Innovative Programs
INDOT employees are challenging traditional ways of thinking in transportation planning, financing and construction in favor of inventive ideas and innovative solutions, especially if those ideas save money and manpower.
Safety Edge
Beginning in 2011, INDOT is incorporating safety edge, a pavement design that includes an edge treatment for asphalt and concrete roads that improves roadway and traffic safety, into its construction specifications. Two-lane rural highways often have unpaved shoulders immediately adjacent to the paved roadway. If roadway maintenance does not keep material against the pavement edge, a pavement-shoulder drop-off may form. Drop-off heights can vary from less than an inch to six inches or more. When a vehicle leaves the paved roadway and encounters a pavement-shoulder drop-off, it may be difficult for the driver to steer the vehicle safely back onto the roadway. The side of the tire may scrub along the drop-off, resisting the driver’s attempts to steer and make a smooth reentry to the roadway. This resistance often leads to a driver’s over-correcting, which may slingshot vehicles across the road, resulting in loss of control or serious traffic accidents. With safety edge, the pavement edge is formed at a sloped angle to lessen the resistance of a tire to remounting the drop-off. The lessened resistance allows vehicles a more controlled reentry onto the roadway. INDOT design specifications have been modified to incorporate safety edge in appropriate projects. INDOT is one of the first state departments of transportation to incorporate safety edge into its design specifications.
Wildflower Seeds
As part of its Hoosier Roadside Heritage program, INDOT produces its own wildflower and native grass seeds to spread along the shoulders of existing roadsides. The plants provide natural low-maintenance groundcover and wildlife habitat while beautifying Indiana roadways and reducing erosion. Indiana produces wildflower and grass seeds on INDOT property at three seed farms in the Winamac, Frankfort and Madison sub-districts. In addition, the Indiana Department of Corrections is developing a fourth seed farm production field at the Putnamville Correctional Facility. DOC inmates perform maintenance and labor at all four sites at little or no cost to INDOT. At wholesale prices, INDOT estimates that the seed farms produce $200,000 in seeds annually. In addition, using native wildflowers and grasses reduces the need for roadway mowing by one-third – saving approximately $45 per acre in equipment, material and labor costs.
Snow Operations
The Fort Wayne District, in on-going efforts to make more efficient use of resources, reduced the number of snow routes and deadhead miles (miles traveled to start a snow route) and also ignored subdistrict and unit borders and ran routes that “made the most sense.” Due to this district’s success with these efforts, other districts will be looking at doing the same. Some interesting snow plow statistics from the 2009-2010 winter season include: 1,966 drivers with commercial drivers licenses were available to plow; 382,000 man hours were utilized; 357,057 tons of salt were spread on roadways; and 2,758,013 gallons of brine were disbursed.
On-the-Move Weigh Stations
Compliance with vehicle weight limits protects Indiana’s roads and drivers. But building, staffing and maintaining weigh stations is a substantial expense — and many areas have no scales at all. Truckers, understandably, also object to delays at weigh stations. The innovative INDOT solution is Virtual Weigh Stations that use in-ground sensors to weigh trucks as they travel along interstate and intrastate roads. When a truck crosses the sensors, its weight, speed and axle spacings are recorded, while a camera snaps a photo of the vehicle. Any violations are forwarded to Indiana State Police, who stop the vehicle and weigh it using portable equipment or escort it to scales. INDOT partnered with the Indiana Department of Revenue’s Motor Carrier Services Division and the Indiana State Police’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division on this program, using a $300,000 federal grant from the Commercial Vehicle Information System Network. Eventually, the Virtual Weigh Stations likely will be integrated with other systems that track weather conditions, measure speed, count traffic, monitor air quality and check for electronic permit tags.
Recycling and Reusing
INDOT is a national leader in its use of recycled materials for highway projects, an initiative overseen by INDOT’s Office of Materials Management. Asphalt roof shingles, steel slag, reclaimed asphalt pavement and recycled concrete are among the items that can be reused to save resources and cut costs. For example, asphalt mixtures that incorporate more than 40 percent recycled materials, including shingles, saved Indiana taxpayers nearly $9.5 million in FY 2010 — and kept those materials out of Indiana landfills. INDOT also used shredded tires to fill in embankments on three projects, which saved more than $3.2 million. INDOT follows guidelines issued by the American Society of Testing Materials (ASTM) and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), and INDOT also develops its own specifications and methods for ideas not covered by ASTM or AASHTO. These practices not only save taxpayer dollars, but mitigate environmental impacts for example, by not filling landfills.
Reusing Shredded Tires
IDEM and INDOT teamed up to save the state about $220,000 by using an alternative lightweight fill made mostly of shredded tires in road projects around the state. The latest project was completed recently in Kosciusko County on State Road 19. An alternative to other traditional fill types, approximately 30,000 passenger tires were shredded and mixed with approved sand. The tire shreds are supplied by ELK Distributors Inc. of Elkhart, a tire processor approved by IDEM. Improvements to the road consisted of removing the existing drainage structure and replacing it with a larger culvert. Usually road widening is performed by replacing the soft organic soil to its full depth. However, in this area peaty, wet and spongy soils are prevalent, making construction over these soils challenging. The alternative fill is a 60 percent mix of tire shred and 40 percent sand and constructed in 12-inch lifts, not the traditional six inch. This in effect reduced construction time by three to four days on the State Road 19 project. Mike Garcia, production supervisor in the Fort Wayne district teamed up with the INDOT offices of Geotechnical Engineering, Environmental Engineering and IDEM on this project. Going forward INDOT will continue to use shredded tires in its operations.
INDOT's innovative use of shredded tires was highlighted in Civil Engineering magazine.
Vehicle Refurbishing
On average, at least eight dump trucks and snow plows are replaced each year in the districts. In the Crawfordsville District, 10 of these vehicles were needed at a cost of approximately $133,000 per vehicle or a total of $1.3 million. Instead of purchasing new vehicles, a total of $289,891 was spent to refurbish 40 vehicles resulting in a savings to the district of just over $1 million. In addition to the trucks, front end loaders were refurbished and old tanker trucks were utilized to hold brine that is applied to road surfaces in the winter. This practice is now being implemented agency-wide.
Traffic Incident Management
The more quickly obstructions — including disabled or wrecked vehicles, debris or spilled cargo — can be cleared from the road, the safer for everyone, because secondary crashes can be avoided. In 2007, INDOT partnered with the Indiana State Police to address the issue in a structured way, and the outcome of that collaboration was a group named IN-TIME, Indiana’s Traffic Incident and Management Effort. Its mission is “to provide a common framework for development of traffic incident management policies and training programs across the various responder disciplines.” IN-TIME took its message of coordinated work and communications to state agencies first, and in FY 2010, widened its reach by hosting a statewide workshop for public safety officials, tow-truck drivers, first responders, environmental experts, state officials, emergency operations personnel and others. IN-TIME also worked with state legislators to update pertinent laws and policies. On average, this initiative results in one hour and 39 minutes of time saved per road closing event.
Alternate Bidding Process
INDOT’s traditional bidding method — in which INDOT developed plans and determined specifications, then selected the lowest bidder — left contractors with little room for offering alternative solutions or bidding based on what’s most economical. INDOT modified its bidding to encourage alternatives for selected projects. Among those modifications are:
- Allowing contractors to bid with different materials, depending on the contractor’s best price. For example, they can specify either asphalt or concrete for pavement, or concrete or steel for bridge beams. This allows contractors to offer INDOT much more competitive pricing.
- Design-build contracting, for which INDOT specifies end results and design parameters and contractors develop proposals based on their individual construction capabilities.
- Incentives and disincentives for meeting schedules. Contractors receive additional money for completing work ahead of schedule and lose money for falling behind. This ensures that contractors minimize traffic disruptions and meet deadlines.
Alerting Travelers
INDOT is continually improving its methods to keep drivers informed of any problems they may encounter. In FY 2010, INDOT upgraded its TrafficWise Traveler Information website (www.trafficwise.in.gov), which receives anywhere from 40,000 to 90,000 hits per month from people checking traffic and road conditions. INDOT also added a new toll-free number, 800-261-ROAD. On the highways, INDOT continues to use dynamic message signs to alert motorists about travel information so informed decisions can be made while traveling.
Predicting Travel Times
In late 2009, a travel time sign was installed on westbound I-80/94 (Borman Expressway) in Lake County to let motorists know how long it will take to get through traffic at a given time of day. The sign displays travel times to both S.R. 912 (Cline Avenue) and the Illinois state line. Sensors on the roads measure many factors including average vehicle speed and traffic volumes; projected travel times change as the data changes. Using such technology to reduce congestion, improve safety and smooth traffic flow on busy interstates has proven to be very successful in aiding motorists with their travels. Nearly 40 more of these signs will be installed in future years.
Milton-Madison Bridge
A technologically innovative construction method will save time and millions of dollars during construction of a new U.S. 421 bridge over the Ohio River between Milton, Ky., and Madison, Ind. Using a method called “truss sliding,” a new 40-foot wide, 3,181-foot-long truss will be moved along steel rails and plates and “slide” into place atop the existing piers, which will be rehabilitated. At just 20 feet wide, the original Milton-Madison steel truss bridge is too narrow for modern traffic. The new span is expected to be open to traffic by November 2012, making it the fastest modern-day bridge built across the Ohio River. Because of the innovative construction method, the bridge is expected to close for a total of only 10 days during construction, rather than the anticipated 365-day closure. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear broke ground on the project in November, 2010. The low bid submitted by Walsh Construction Company of LaPorte, Ind., for $103 million, was 20 percent below the original $131 million construction estimate. The original Milton-Madison steel truss bridge opened in 1929.
INDOT Innovation Contact & Research Contact:
Edward E. Pollack
Director-Innovation and Enhancement
Indiana Department of Transportation
100 N. Senate Ave., IGCN755
Indianapolis, IN 46204
317-234-7244
epollack@indot.in.gov
Jay Wasson
Director-Research and Development
Indiana Department of Transportation
1205 Montgomery St.
P.O. Box 2279
West Lafayette, IN
765-463-1521 x229
jwassson@indot.in.gov
