UConn is best known for its basketball team, maybe even its academics. But did you know there’s a think-tank on campus doing interesting research on transportation?
Now celebrating its 50th
anniversary, the Connecticut
Transportation Institute’s mission is to innovate on
hardware and software to make our travels faster, safer and cheaper.
CTI’s Executive Director Eric
Jackson says “we have access to a huge network of experts from all disciplines
on campus”, though most of their $7.5 million annual budget comes from CDOT and
federal agencies involved with highways.
But this “think tank” does
more than just “think”. They also train,
offering dozens of courses for public works staffers doing everything from snow
plowing to highway maintenance.
CTI’s pavement lab is designing better road surfacing that will grip your car’s wheels without wearing out the pavement. Highways that don’t wear out as fast means a saving on your taxes.
More recently they’ve
demonstrated a truck equipped with reflectometers measuring how well the lines
on the highways are visible at night. By
prioritizing repainting the line marking that don’t adequately reflect
headlights, there’s more tax savings. That high-tech truck will inspect every state
road in Connecticut by mid-2025.
In anticipation of
self-driving vehicles, CTI is opening a testing ground on UConn’s Depot campus
to test the electronics that will let driverless vehicles talk to each
other. They’ve already partnered with
the Feds and CDOT to soon test driverless buses on the CTfastrak busway from
New Britain to Hartford.
Some of the Institute’s most
important work is number crunching. They
log 110,000 police reports each year on vehicle crashes by location and time,
looking for patterns. Too many incidents
at one intersection may suggest a roadway redesign, hopefully saving
lives. CTI can even work with local
police crash investigators to gain access to newer cars’ black boxes, which
record speed and braking before a crash, seeing if it’s the road or the driver
that may be at fault.
“We’re also testing ‘wrong way
rumble strips’ at highway on-ramps to prevent cars from entering the roads in
the wrong direction,” says Jackson. But
he admits that if drivers are impaired, the bumpy road may not even be noticed.
“Those drivers would probably drive head-on into a police cruiser with its
lights flashing.”
To prevent drunk driving, CTI
is working with CDOT in testing passive alcohol sensors built into the
vehicle. Not a blow test like a
breathalyzer but some new tech that would measure alcohol in your sweat when
your thumb hits the start button.
And to keep us all safe from
over-tired truckers, the Institute is developing an app to show the long-haul
drivers where they can legally and safely pull over for the night when they’ve
reached their maximum time on the road.
At night you’ve probably seen dozens of trucks parked on interstate
shoulders, so this might keep them (and the rest of us) safe while drivers
catch badly needed rest.
All of this work engages CTI
staff as well as Civil Engineering students, some of whom may chose careers at
CDOT after graduation.
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