Martin T. Pietrucha’s research while affiliated with Pennsylvania State University and other places

The main objective of this research was to compare the legibility distance of the negative-contrast Clearview typeface with that of comparable FHWA Standard Alphabets on black-on-white signs in the daytime and nighttime for older and younger motorists. Mixed-case Clearview (2-B, 3-B, and 4-B) was compared with both mixed-case and uppercase FHWA Standard Alphabets (Series C, D, and E). In addition, the researchers evaluated the effects of letter height on the legibility distance of mixed-case Clearview. A small set of positive-contrast white-ongreen signs were displayed to compare Clearview Typefaces 2-W, 3-W, and 4-W with FHWA Standard Alphabet Series C, D, and E, which are all mixed case. Overall, signs that used Clearview negative-contrast in mixed case performed as well as FHWA Standard Alphabets in uppercase (even though the Clearview fonts took up less sign space than the FHWA Standard Alphabets) and better than mixed-case FHWA Standard Alphabets in both daytime and nighttime. Overall, Clearview in positive contrast (white on green) outperformed the comparable FHWA Standard Alphabets. In addition, a survey conducted with state departments of transportation of their current use of Clearview in positive contrast and their potential use of Clearview in negative contrast is discussed.

The federal Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) has been associated with the reduction in fatal crashes since 2006, but the reasons for the reduction remain largely unknown. This paper examines the reduction in fatal crashes in terms of different types of first harmful events that can provide insight into crash causes and prevention strategies. In this study, fatal crashes were categorized into four types: overturn, collision with motor vehicle in transport, collision with fixed object, and collision with nonmotorist. Fixed-effects and mixed-effects Poisson models were used to estimate the magnitudes of fatal crash reduction by first harmful events for each state. Fatal crashes due to collisions with nonmotorists and motor vehicles in transport have been reduced by 10% and 5.3%, respectively, compared with the 2001 to 2005 period. Fatal crashes due to overturn and collision with a fixed object decreased in some states but remained unchanged or increased in other states. Nevertheless, the numbers of national fixed-object and overturn fatal crashes have been reduced by 3% and 0.7%, respectively, as a whole. This study also investigated possibilities that could be associated with the magnitudes of the reductions, for example, the different traffic laws among states. It was found that although different safety improvement projects were implemented to target the various types of crashes, the improvements were also likely to be beneficial to other crash types. These are referred to as spillover effects. Nationally, fatal crashes have decreased since the introduction of the HSIP partly because of the reduction in fatal crashes due to collisions with nonmotorists and motor vehicles in transport and partly because of spillover effects.

The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users established the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), which authorized about $1.3 billion/year from 2006 to 2009 for highway safety projects. The HSIP aims "to achieve a significant reduction in fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads," and the number of national traffic fatalities seems to have decreased at about the same time. This study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the HSIP in reducing fatal crashes in the United States. The study adopted fixed-effect panel models and multilevel mixed-effect models to deal with random fluctuations both before and after introduction of the HSIP and state-specific effects. The results show a drop of about 7.5% in national traffic fatalities since introduction of the HSIP compared with the average for 2001 to 2005, but the magnitude of reduction varied by state. States' safety-related spending did not increase after introduction of the HSIP. Increased federal safety funding was offset by reduced state funding (crowd-out effect). The magnitude of states' fatal-crash reduction was highly associated with years of available crash data, prioritizing method, and use of roadway inventory data. Moreover, states that prioritized hazardous sites by using more detailed roadway inventory data and the empirical Bayes method had the greatest reductions; all of those states relied heavily on the quality of their crash data systems. This study found that effectiveness of the HSIP in reducing national fatal crashes is very likely attributable to mandated reporting requirements, which helped states allocate safety spending more effectively and efficiently. It also suggests that more consistent and reliable crash data will allow states to employ more sophisticated prioritization methods and make better highway safety investment decisions.

Potentially the biggest failure in transportation planning is a failure of imagination. How many times have we heard, “we did not see it coming,” “it wasn’t on our radar,” “nobody could have planned for THAT?” The increasing complexity and interconnectedness of transportation systems worldwide and the connectedness of those systems with other critical infra-structure, such as telecommunications, and electricity, as well as the changing nature of land-use planning demands that the next generation transportation professional have an intellectual toolkit that is broader and more strategically oriented than today’s tactical and operational perspective. The ability to understand the complicated dynamics of transportation systems as complex, large-scale, socio-technical systems requires the cultivation of an ability to imagine the possible and understand the consequences of what sometimes are called low probability, high impact events. Although one cannot plan for every remote possibility, one does need to develop a framework for interpreting the potentially far-reaching implications of seemingly minor events and to craft strategies that can effectively respond to these possibilities. One may think of this capacity as strategic imagination. In this paper we explore scenario planning for cultivating strategic imagination and, in particular, examine the use of scenario planning as a way to enable the individual transportation professional to think more creatively and, through the incorporation of this technique into the transportation planning process, create a common medium for multiple stakeholders to think collaboratively and reflect upon the deeper connections among socio-technical systems. We report on a case study of a scenario planning exercise for the Centre Region, Centre County, Pennsylvania held in cooperation with the U. S. Department of Transportation to illustrate how scenario planning may be used to think imaginatively, but practically, of the connections between land-use and transportation. In this context, scenario planning may be seen as an effective tool to be used for strategic engineering leadership.

Poorly visible on-premise commercial signs have been associated with reduced safety because drivers trying to locate and make sense of these signs may drive slower than the rest of traffic and perform erratic, last-second maneuvers. One of the main reasons for reduced sign visibility is poor sign lighting. In addressing this issue, research has demonstrated that internally illuminated on-premise signs have 40% to 60% greater visibility than externally illuminated signs on a controlled test track. Even so, an ever-increasing number of jurisdictions are implementing sign ordinances that prohibit the use of internally illuminated on-premise signs, mainly for aesthetic reasons. The objective of this research was to expand on the earlier test track research by evaluating the relative visibility of internally and externally illuminated signs on open roads in the real world. The results of this research clearly demonstrate the superiority of internally illuminated signs across a wide variety of driving conditions, sign offsets, sizes, shapes, colors, external lighting designs, and quality.

The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices has grown much more complex since 1961, the year that a section on signs for freeways and expressways was added to the manual. Yet that growth has been reflected primarily in the addition of more regulatory signs and a great deal of qualifying language. The standards for sign legibility and layout have changed little; however, the complexity of the roadway environments and the demand placed on the system has changed substantially. This paper builds upon previous work by the writers, which proposed similar formatting for conventional road guide signing. The intent of the system proposed in this new work is to improve the consistency and uniform readability of freeway and expressway guide signs based on defined proportions for key dimensions including: border, figure and field relationship, and line space. This design scheme rests on a foundation of proportional relationships made uniform for all common applications based on the common dimension ("X") of the height of the primary legend's lead capital letter.

Nano-, bio-, and information based engineered systems as well as large-scale socio-technological systems, such as the electric grid and the regional surface transportation network, are complex systems for which the temporal evolution and outcomes states may not be predictable because emergent phenomena are ubiquitous. Given that engineers may not be capable of predicting the outcome of an engineered system, the issue arises as to how engineers ensure system performance and engineer ethically. A pragmatic philosophy of engineering with both instrumental and reflective aspects is essential. This philosophy will incorporate both systems analysis and scenario planning as tools to learn about how a system may perform over time, and engineers may thereby gain insight to how they ought design and manage complex systems even though they may not fully understand them. The creation of feedback mechanisms by using such tools as the semantic World Wide Web may be one way that a reflective dialogue about engineering systems emerges and influences the evolution of these complex systems.

Driver satisfaction regarding travel information provided by variable message signs (VMS), which are part of the Nam-Mountain Tunnel ATIS, was evaluated using fuzzy aggregation. Application of fuzzy aggregation to analyze driver satisfaction allows one to represent the variability and complexity of human perception with great fidelity. A fuzzy weighted average using two sets of fuzzy membership functions was applied to evaluate individual satisfactions of delay and travel time information provided. Then, those individual satisfactions were aggregated to estimate the driver group's overall satisfaction. The evaluated overall satisfaction was 0.65 for delay information and 0.63 for travel time information. Through these results, it was found that users of the travel information provided by the VMS in the Nam-Mountain Tunnel ATIS were somewhat satisfied with the service quality. Those overall satisfactions were compared with a conventional weighted average and traffic operational effects to demonstrate the usefulness of the developed fuzzy method.

Concepts of transportation service quality are related to efforts to evaluate driving conditions and the level of satisfaction that transportation users perceive. However, few data have been gathered from actual users about perceived service quality. A new method is developed for the evaluation of transportation service quality using a fuzzy aggregation and a cultural consensus analysis technique. After a literature review was conducted, six analysis criteria that showed promise as relevant indicators were selected to apply the developed method to assess the service quality of signalized intersections. With the use of a fuzzy weighted-average technique on six criteria, individual perceptions regarding the service quality of signalized intersections were evaluated. Then, the weight of an individual's perceptions, measured with consensus analysis, was applied to estimate a more realistic, aggregated overall service quality rating of a signalized intersection. Through the consensus analysis, the competence scores-which indicate how '' correct '' and relatively important each individual's response is-were estimated and used for each participant. Experimental results indicate that user perceptions of transportation service quality fall in a narrow measurable range of the scale constructed to perform this measurement. In other words, users' perceptions are not easily distinguished and vary greatly by individual. Therefore, user-perceived service quality ratings do not correspond to the level of service evaluated using the Highway Capacity Manual method. Ratings of user-perceived service quality of signalized intersections evaluated by using the new fuzzy aggregation method are in better agreement with the actual perceptions that people hold than those obtained by using a more conventional method.