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The objectives of this study were to: 1) estimate the situation in year 2005 with the current TIMED program in operation, 2) estimate how long current TIMED funding must be extended to fully fund the projects listed in the TIMED program, and 3) estimate how much the current level of funding must be increased to complete the projects in the TIMED program by the year 2005.

State transportation agencies commonly use consultant firms for some of their highway and bridge design. For example, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (hereafter referred to as the "Department" or "LaDOTD") currently uses both consultants and in-house staff in designing state transportation facilities. However, the relative cost of doing so is unknown., Past studies in other states strongly suggest that consultants are more expensive than in-house staff in providing the design services needed by the Department (Wilmot, 1995). These studies also reveal that it is difficult to make an accurate comparison of individual cost items within the public and private sector with complete equity. This is particularly true for indirect costs. The public sector, for example, has cost items such as the advertising of contracts. Similarly, the private sector has costs not borne by public sector agencies, including taxation, marketing, and compliance with public sector organization procedures and standards. Moreover, costs incurred for office rental, utilities, senior administrative staff, and insurance are usually not incurred uniformly across private and public organizations.

LTRC Project No. 15-3SS, State Project No. DOTLT1000056, The objective of this study is to review the status quo in the development of autonomous vehicles and determine, what regulatory action needs to be taken that will permit their safe introduction in, Louisiana while not stifling innovation and development.

LTRC No. 98-13SS, The objective of this research was to identify and quantify the factors that influence the price of highway construction in Louisiana. The method of investigation involved a literature review and an analysis of construction price records in Louisiana over the last 15 years., The factors that influence construction prices were found to be the inflationary increase in the cost of construction inputs (labor, equipment, and material), characteristics of individual contracts, and the construction environment prevailing at the time of bidding. Contract characteristics found to be significant were contract size, duration, location, and time during the fiscal year in which the contract was let. Contract conditions found to influence contract prices were the total volume of contracts bid, variation in the bid volume, number of plan changes, and introduction of changed contract specifications, standards or practice., The most influential factors in determining the cost of construction are the price of labor, equipment, and material. However, changes in contract characteristics and the contract environment also have an impact, causing fluctuations or incremental changes to the price of construction. The most important of these are contract size, duration, and location among the characteristics of individual contracts. Among contract conditions, number of plan changes, and changes to contract specifications, standards, or practice, are the most influential., The impact of the factors on the cost of construction has been captured in a model which presents construction costs in terms of a construction price index similar to the Federal Highway Administration’s Federal-Aid Highway Construction Composite Bid Price Index. The model closely reproduces past construction cost records when supplied with either disaggregate (i.e. contract level) or aggregate data. The model was used to predict future construction costs. Forecasts of labor, material and construction equipment costs were used together with the assumption that current contract characteristics and conditions will be maintained in the future. Under these assumptions, the model estimated that construction costs will double between 1998 and 2015 as measured in current dollars.

When hurricanes threaten coastal cities, the most eff ective strategy to mitigate mortality is to evacuate the population, at risk. However, public offi cials face several transportation challenges when managing evacuations from a large city, like New Orleans. As a result, they seek the help of transportation offi cials to implement a safe and effi cient evacuation., In response, transportation offi cials evaluate several alternative evacuation policies—for example, phased evacuation, initiation of contrafl ow, and evacuation of carless people using transit. The evaluation of alternative evacuation policies, requires statistical evacuation behavioral models that are responsive to various factors that infl uence evacuation, behavior. The current post-event revealed preference data collection methodology is incapable of collecting detailed, time-dependent behavioral data that is required for the development of statistical behavior models capable of evaluating, alternative evacuation policies.

State project no. 737¿99¿0649, LTRC Project no. 06¿1SS, Louisiana’s crash rate is consistently among the highest in the nation, and it imposes signifi cant economic and social, costs on the state. Property damage, lost productivity, medical expenses, and infl ated motor vehicle insurance rates, imposed an estimated $5.3 billion burden on the state in 2002. This prompted a study by the Louisiana Department of, Transportation and Development (LADOTD) to identify the major traffi c safety problem areas in the state. This research, documents the results of the second and fi nal phase of that investigation. Phase 1 results are documented in LTRC Final, Report 399.

LTRC Project no. 06-1SS, State project no. 737-99-0649, This report summarizes a study that seeks to identify the factors leading to the high crash rate experienced on Louisiana highways. Factors were identified by comparing statistics from the Louisiana Crash Database with those from peer states using the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database and to the nation as a whole using the General Estimates System (GES) database. Peer states for Louisiana are Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. A list of 23 problem areas were identified and were then further investigated to try and identify root causes. The root causes were suggested as including high alcohol-impaired driving, high crash rates among young drivers, low seatbelt usage, an elevated use of improper driver licenses, speeding, and inadequate adherence to traffic control. Countermeasures were identified to address some of the main problem areas and prioritized on their cost, need, and performance.

LTRC No. 98-4SS, The purpose of this research was to identify cost-effective methods to accumulate data for metropolitan transportation planning in Louisiana. The research was directed at making maximum use of existing data sources, investigating the transferability of data to metropolitan areas in Louisiana, considering the use of small local samples to update transferred or outdated local data, and investigating the potential of Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment to collect travel-related information., Data considered for transfer are aggregate relationships, distributions, and proportions of the data from one or more external, primary, or secondary data sources. Transferability to the Baton Rouge metropolitan area was tested by comparing aggregate measures of data from the National Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) of 1995 for metropolitan areas, with populations between 1/2-1 million, and from the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) survey of 1996, with values obtained from the Baton Rouge Personal Transportation Survey of 1997. Some aggregate measures were found to be transferable to Baton Rouge while others were not. The possibility of using current, local data to update transfer data was investigated by collecting data from a sample of 108 households in Baton Rouge in 1998 and using it to update aggregate measures from NPTS 95 and NCTCOG. While the sample was too small to provide consistently improved transferability to the transferred data, simulated results with a sample of 450 households suggested that data updating can provide aggregate measures of transferred data that are comparable with locally-collected data., Three research thrusts were conducted to investigate the potential of improving the efficiency for collecting local data. First, stratified sampling of households to improve the homogeneity of data in strata was investigated. Second, a new form of time-use diary using a day-planner type format was developed and tested. Third, GPS devices were used to record auto travel. All three tactics appeared to improve the efficiency of collecting local data.

The objectives of the research in this study are to develop a mode choice model of hurricane, evacuation behavior and to demonstrate its use in New Orleans, Louisiana.

LTRC project no. 05-3SS, State project no. 737-99-0649, In the last decade, Louisiana’s traffic related fatality rate has consistently put Louisiana within the, top eight highest ranking states in the nation with regard to such; in 2001, Louisiana tied with, Montana and South Carolina as states with the highest fatality rates. That year, Louisiana’s, fatality rate was 2.3 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled, while the national average was 1.5., As would be expected, Louisiana’s high crash rate has significant economic and social costs., Property damage, lost productivity, medical expenses, and inflated motor vehicle insurance rates, imposed an estimated 5.3 billion dollar burden on the state in 2002. Although these costs are not, distributed equally, fatality rates among Louisiana’s 16 to 20 year olds are double that of all other, ages. While improving road safety is a national objective, the conditions in Louisiana justify an, independent study of conditions and opportunities for improvement within the state.

97-11SS, The use of consultants in providing pre-construction engineering design services for the state's Departments of Transportation has increased over the last twenty years. This has resulted in several investigations into the cost-effectiveness of this trend. This paper reviews past studies, examines their methodology, suggests improvements to certain parts of the commonly-used investigative process, and demonstrates their use in an application to the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development., The suggested improvements to methodology are described and used in this study. They include using the same project to compare in-house and consultant design costs (rather than the use of similar projects, as in most studies), performing a detailed analysis of overhead rates that are comparable between the State agency and consultants, and measuring comparative design costs as the ratio of in-house to consultant design costs (rather than the ratio of design to construction costs commonly used in past studies)., Most studies in the past have concluded that consultant design costs are higher than in-house design costs or that there is no significant difference in cost. The Louisiana study found that consultants are approximately twenty percent more expensive than in-house staff in preparing road and bridge designs but that the difference was almost entirely due to the extra cost of contract preparation and in-house supervision required for consultant designs.

Truck lane restriction strategies (TLRS) are a means of managing truck traffic on highways by prohibiting trucks from using certain lanes to minimize interaction between trucks and other vehicles. The purpose of this study is to review the literature with respect to past studies of truck lane restrictions in the United States with the intention of determining whether applying them to access-controlled and non access-controlled multilane highways in Louisiana would bring any safety or operational benefits. A literature review, an opinion survey among motorists in Louisiana, and a survey of practice among state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) was conducted to establish an information base on which to base a decision. From the results of the investigation, it is recommended that, in general, TLRS only be applied to controlled access facilities with three or more lanes in each direction, unless an engineering study can justify the application of TLRS to a particular facility. It is not recommended that truck lane restrictions be used on non controlled access highways. When applied, truck lane restrictions should prohibit trucks from using left lanes rather than restrict trucks to use right lanes only The major advantage of TLRS appears to be in their general contribution toward improved safety, while their impact on speed, travel time, flow, speed differential, impedance, and lane changing is marginal. Some of the significant costs of introducing TLRS involve pavement damage if truck lane restrictions concentrate trucks on a limited set of lanes and the difficulty of entering a freeway where there are three or fewer lanes in each direction, high traffic volumes, and a high percentage of trucks in the traffic stream.

LTRC Project No. 06-2SS, SIO No. 3000012, Federal No. SPR-0011(033), Revealed preference is the traditional method to collect hurricane evacuation behavior data. However, revealed preference surveys, as they are currently administered, have the disadvantage that they are unable to collect time-sensitive and policy-sensitive data needed to test evacuation policies. Since time-sensitive and policy-sensitive data is necessary for effective evacuation demand modeling and no methods currently exist to collect such data, this study reports on the development and testing of a candidate procedure to address this need. The procedure involves using the stated choice approach to data collection adapted to collect dynamic information and enhance the realism of each scenario by presenting it in audio-visual form on a DVD. Nine hypothetical storms were presented in audio-visual form through a series of time-dependent scenarios to a random sample of respondents in the New Orleans metropolitan area. The new method was evaluated by collecting data using both new and traditional methods and comparing their cost and their ability to produce good evacuation models. In the new method, survey respondents watched animations of storm scenarios and stated how they believed they would behave in each time interval as the storm approached, while in the traditional method they reported on their actual behavior during Hurricane Gustav, which made landfall near New Orleans in 2008. Results indicate that the new stated-choice method is easy to use and effective in collecting time-dependent and policy-sensitive data but costs 25 percent more than the traditional method. The new method appears to have the potential of evolving into a survey instrument that can be used by researchers and practitioners working in hurricane evacuation modeling.

The objectives of this study are to extend Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) to allow for the input and review of visual and verbal components to the process, develop assignments in a set of core engineering courses that use these facilities, assess the impact of the visual and verbal components on student communication performance, and disseminate the findings and the enhanced CPR procedure through training workshops, conference papers, and websites.

LTRC Project Number: 15-3SS, State Project Number: DOTLT1000056, This report addresses the matter of autonomous vehicles and the regulation of their operation in the, state of Louisiana. It was prepared in response to a request from the Louisiana State Legislature to, study the subject of autonomous vehicles and provide recommendations on legislative and regulatory, action to best accommodate this emerging technology. The methodology employed included reviewing, the state of the art as published in the literature and other media, noting practice in other states, considering agencies involved and the role they have, and identifying the main issues facing the, development of autonomous vehicles today. What was found is that there is an exponential growth in, interest in the subject, both officially and among the public at large, that some unrealistic expectations, as to what autonomous vehicles will be able to accomplish is beginning to be challenged, and that two, paths in the development of autonomous vehicles are being followed: one involving incremental, growth toward full automation and the other an attempt to produce a fully autonomous vehicle directly., The general consensus is to place as little restriction and regulation on the development of autonomous, vehicles as possible at the moment so that innovation is inhibited as little as possible. At the same time, the potential benefits of uniformity or standardization among states is recognized but any proposals in, this regard are limited to suggestions at the moment.