preserve the characteristics of corridors show that the process may serve to raise barriers to adding access points but does not guarantee that access points may never be added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]