UGPTI Work on National Highway Software to Benefit North Dakota

North Dakota will soon have a new tool for planning highway maintenance and improvement thanks to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the UGPTI.

The FHWA developed the Highway Economic Requirements System (HERS) planning software more than a decade ago to help assess the nation's highway system. In the past three to four years, the agency has been improving the software to look at highway systems at the state level. Denver Tolliver, UGPTI associate director, has been a key part of the effort.

"We were one of the few places to use the national model to do analysis on a state level as early as 1995," Tolliver says. "As a result of that work we were invited to participate in the developers' group that was improving the software."

"Now the UGPTI is tailoring HERS to North Dakota. We're developing features that will allow NDDOT and other agencies to use it in the future," he says. The process involves substituting North Dakota highway design values for national values and adding classes of highway and additional information that may be unique to North Dakota. The software customized for North Dakota should be ready for use this fall.

"We're also developing it so it can be used in conjunction with regional economic models so we can quantify the regional economic assessments," Tolliver says.

Tolliver says the effort in North Dakota is unique and may benefit other rural states. "We're one of the few states to look at a rural highway system and assess efforts to preserve that system. Most other groups using the software are in urban areas and are primarily concerned with highway capacity."

He says the software forecasts performance of highways over time and can predict the benefits of resurfacing, shoulder upgrades and other improvements.

"The software's primary use is as a big picture planning system and to quantify benefits of preserving the existing highway system," he says. "But we can also look at parts of the system, regions of the state, a corridor, or a particular highway. We can look at tradeoffs involved with certain geometric features such as lane width and shoulder width vs. structural capacity to help make planning decisions."

Griffin Named to Eno Transportation Foundation Board of Advisors

Gene Griffin, director of the UGPTI, was recently named to a three-year term on the Eno Transportation Foundation's Board of Advisors.

The Eno Transportation Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., works to improve mobility by anticipating and averting issues that threaten it. Activities focus on all modes of transportation and its mission is to cultivate creative and visionary leadership for the transportation sector by identifying emerging transportation issues and accelerating the consideration of steps to address them.

The foundation is named for William Phelps Eno, an international pioneer in traffic control and regulation who wrote the first "rules of the road" which were adopted by New York City in 1909 and later by cities throughout the world. He chartered the foundation in 1921 as a means of attracting the thinking of other experts and specialists and of providing a forum for unbiased discussions.

"I will be serving with leaders in the transportation industry, so being named to the board of advisors is an honor and a great opportunity," says Griffin. "The appointment recognizes the excellent work and reputation of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute."

Griffin has been director of the institute since 1980, a tenure that has seen the Institute's annual budget increase to more than $3 million and the number of staff grow to more than 40. During his tenure the UGPTI has gained national stature in its focus area of rural and small urban transportation and logistics.