The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently made recordings available of its weekly series of COVID-19 “virtual panels” held in April.
The AASHTO Committee on Transportation System Security & Resilience, through its Resilient and Sustainable Transportation Systems or RSTS Technical Assistance Program, sponsored those panels, which focused COVID-19 response and recovery issues faced by state departments of transportation.
The panels featured COVID-19 updates from the Federal Highway Administration, Transportation Security Administration, and Department of Homeland Security as well as from other state and local transportation agencies, followed by a question and answer session.
The panel recordings and materials can be accessed by clicking here.
What does it mean to be “net zero” in the transportation world today? When talking about carbon emissions, it refers to achieving an overall balance between emissions produced and emissions taken out of the atmosphere.
For example, the building industry has been working toward “net zero” infrastructure for years. According to the World Green Building Council, buildings are currently responsible for 39 percent of global energy-related carbon emissions: with 28 percent coming from operational emissions – from the energy needed to heat, cool, and power the structures – and the remaining 11 percent from materials and construction.
Though highway roads and structures do not have the same level of operating emissions as a building, “embodied” carbon from the construction process significantly adds to transportation’s carbon footprint. Embodied carbon is the carbon footprint of a material. It considers how many greenhouse gases (GHGs) are released throughout the supply chain. This includes the extraction of materials from the ground, transport, refining, processing, assembly, in-use and finally its end of life recycling of disposal.
The building industry now believes that embodied carbon in projects can be reduced 10 percent to 20 percent without increasing capital costs. One new study out of Sweden believes net-zero carbon emissions in construction supply chains can be reached by 2045.
Photo courtesy Hawaii DOT
But what exactly does this mean for highway and bridge construction? Many believe that policy is the starting point for significant reductions in carbon in highway projects. Globally, many countries are already requiring “net zero” infrastructure design. In Sweden, for instance, large transport infrastructure projects (roads, rail, tunnels) are required to calculate and report embodied carbon and monetary incentives awarded if embodied carbon is below a specified target.
Some state departments of transportation are already working toward similar goals. For example, the Hawaii Department of Transportation started a testing project in 2019 using a concrete mix injected with waste carbon dioxide (CO2). The CO2 is mixed into the concrete using CarbonCure technology. The resulting product traps carbon dioxide in mineral form within the concrete and improves the comprehensive strength of the material.
The test project involves a pour of 150 cubic yards of carbon-injected concrete next to an equivalent pour of standard concrete mix on an access road for the Kapolei Interchange. This test will allow the Hawaii DOT to do a side-by-side comparison of the carbon reducing mix versus a standard mix to determine specifications for the use of carbon-injected concrete for road projects in the future.
“We’ve seen the benefits to CO2 mineralized concrete and will be using it when appropriate in Hawaii’s road and bridge projects,” explained Ed Sniffen, Hawaii DOT’s deputy director for highways. “The availability of environmentally friendly materials such as carbon injected concrete is necessary for us to move forward in reducing the carbon footprint of our construction projects.”
In an interview with Smart Cities Dive, Sniffen added that the carbon-injected material has turned out to be stronger and more workable, with no increase in cost over traditional concrete. “The overall carbon savings is significant,” he said. “We reduce it overall about 1,500 pounds into the environment. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but really, that equals up to one car driving 1,600 miles continuously. So, it builds up quite a bit.”
How can such “embodied” carbon in highway construction be reduced? In general, highway designers can use Life Cycle Analysis based tools to determine the environmental footprint of a whole project and search for ways to reduce life cycle GHG emissions and other impacts through strategies such as:
Ensuring efficient use of materials (i.e. “right-sizing”)
Selecting materials with more efficient manufacturing processes
Minimizing transportation impacts through use of local materials
Using robust materials that require less maintenance, repair, and refurbishment
Choosing materials that can be reused or recycled instead of landfilled
Although there may be a learning curve and increased costs initially to incorporate embodied carbon reduction into construction decisions, it appears that the incremental costs of incorporating this analysis is comparatively small for the potential benefit it could provide. Complicated decisions and life cycle analysis must be done from the planning phase of the project through design and construction to significantly reduce embodied carbon and hit the “net zero” goal. In the future, these efforts will be driven by government policy and environmental stewardship of firms and contractors. It is inevitable that the wave of “net zero” goals in the building industry will continue to transition into the highway industry as well.
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Committee on Transportation System Security is sponsoring a series of “virtual panel discussions” to help state department of transportation leaders stay up-to-date on the latest news regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
The panels will feature updates from the Federal Highway Administration, Transportation Security Administration, and Department of Homeland Security regarding the latest transportation implications of the COVID-19 outbreak. State DOT leaders will also get updates from other state and local transportation agencies from across the country, with an opportunity for open discussion.
The panels are also envisioned to serve as a “support group” for state DOTs facing COVID-19 emergency situations. But they are also forums for gathering and learning from the transportation impacts of the current pandemic and how they can be applied to future emergencies, including natural disasters such as hurricanes.
Another discussion thread will deal with how to improve multi-agency partnerships and emergency response efforts – especially in terms of building multi-agency ties before, and not during, emergency efforts. There will also be an emphasis on fine-tuning continuing of operations or COOP plans to help state DOTs maintain transportation systems during disease pandemics, as managing contagion outbreaks requires different protocols compared to COOP plans for wildfires, hurricanes, and the like.
The virtual panel series will be hosted weekly for the month of April. Additionally, a survey of state DOT needs or areas of interest regarding COVID-19 response and recovery will be launched at the April 8 session. Feedback collected will be used to inform subsequent sessions and additional technical assistance in response to the immediate and near-term response needs identified by state and local transportation agencies.
For registration details, please use the links below:
Wednesday, April 8, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern: click here.
Wednesday, April 15, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern: click here.
Wednesday, April 22, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern: click here.
Imagine a highway that
uses technology to track motor vehicles along an18-mile span ― that uses
existing vehicle infrastructure to transmit radio data, as well as rest areas
with testing zones and solar-powered charging stations.
Incorporating those
features and others are part of the approach of the Georgia Department of
Transportation long the said stretch of Interstate 85 via The Ray, which runs
along the Ray C. Anderson
Memorial Highway – so named for the late LaGrange, Georgia, native and
businessman who promoted sustainability as a key aspect of future
transportation projects.
The Ray – a high tech
arterial roadway that lies south of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport –
begins at the Georgia/Alabama state line and ends in LaGrange at Exit 18. It’s
a “future-forward infrastructure” project made possible by what’s known as a P4
– a public-private-philanthropic partnership.
Allie Kelly
What the state “has done with its partners in the advanced technology sector is learn from an 18-mile living laboratory that’s completely open to the public,” said Allie Kelly, executive director of The Ray. “It’s not a test track at a university, but a real-world environment that’s used by the 11.5 million drivers.”
The idea behind The Ray noted Kelly, “is to make highway transportation safer. Russell [McMurry, Georgia DOT commissioner] and I always talk about roughly 38,000 Americans who die in traffic crashes every year. They’re why we’ve worked together on various innovations” to make highway travel safer.
One way to accomplish that
goal, she explained, is to make testing easily accessible. And free.
“In 2016, we installed a
drive-thru tire safety test station at Mile Marker 1 at a Federal Highway
Administration rest area along The Ray’s northbound lane,” Kelly pointed out, highlighting
the use of WheelRight technology at a tire safety station, which allows drivers
to cruise over testing equipment “at 10 miles per hour or less”
She added that the technology evaluates tire pressure, tire tread depth, temperature, weight in motion and looks for damage on your tire sidewalls before printing out a report, all in about 10 seconds. “And it works on every vehicle type – aside from motorcycles,” Kelly noted.
She also noted that the
Georgia DOT has built a dozen projects along The Ray since 2015, including the
aforementioned connected vehicle infrastructure for radio data, which Kelly called
“the biggest data pipeline the U.S. has ever seen, where we will have 105
million connected cars by 2022 sending out data packets at a rate of 10 times
per second.”
The roadway also features
a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station; a solar road called
Wattways; and a megawatt solar array at the Exit 14 Diamond interchange, 40
feet from the pavement.
Russell McMurray, Georgia DOT Commissioner
Georgia DOT’s McMurray
said such innovations are the result of “a case-by-case cost-sharing concept,
with The Ray as a frequent financial partner,” in addition to private industry
donating materials.
He said other states are
taking notice of Georgia’s approach.
“While Georgia is
definitely leading the way in innovative partnerships like Georgia DOT’s
partnership with The Ray, one example I can cite is the Massachusetts
Department of Transportation Solar Energy Program,” McMurry noted. “[It]
focuses on ground mount solar [photovoltaic] generation facilities within state
highway layouts throughout Massachusetts. The goal is to create energy savings
by procuring electricity at a favorable rate, generate revenue by using unused
state land and support the Commonwealth’s green and clean economy.”
There are various facets
to what is being accomplished via The Ray that include not only data collection
and energy creation, but environmental aspects, too – such as the evaluation of
different types of plants-pollinators and native species. For instance, the
solar farm covers a natural habitat with native grasses and flowers, among
others.
From environmental and
safety standpoints, “all of the shredded tires on an interstate from blowouts
and are very dangerous and they are often the byproduct of loss of life,” Kelly
said. “While this effort is about safety, we’re also wasting two billion
gallons of fuel every year because we can’t get our tire’s air pressure right.”
On that note, she added that “the big winners” traveling The Ray are fleets. “School buses, city transit buses and 18-wheelers coming out of ports can use every weigh station on I-85,” Kelly pointed out. “That’s how we correct those tire issues that are leading to tire failure, wasted, fuel, and dangerous crashes.”
While made with sadness
and frustration, Kelly emphasized there is hope in that observation, as well.
“The technology we need to
make improvements exists,” she stressed. “We just need to start using it.”
