The Transportation Department is beginning an evaluation process that will allow the University to asses the need for and scale of future improvements on Dan Allen Drive.
The department is collaborating with CE 506, Transportation Engineering Data Collection and Analysis, to do the evaluation.
“They’re going to do a lot of data collection and we can use the data for forecasting,” Assistant Director of Transportation Slade McCalip said.
According to McCalip, forecasting is the process of predicting how many trips are going to take place on a given avenue.
Tom Kendig, director of transportation, said the main issue Transportation wants to target with possible Dan Allen renovations is creating a free-flow corridor for the the bus system.
“And that’s essentially what this study is supposed to be doing,” Kendig said. “Until we get a little further in the study, this is just kind of a thought that’s out there and something that we’re investigating the implications of.”
Billy Williams, assistant professor in civil, construction and environmental engineering, is one of the professors that teaches CE 506.
He said he and Joseph Hummer, professor in civil, construction and environmental engineering, used to teach the class under the name Multi-Modal Transportation Engineering Studies.
“We used to teach it every other year,” Williams said. “[The class] took a year off, but we’re now in the mode of trying to teach it every fall.”
CE 506 was given its official title after it was finalized as a permanent class, according to Williams, and while it is technically a graduate level course, it is also open to seniors.
Williams said the class this year has five students but that in the past, there have been as many as 12. Every time the class is taught, the students are assigned a new problem to solve, and this year it was Dan Allen again.
“We have a pretty good-sized group of students looking at whatever it is the Transportation Department is currently struggling with,” Williams said.
Williams’ last class’s work influenced the three-way stop on Sullivan Drive; though it may not always come to anything, Williams said the class is certainly helpful to Transportation.
“They are students and the primary goal is the education side,” Williams said. “But often, they are able to come up with some findings and make some recommendations that the Transportation Department finds useful.”
McCalip said a variety of data collection methods will likely be used, including pneumatic traffic counters, magnetic traffic counters and physical observation counts.
Pneumatic counters are the rubber hoses that stretch from one side of the street to the other. Pressure on the hose sends an air pulse to a box attached to it, according to McCalip. This pulse tells the size of the vehicle that passed over, as well as how many objects have passed over.
Magnetic counters are small devices placed in the center of the road that count anything metal that crosses them. McCalip said people will go out and do in-person counts to supplement the information collected.
He said the department will take the suggestions of the class and do an existing condition assessment for Dan Allen Drive before making any decisions. Once those decisions have been made, the department get a cost estimate. Then it will decide where the money will come from.
“There’s usually not a silver bullet solution to things like this,” McCalip said.