Mapping US Infrastructure: Thru Invested Dollars & Via Motorists’ Smartphones

James Mack, Director, Market Development-CEMEX, posted on LinkedIn: “Here are two back to back articles from the New York Times describing our infrastructure woes: “As States Add Money to Fix Roads, U.S. Is Urged to Ante Up” and “Mapping Potholes by Phone (the West Bank’s Roads Were Smoother)”.”

“The 1st article describes the problem—not enough money. And while that is true, we also need to demand better results from our highway investments. It is possible to make roads last more than 10 to 12 years between fixes … we can go 30, 40 or more years. For example, concrete overlays in Iowa on average last 30 years, and when the concrete mix was well done, they lasted 45 years. We have the technologies—now we need the agencies to actually implement them.
The 2nd article highlights a more positive story where researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are using our own smartphones to capture road condition data. They focus on how it can be used to lower CO2 emissions on roadways, which is a great thing, but it also highlights how expensive the current system of road monitoring is and how, when we look outside the box of “this is how we do it” … we can do better. We can have cleaner, more fuel-efficient roads, but we can also get better information at lower costs; which means we are more productive with the limited funding we do have. MIT’s CARBIN App helps determine the roadway conditions in “real time” so we know where our roads are bad, and how fast they deteriorate.”
_____________________________

1.

[The United] States’ voters approved $7.7 billion in transportation spending last year, but experts say the federal government needs to do more to fix the nation’s ragged roadways. Drivers in America topped 3.2 trillion miles in 2018, traveling countless roads and bridges in dire need of repair and improvement, and they are showing little sign of slowing down.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) painted a bleak picture of the country’s byways in its Spring 2017 Infrastructure Report Card (Editions every 4 years). The assessment resulted in an overall “D+ grade”—ROADS: an underwhelming D, and BRIDGES: C+. In all, 45% of the nation’s roads were deemed in poor condition. Since then, the group estimates that vehicle travel increased 17% while new roadways increased only 5%—resulting in 6.9 billion hours/year of traffic delays—costing motorists $616 each in 2017.

Andrew Herrmann, Former President-ASCE said, “You have a lot more cars, but not much more new roadway. We’re falling behind due to the poor condition of the nation’s highways.”

Federal spending on road infrastructure is struggling to keep up. In 2019, federal lawmakers staved off a cut to the national Highway Trust Fund that would have pulled $7.6 billion away from state highway budgets, leaving states to fill in some of the gaps, and voters approving huge transportation investments via ballot measures.

“The ballot results are a great reminder infrastructure investment remains one of the few areas where red states, blue states, Republicans and Democrats can all come together. It should also demonstrate to lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the public will be on board for the passage of a long-term bill that significantly boosts highway and transit investment at the federal level,” said Dave Bauer, President-American Road & Transportationa Builders Association (ARTBA).

The need is great.

Jim Tymon, Executive Director-American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), said, “Most systems that make up our network of interstate highways are at least 50 years old, so there has to be substantial reinvestment to make sure those assets can keep up with daily wear and tear. States and localities are doing their part, and this is a great opportunity for the federal government to do its part.”

The ASCE said there is a huge backlog of federal highway projects that need funding—$836 billion, but voters are unlikely to know those details. According to the Transportation Investment Advocacy Center (TIAC) out of 305 transportation-related state and local ballot measures, 270 went before voters last year with more than 88% approved (most involving property tax increases for road repairs). Washington State and Colorado were among the few to vote for tax cuts that are likely to squeeze highway budgets.

The issue is important at the local level, too. The United States Conference of Mayors published a campaign agenda wish list in December that called on 2020 presidential candidates to say what they would do to stabilize the Highway Trust Fund, regulate new transportation technology, and strengthen public transportation.

Bryan Barnett, President-TIAC and Mayor-Rochester Hills, Michigan, said, “While Washington is so often paralyzed by partisanship, mayors continue to show how things can get done.”

In 2020, the Congressional Budget Office has made a number of recommendations regarding highway funding, including charging motorists based on road use, and initiating performance benchmarks for road projects.

Mr. Tymon said, “There are a number of pilot programs going on right now to test vehicle use fees that are going extremely well. It’s not something you’re likely to see in the next federal transportation bill, but it’s something you could see in the next five to 10 years.”

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), most states have raised their gasoline taxes over the last several years, but states could take a bigger role in their own infrastructure destinies.

Mr. Herrmann inquired in his statements, “How many ‘infrastructure weeks’ have we had over the past few years? We need one that sticks. State and local governments are working hard to get things done, but we need the federal government to step up with a bill.”

For the article titled, “As States Add Money to Fix Roads, U.S. Is Urged to Ante Up”, please go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/business/us-road-infrastructure.html

Photo: Road work on Interstate 44 in Tulsa, Okla. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the USA’s roads poor grades in its latest Infrastructure Report Card. Credit: Stephen Pingry/Tulsa World, via Associated Press

2.

Students in Cambridge, Massachusetts
have created an app to track road quality.
It turns out, the roads around Cambridge are [some of the worst].

A geographically dispersed group of engineering students, from schools like MIT, Harvard University, and Birzeit University (BZU)—one of the top engineering schools in West Bank, Palestine—have developed an app that turns a smartphone into a tool to track potholes and measure overall road quality. This project could improve life in many ways for drivers … and everyone else. The students’ test users have already come up with some surprising data (or not so surprising for those familiar with Boston-area streets): The roads around the MIT are worse than the roads around Birzeit University.

“The surface streets in Cambridge have the roughness index of a well-maintained dirt road,” said Franz-Josef Ulm, Faculty Director-Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSH)-MIT, who is guiding the students in developing their app, called Carbin.

Poor road quality increases fuel consumption, Professor Ulm said. Fuel is expensive in the Middle East, and for some Palestinian motorists, transportation costs rival those of rent and food. He realized that if there were a way to map road quality, drivers could plan trips that cost less, and reduced wear and tear on their cars. Professor Ulm said road quality could account for 10 to 15% of fuel use in urban settings.

Another motivation for the Carbin app? “We were frustrated because we could not get road-quality data from the government,” Professor Ulm recalled.

Engineers rate road quality using a World Bank metric, the International Roughness Index (IRI), which ideally is measured by special vans equipped with lasers to scan the road—can cost up to $700,000. Only state transportation departments can afford them, and they usually measure only major highways. American cities (and Ramallah, near Birzeit University) rely mostly on citizen complaints or seat-of-the-pants assessments by city employees. That unscientific approach presents problems, said Glenn Engstrom, Director-National Road Research Alliance (NRRA)–MnROAD (pavement test track made up of various research materials and pavements) at Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT)‘s asphalt test track.

“People are far more tolerant of bad roads in urban settings, because speeds are lower,” Mr. Engstrom said. He noted that apps like Carbin could be particularly helpful in cities because those expensive vans don’t work as well in stop-and-go traffic (or in freezing weather, a.k.a. pothole season). Accurate data is better than citizen complaints for road maintenance. The time to resurface roads is when the roughness index starts to climb, even before drivers report problems. He added, “Smooth roads last longer, and that definitely helps both the environment and our pocketbook.”

After Professor Ulm returned from the West Bank,
he discussed the lack of roughness-index data on those roads with
Arghavan Louhghalam, Engineering Professor-University of Massachusetts (UMass), Dartmouth. She had the idea that
the accelerometers built into smartphones might be able
to measure road roughness … they assembled a group who went to work:

5 faculty supervisors from MIT, UMass Dartmouth, and Birzeit University, along with 6 students from MIT, Birzeit, Harvard, UMass Dartmouth, and the University of Washington (UW) with their supervisor Jacob Rozon, Ph.D. Candidate-MIT.

Shahd Nara, Computer Science Major (a Senior) at Harvard, wrote the code for the initial Carbin iPhone app. Ms. Nara is also the developer and designer of the Carbin website, FixMyRoad.us, where data from hundreds of Carbin beta testers has already been collected and mapped. As of January 2020:
• About 1,000 people have downloaded the Carbin app
• About 300 regular users have uploaded data from over 3,000 trips
• Over 175,000 miles of roads have been mapped in 11 countries

Bader Anini, Computer Systems Engineering Major (final year) at Birzeit developed the Carbin Android app —because Android phones are far more common in the West Bank.

Carbin works best if the smartphone is attached to the vehicle in a phone holder, but it works fairly well even if the phone is simply laid flat on the car floor … [as long as movements are not made through] driver behavior. Carbin’s estimates of road quality compare favorably with the measurements taken with those laser-equipped vans. **For many more details on the Carbin app’s instructions and functions, please see link to 5 ISCP Carbin app articles below.

Data gathered by Carbin users and uploaded to FixMyRoad.us already offers a new argument for improved road-maintenance budgets: reducing carbon emissions.

The student team is now working on a version of Carbin to:
• Suggest the greenest driving routes
• Eventually incorporate into navigation software like Waze or Apple Maps
• Improve eco-routing promises users an immediate fuel savings and lower maintenance costs
• Factor in additional variables to some navigation apps that already offer an “eco” option based on distance and average fuel consumption, including:
—road conditions
—topography
—predicted idling time
—individual vehicles: Professor Ulm said, “Carbin has the potential to offer eco-routing for your particular car. If you have a choice of 10 pounds of CO2 or seven pounds of CO2, you may want to consider it in a time of global warming. This technology is proven. It just needs to be scaled.”
—individual driving styles

The next big step is COMMERCIAL—turn class project into a start-up/a business when most of the students will graduate this spring. Mr. Roxon will manage Carbin’s transition from a student project to a commercial venture over the next few months, as graduation nears. The group is also thinking about large fleet customers like UPS, FedEx, Uber, and Lyft.

For more detail and the article titled “Mapping Potholes by Phone (the West Bank’s Roads Were Smoother)”, please go to: www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/business/potholes-app.html

For the ISCP September 2019 article about the CARBIN APP titled “MIT’s “Carbin App” Enhanced—Participate Today!”, please go to: https://www.concretepavements.org/2019/09/29/mits-carbin-app-enhanced-participate-today/

For 5 ISCP articles pertaining to the CARBIN APP, please go to:
https://www.concretepavements.org/?s=Carbin

Home Photo: Members of the Carbin team at the office of Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm at MIT. Photo Credit: Cody O’Loughlin-The New York Times