
Kumares C. SinhaPurdue University West Lafayette | Purdue · School of Civil Engineering
Kumares C. Sinha
PhD (University of Connecticut)
About
347
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Introduction
For almost five decades, Kumares C. Sinha has contributed to transportation engineering over a spectrum of areas from highway engineering, traffic operations, and safety analysis to land use–transportation system modeling, transportation financing, and civil infrastructure management.
He pioneered integrated highway-asset-management techniques with innovative research on facility condition modeling, treatment effectiveness, life-cycle costing, and multiobjective optimization of system performance to determine the best times and the optimal levels of effort for renewing and repairing pavement, bridges, and other facilities.
KCS is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a national associate of the National Academies.
Publications
Publications (347)
The results of experiments testing the public use of automobiles in the United States are presented. The Purdue Mobility Enterprise system was a work-based shared-vehicle concept, where households used mini/micro-class automobiles for normal daily travel, and full-sized shared vehicles for less frequent but more demanding trips. Comparisons between...
This paper deals with an application of optimization technique to the problem of land use plan design: a spatial design of primary land uses in a given area and the associated linkage requirements for transportation and utilities. Using a random search procedure the discrete land use elements, called modules, are assigned to discrete land areas, kn...
Under the current fuel-tax-based highway financing system, the funding gap between highway needs and revenue available is expected to grow as vehicle fuel economy improves and use of alternative fuels increases. Consequently, the highway financing mechanism needs to be restructured or a different financing strategy undertaken. Previous research pro...
The evaluation of transportation projects has traditionally been made by assessing changes in travel time, vehicle operating
cost, and safety. The broader, long-term effects on economic development (job, income and business growth) are a concern of
transportation planners and decision makers, but have often been overlooked due to the lack of a reli...
The primary focus of this research is to develop an approach to capture the effect of travel time information on travelers’ route switching behavior in real-time, based on on-line traffic surveillance data. It also presents a freeway Origin–Destination demand prediction algorithm using an adaptive Kalman Filtering technique, where the effect of tra...
Over the past century, landmark advancements in vehicle technology have motivated road agencies to carry out changes in their road infrastructure design and management processes to accommodate these advancements. The advent of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), however, poses infrastructure challenges that could be more profound compared to those faced in...
Rapid growth in information and communication technologies has spawned a number of major innovations in transportation area, including automation and connectivity. At the same time, the advancement in battery technology has accelerated the electrification of transportation vehicle propulsion. This paper, focusing on highway-oriented surface transpo...
Two financial incentives that have spurred the growth of renewable energy including wind farms are Production Tax Credits (PTC) and Property Tax Abatement (PTA). PTC provides a tax credit of 1¢–2¢ per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of electricity generation for utility-scale wind, and PTA is a rebate provided by the local governments to wind...
State and city governments in the United States continue to emphasize user equity in all transportation policy areas, including project evaluation, finance, and operations. In 2016, the State of Indiana House of Representatives introduced House Bill (HB) 1002 in a bid to raise additional revenue for maintaining the state’s road infrastructure. The...
Transportation agencies routinely make repair decisions in numerous contexts which include the timing of different repair treatments over an extended period. The timing policy may be characterized either by a standalone manner that maximizes the outcome or utility of individual treatments at a given time, or by a holistic manner that maximizes the...
Trade‐off analysis, one of the key tenets of multi‐objective optimization for the project selection problem in Transportation Asset Management (TAM), can help decision‐makers quantify and comprehend the consequences of different resource allocations in terms of the multiple measures of system performance. In analyzing TAM trade‐offs, it is vital to...
Trade-off analysis, one of the key tenets of multi-objective optimization for the project selection problem in transportation asset management (TAM), can help decision-makers quantify and comprehend the consequences of different resource allocations in terms of the multiple measures of system performance. In analyzing TAM trade-offs, it is vital to...
Given many known and unknown uncertainties, it is hard to forecast reliably the mode choices, expected to prevail with autonomous vehicle (AV) technology; however, the key to getting some idea lies in understanding the preferences of end users. In this vein, a random parameters logit model is employed to study the consumers’ preferences in small- a...
This paper examines the potential impact of autonomous vehicles on commuters’ value of travel time (VOTT). In particular, we focus on the effect on auto commuters in small and medium-sized metropolitan areas, concerning the spatial variability across urban areas, suburbs, and rural areas. We design a stated choice experiment to elicit potential cha...
Incidents are a major source of traffic congestion and can lead to long and unpredictable delays, deteriorating traffic operations and adverse environmental impacts. The emergence of connected vehicles and communication technologies has enabled travelers to use real-time traffic information. The ability to exchange traffic information among vehicle...
Autonomous vehicle technologies are expected to reshape travel experiences by enabling more productive or enjoyable uses of travel time. Interests regarding how autonomous vehicles will affect mobility and the subsequent broader social effects are growing. However, few studies have investigated individuals' in-vehicle activities during travel in au...
This study provides and demonstrates a methodology to quantify the impact of INDOT’s standard maintenance treatments on state highway pavements and bridge deck surfaces, in terms of their condition ratings. Of the specific objectives, the first is to generate requisite reset values that INDOT’s asset manager can use in the agency’s PMS and BMS soft...
Communication technology enables information transmissions among vehicles and has the potential to improve the transportation system performance. The goal of the current study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a congestion warning application in connected vehicles on improving mobility and reducing fuel consumption at the network level. A microsi...
Communication technology enables information transmissions among vehicles and has the potential to improve the transportation system performance. The goal of the current study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a congestion warning application in connected vehicles on improving mobility and reducing fuel consumption at the network level. A microsi...
Highway agencies apply rehabilitation and maintenance treatments to restore pavement condition and to reduce the deterioration rate, thereby extending pavement longevity and ultimately deferring reconstruction. Before agencies make decisions regarding the need for some treatment, treatment selection and timing and repair schedule (combination of tr...
Connected vehicles have the potential to improve the performance of highway transportation systems. The impacts of connectivity on individual highway segments have been extensively evaluated. The present paper assesses the network-wide impacts of connected vehicles on mobility and emissions using a micro simulation model developed in the study. A n...
Bridge agencies seek to apply appropriate rehabilitation or maintenance treatments at the right time. For a specific treatment, improper timing can have significant adverse consequences: Premature application could mean wasteful spending by the agency even if road users and the community enjoy the benefits of a superior bridge condition, and deferr...
VMT data have a wide range of applications in highway agency business processes. However, at all administrative levels, highway agencies continue to be stymied by the poor reliability of local road vehicle miles of travel (VMT) estimates due to the inadequacy of local road traffic counts. This paper presents a methodology to address this problem wh...
In the past decade, infrastructure-related legislation in the United States has consistently emphasized the need to measure the risk and uncertainty associated with infrastructure project cost estimates. Such cost variability is best viewed from the perspective of the project development phases of planning, design, bidding, and construction and how...
The time has come for renewed emphasis on the life cycle management of the physical aspects of transportation infrastructure. The urgency for this new direction is underscored by the fact that the physical transportation network at most countries constitutes the most valuable publicly-owned infrastructure and efforts must be made to keep it resilie...
Civil infrastructure managers have a profound interest in knowing the costs of infrastructure degradation caused by user operations that exceed statutory limits; that way, they are better informed to establish or revise policies related to permit fee structures for such extra-legal operations. In the specific context of vehicle weight permitting fo...
This paper presents a replicable framework for geographic information system–(GIS) based land suitability analysis of utility-scale wind farms using publicly available and permissible data. The framework identifies 10 suitability factors accounting for environmental, ecological, cultural, human settlement, physical infrastructure, and wind resource...
The evaluation of warranty contracts is of great interest to highway agencies that seek innovative ways to manage their assets in the most cost-effective way. This paper demonstrates a statistical approach for evaluating the long-term performance and cost effectiveness of pavement warranties via comparison with similar traditional contracts. This i...
Wind energy is an emerging source for renewable energy. This article presents an application of the economic input–output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the life cycle of wind energy farms in a state. The EIO-LCA incorporates manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and decommis...
This study investigated the responsibility for the cost of upkeep of the highway infrastructure and the contribution of revenue from highway users on that upkeep. The costs consisted of actual expenditures on the construction, preservation, maintenance, and operation of the infrastructure at both the state and the local levels. The revenues from th...
Highway agencies use deterioration models to monitor the performance of bridge components (deck, superstructure, and substructure) and to predict their remaining service lives on the basis of the attributes of the bridges and their operating environments. Most bridge deterioration models are deterministic in nature. However, as a result of recent f...
Highway agencies impose permit fees for overweight vehicles both to recuperate (partially) the consumption cost and to encourage the use of less-damaging loading patterns and vehicle configurations. To provide information for such policies, numerous state and national studies have investigated the impacts of overweight vehicles on the physical and...
For purposes that include oversight and accountability, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the General Accountability Office continue to emphasize the need for regular systemwide monitoring of transportation infrastructure performance in response to system expenditures. To address this issue, it is necessary to ascertain the nature of the re...
Highway agencies impose permit fees for overweight vehicles both to recuperate (partially) the consumption cost and to encourage the use of less-damaging loading patterns and vehicle configurations. To provide information for such policies, numerous state and national studies have investigated the impacts of overweight vehicles on the physical and...
Professor Karlaftis did extensive work in the areas of urban transportation, transportation planning and operations, and emergency response. He had an affinity for statistics and optimization, so most of his work was quantitatively driven. He was a coauthor of an international bestselling book on transportation econometrics and statistics, two text...
This paper presents a framework for comparative assessment of the operational productivity and efficiency of transit agencies. Inputs from selected public transit agencies in Indiana, including annual operating expenses, number of employees, and total fuel consumption, and outputs, including the total ridership and total vehicle miles traveled duri...
In response to the federal requirements of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Act: A Legacy for Users, nearly all state departments of transportation (DOTs) have started to use performance measurement in the planning or programming process. Although these performance measures are routinely monitored, they are generally comple...
The long-term leasing of toll roads, a type of public-private partnership (PPP), has been attracting the attention of state governments since the two landmark cases of the Chicago Skyway in Illinois and the Indiana Toll Road in 2005 and 2006, respectively. To assist public agencies in making appropriate decisions to enter PPP agreements that are in...
The development and management of transportation infrastructure is a continuous process that includes the phases of planning and design, construction, operations, maintenance, preservation, and reconstruction. Uncertainties at each phase include variability in demand estimation, reliability of planning and design parameters, construction cost overr...
Multiattribute utility functions are widely used for multiobjective optimization of project selection problems in network-level bridge management, based on their capability of incorporating multiple performance measures and decision-makers' preferences. However, the existing way of using them needs to be improved. First, the addition of individual...
NCHRP Report 713, Volume 2 describes the technical issues and data needs associated with estimating asset life expectancies and the practices used in a number of fields--such as the energy and financial industries--to make such estimates.
NCHRP Report 713, Volume 1 addresses how to apply a methodology for estimating the life expectancies of major types of highway system assets. The methodology is designed for use in lifecycle cost analyses that support management decision making.
Transport agencies around the world recognize the importance of on-time on-budget delivery of highway projects and understand the need for an efficient transport development process. Past studies of highway project duration and cost estimation were focused on construction, and few studies have focused on preconstruction project delivery from an age...
Investment decision making in transportation asset management is typically characterized by a wide diversity of asset types for purposes of optimization at overall system level. To enhance investment analysis and decision making for these multiobjective problem types, the analysis of trade-offs associated with different performance measures can be...
In the current era of greater stakeholder participation, limited funding, and increased user awareness, bridge managers are using multiple-criteria techniques in their decision-making processes so that their decisions can be more accountable and transparent. Issues that arise in making such decisions include the multiplicity of the performance crit...
A distance-based highway pricing scheme has been considered a means to tackle highway revenue shortfalls as an alternative to the current taxation on motor fuels. To establish fee rates for a distance-based pricing scheme, this study argues that maintenance and management of the highway system be self-financed by its users, who are responsible for...
The effect of trucks on the level of service is determined by considering passenger car equivalents (PCE) of trucks. The Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) uses a single PCE value for all tucks combined. However, the composition of truck traffic varies from location to location; therefore a single PCE-value for all trucks may not correctly represent the...
Efforts to incorporate the concerns of bridge users in bridge investment evaluation are often stymied by lack of a comprehensive framework for assessing different user costs. There is a need to synthesise and update existing user cost estimation techniques so that the incorporation of user costs in bridge investment evaluation can be more consisten...
Highway agencies are collecting an enormous amount of pavement condition data and have to face constantly the laborious task of ensuring its completeness and accuracy. Traditionally, most data-quality studies are focused on ensuring the accuracy and precision of delivered pavement condition data and little attention has been paid to ensure that the...
Highway agencies strive to provide the highest possible level of service (LOS) to their users. Traffic density, the main factor affecting the freeway, is determined by converting a mixed traffic stream to an equivalent passenger car stream using passenger car equivalencies (PCEs). Traditionally, equivalent delay and microscopic simulation have been...
Construction cost overrun and time overrun (delay) are a significant problem in highway-construction project delivery. Previous research studies have provided insight into the factors that affect overruns; however the findings may have been limited because they do not explicitly consider the simultaneous relationship between cost and time overruns....
Transportation agencies worldwide increasingly seek to abandon reactive approaches for safety enhancement in favor of approaches that incorporate safety in their transportation planning processes in a proactive, comprehensive, and systemwide context. To facilitate this task, this paper presents a framework which identifies candidate facilities in a...
There has been much concern on the need for integrated transportation planning and urban land use development to promote sustainablilty in metropolitan areas. An integrated transportation-land development framework is critical to explicitly address concerns on sustainability in urban areas. This paper shall examine the various options that can be u...
State highway agencies are facing immense pressure to maintain roads at acceptable levels amidst the challenging financial and economic situations. In recent years, pavement preservation has been sought as a potential alternative for managing the pavement assets, believing that it would provide a cost-effective solution in maintaining infrastructur...
Throughout the United States, state highway revenue, which is dominated by receipts from fuel taxes, has failed to keep up with expected investments required for infrastructure preservation and improvement. The reasons for this trend include the increasing fuel efficiency of vehicles, slowing of the growth in vehicle-miles of travel, and the eros...
Automated pavement data collection techniques are commonly used by highway agencies to collect pavement surface distress data at the network level. While an immense amount of data is collected at the network level, agencies realize that there is a lack of understanding in the quality of data collected. Traditionally, either the overall pavement con...
Transportation management policies and practices are currently experiencing evolving trends such as funding limitations, aging facilities, greater travel demand, increased number of visible stakeholders, and higher user expectations. As a result, transportation agencies currently grapple with how to best incorporate a wide range of performance crit...
Of the overall benefits of a highway project, only a portion may be quantifiable in dollar values and the remaining in nondollar values. To facilitate project comparisons, both portions of project benefits need to be converted into commensurable values. Such conversion can be achieved by using multicriteria value functions that can be derived throu...
This paper introduces a new methodology for highway investment decision making under uncertainty that uses Shackle's model for uncertainty-based project benefit analysis and system optimization for project selection. Shackle's model overcomes limitations of the risk-based life-cycle cost analysis approach by using degree of surprise as a measure of...
Like the rest of the US, the ethanol industry in Indiana has rapidly expanded, growing from one plant in 2006 to a projected 13 by 2010. One result of this expansion is that truck and rail traffic flows in Indiana are shifting, as more corn and beans are processed in state. Most of the change in transportation requirements will likely be concentrat...
Highway agencies around the world are undergoing major changes in their traditional maintenance practices, including the privatization of entire sections of highway routine maintenance activities. Performance-based contracts (PBC) are an option in such privatizing efforts. This paper presents a methodology to estimate the likelihood and amount of c...