The Grainger College of Engineering
Illinois Center for Transportation

New ICT-IDOT reports

4/15/2023 McCall Macomber

Illinois Center for Transportation is pleased to announce the publication of reports from the following Illinois Department of Transportation-sponsored projects, in order of publication.

R27-219: State-of-the-Practice Review of Field-Curing Methods for Evaluating the Strength of Concrete Test Specimens
Pranshoo Solanki and Sally Xie, Illinois State University
Douglas Dirks and James Krstulovich, Illinois Department of Transportation

Curing, which occurs after concrete is placed, provides water retention to facilitate cement hydration, thereby reducing permeability, increasing strength gain and minimizing concrete cracking.
Curing, which occurs after concrete is placed, provides water retention to facilitate cement hydration, thereby reducing permeability, increasing strength gain and minimizing concrete cracking.

Concrete strength samples cured in the field — in which samples are subjected to the same temperature and humidity experienced by the item they represent — have the potential to underestimate the true early strength of concrete placed in the field.

This ongoing project seeks to evaluate different curing techniques in the field for strength specimens to obtain a more representative strength of the concrete structure.

This report examined field-curing practices of transportation agencies. Researchers conducted a literature review and survey to identify the selection criteria and details of agencies’ field-curing methods.

R27-245-HS: Noise Measurements of US-41 Transverse Rumble Strips
Khaled El-Rayes, Ernest-John Ignacio and Ramez Hajj, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Benjamin Sperry and John Baczek, Illinois Department of Transportation

One of four rumble strip designs — milled, rolled, formed and raised — on a roadway. More than half of U.S. traffic fatalities occur after a driver crosses the edge or center line of a road, according to the Federal Highway Administration, which is why designing effective rumble strips is key to safer roadways.
One of four rumble strip designs — milled, rolled, formed and raised — on a roadway. More than half of U.S. traffic fatalities occur after a driver crosses the edge or center line of a road, according to the Federal Highway Administration, which is why designing effective rumble strips is key to safer roadways.

Rumble strips — patches within a roadway that warn drivers when to slow down or when they are leaving their lane — can cause excessive noise to nearby neighborhoods.

Building off project R27-SP51-HS, this report focused on analyzing external and internal noise levels generated by transverse rumble strips that were reconstructed in 2022 on US-41. The report compared noise levels generated by rumble strips that were constructed in the same location in 2019.

This ongoing project will research additional rumble strip designs to further determine if a quieter design is available for Illinois.

R27-SP53: Quantifying Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Ridership of CTA Rail and Bus Systems in Chicago
Yanfeng Ouyang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Charles Abraham, Illinois Department of Transportation
Cemal Ayvalik, Regional Transportation Authority

A train in Chicago operated by the Chicago Transit Authority. CTA is one of Regional Transportation Authority’s three transit service operators — including Metra commuter rail and Pace Suburban Bus — in northeastern Illinois.
A train in Chicago operated by the Chicago Transit Authority. CTA is one of Regional Transportation Authority’s three transit service operators — including Metra commuter rail and Pace Suburban Bus — in northeastern Illinois.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many areas of our lives, including how we use transit systems. This project sought to help transit agencies better understand the factors that may have contributed to transit ridership loss and the extent of their impacts.

Building off ICT-IDOT project R27-SP45, researchers developed a statistical model for Chicago Transit Authority rail and bus systems, analyzed the resulting data, identified contributing factors of ridership loss, determined each factor’s magnitude and extent of ridership loss as well as provided recommendations to reverse this loss. They also collected and prepared data for more comprehensive studies on the Pace suburban bus system and Metra commuter rail network.

Data-driven analysis of the pandemic’s impacts on CTA bus and rail ridership will help IDOT, RTA and CTA make policy decisions and more easily identify planning resources during and after this pandemic.