Along the Road - United States. Department of Transportation activity - Brief Article

Public Roads, July, 2000

ITS Training Now Available Online

The Consortium for ITS Training and Education (CITE) is offering interactive Web-based courses over the Internet.

CITE is an organization made up of universities, associations, and private-sector members focused on providing comprehensive ITS training and education. CITE developed interactive, Web-based courses for graduate students and professionals who wish to enhance their knowledge and skills in ITS. Graduate-level, for-credit courses developed by CITE are offered through CITE member universities. Training courses for continuing education units are available directly through CITE.

CITE was started with seed funding provided by the I-95 Corridor Coalition. The coalition is a regional partnership of transportation agencies from Maine to Virginia, bringing its members together to address ITS solutions to shared transportation problems and challenges.

For more information, visit CITE's Web site at www.citeconsortium.org.

Virginia's "Smart Road" Opens

The world's first all-weather road test facility built especially for scientific research in the transportation field opened on March 23 in Blacksburg, Va. The facility, known as the "Smart Road," is the result of a partnership between the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute, and FHWA. VDOT owns the land on which the facility was built; Virginia Tech operates the facility. FHWA participated in the design and funding of an experimental highway lighting system.

Currently, the Smart Road is a 2.7-kilometer (1.7-mile) stretch of two-lane roadway equipped with 400 electronic sensors, video cameras, and 75 weather towers that can create rain, snow, and icing conditions. It features 14 instrumented pavement sections and embedded magnetic strips for measuring lane-keeping and driver behavior.

The experimental lighting system section is 1.2 kilometers long and provides for a wide variety of luminaires selections, pole spacings, and changes in mounting heights. The system will serve as a test facility for new and novel highway lighting designs; visibility studies, as well as the evaluation of the interaction between fixed lighting, headlighting, and signing; and roadway markings under different weather conditions. TFHRC designed and built the computer-based lighting control system that allows for instantaneous changes of many of the lighting parameters from a central command post.

The test track cost $12 million to $15 million and was funded by VDOT, but is reimbursable by FHWA.

More than 70 research projects are now underway at the facility for both private industry and government agencies.

The Smart Road test facility is the result of a movement started in the 1980s to connect Blacksburg to Interstate 81 and Roanoke to the north. Smart Road is projected to be a part of Interstate 73, eventually linking Blacksburg to I-81.

FHWA Announces 2001 Environmental Excellence Awards Call for Entries

FHWA is accepting entries for the biennial Environmental Excellence Awards Program. FHWA developed the biennial awards program to draw attention to those partners, projects, and processes that excelled in meeting the growing transportation demands, while protecting and enhancing the environment.