Establishing WTS West Virginia

WTS International is an organization dedicated to the inclusion and advancement of women in transportation-related professions. There are chapters all around the world and, as of last month, now an active chapter in West Virginia. We are WTS West Virginia!

One of our chapter’s most pressing goals is the ability to offer scholarships to students enrolled at West Virginia colleges and universities who are interested in pursuing transportation-related careers. To kick off the scholarship fundraising, we held our first scholarship event on May 22, 2021, a disc golf tournament at Coonskin Park in Charleston.

I had never tried disc golf before but decided this event was the right time to start learning. I was terrible. My much more skilled husband, mercifully, offset my poor performance. We played through with another pair much more skilled at disc golfing, they were not only great to watch, but so patient and helpful as my husband, and I learned how to throw a disc around.

The event also featured a throw-off and raffle prizes, many of which were items donated by local businesses. The support, so far, has been amazing.

What heartened us the most was the turnout for the event, given the newness of our chapter, the expectations were modest, but 40 people registered and came to play! Participants came to Charleston not only from the immediate area, but also as far away as Beckley and Bridgeport.

The best part? I think we now have enough money to offer a scholarship.

Moreover, this event was so successful that I think we are going to do it again in the fall at a disc golf course in the north central part of West Virginia. Keep an eye out for it!

Inaugural leadership team of WTS West Virginia. From L to R: Melissa Thompson, Hannah Costello, Karen Reed, Sondra Mullins, Cynthia Shamblin, and myself.

Let it Snow: Winter Driving Tips

Winter is definitely upon us. It is snowy misery here in State College. The cold and snow definitely impact desire to attend class and finish those last, dangling tasks of the semester. For me, those are two papers and a presentation. The cold just makes it so hard to open up Stata and do some analysis!

But given the weather, there are important things to consider when driving, be it around town or a long drive.

Clear the snow off your car. All of it. If you clear off just enough to see out a small hole on your windshield you put yourself and other drivers in danger. You can’t see enough of the road, even in familiar surroundings, to make the best choices. Furthermore, as snow blows off your vehicle it can be a distraction to other drivers. Sometimes there are also ice chunks hidden in your car’s snowhawk, those can be hard on other vehicles and injure pedestrians as they come off. It is also state law in Pennsylvania.

Know when conditions are ripe for black ice. Black ice can exist on roads in conditions up to a few degrees above freezing. It is very common around dawn and dusk when it can be difficult to tell if the road is just wet versus frozen. Especially on local streets that may not be treated as often, be careful!

Understand your vehicle’s capabilities. Four-wheel drive is not a license to drive like a NASCAR racer through snow, you will end up in a ditch and disappointed. ABS can help you brake safety in a spin out situation, but you’ll still be in a sub-optimal condition.

Pay attention to what is going on. I rely heavily on the excellent travel conditions websites put together by PennDOT, Maryland State Highway Administration, and WVDOT. At this point, most DOTs have websites with interactive maps and access to their traffic cams. Knowledge is power.

Always be closer to F than E. You never know when you might get stuck on the road for longer than you planned. Whenever possible, try to make sure you’ve got enough fuel to get to where you’re going. Power outages, traffic delays, and snow can all get between you and a full tank of fuel.

Be prepared for the long haul. Keep a blanket and/or heavy coat, non-perishable ready to eat food, a gallon of water, and a phone charger/fully charged phone in your car at a minimum. If you get stranded, you want to be able to keep warm, keep hydrated, and contact help. You never know how long you’ll be out there. I personally recommend peanut butter and crackers. Peanut butter is my favorite. It is hard to find a more calorie dense food that is so low maintenance to keep around.

Let folks know where, when, and how you are going. If you’re going on a longer drive, it’s important for someone to know where, when, and how you’re going. For me, when I tell my husband I’m heading to Morgantown from State College, he knows what route I’m taking and I tell him if I’ve decided to make a modification to my route. Another friend of mine uses Twitter as way of “checking in” when he’s out adventuring all over the mid-Atlantic.

There are plenty more things to keep in mind when driving in winter weather, but these are the tips closest to my heart. Be safe out there!

A Universal Goal with Voluntary Participation

I commend those who work in road safety who can put on a smile and look optimistically at things like Target Zero (Washington State), Vision Zero (Sweden, Netherlands, United Kingdom), and Toward Zero Deaths (Minnesota, but many other states have virtually identical programs). Each of these programs intends to eventually get the number of deaths and serious injuries from vehicle crashes down to zero. It’s an admirable goal. It is a goal that everyone everywhere should want to accomplish, yet there are some sticking points. After being first on scene to more than one alcohol-related crash, my spark is fading.

When I was growing up I was raised to firmly believe that one must always wear a seatbelt in a car and that one never, ever drinks and drives. But as I have grown up and experienced life in most every corner of North America, I see that there are many people who do not share the same core belief.

What is most frustrating to me is when my peers, so people in their 20s, don’t wear a seatbelt or drink and drive. These are things that we have known are harmful for our entire lives. If after two decades of being told through so many mediums you still won’t wear a seatbelt and you still decide to get behind the wheel drunk, what hope is there for you in the next two decades? That said, please prove me wrong. While I normally hate being wrong, I will gladly make an exception here.

It is impossible to legislate behavior. Yes, drinking and driving is not legal. But lots of things aren’t legal and widely done. Plenty of folks use illicit drugs and speed, and our prisons tell us that some folks rob banks, assault, and murder. The threat of prison (and, in some states, death) for crimes clearly wasn’t an effective deterrent.

This leads me to question what the contributing causes of dangerous driving behavior are. I cannot count the number of educational campaigns I sat through in school or the catchy commercials I see and hear around the holidays. Maybe awareness isn’t the problem at all. Maybe the problem is beyond the realm of where most transportation people routinely travel. Maybe it’s more connected to health and social status than knowledge and awareness. Maybe someone who is depressed feels they have less to lose, whether they get ticketed or get into a crash. Maybe an alcoholic believes they have merely adjusted to consuming a certain number of drinks and is “fine.”

Maybe we should stop staring at FARS and our state crash databases and look more into injury prevention and public health fields to find out if there are consistencies with those who drink and drive or who do not wear seatbelts. These are variables in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), which is a big survey conducted by the CDC. It’s on my list of things to investigate.

Zero road-related fatalities is a noble goal and it is one that, I believe is entirely within our grasp if everyone cooperates. The trouble is, cooperation is voluntary whether an individual realizes it or not. 

Summer Camp!

As a doctoral candidate, I spend a lot of time holed up in my office on the fringes of the Penn State campus. I do a lot of reading, tinkering with STATA, managing data sets in Access, and generate pages and pages of writing. That all might sound like a special form of hell but I actually really like it—even though sometimes it gets a little lonely. The rewards for this hard work are numerous and definitely include the opportunity I had in July!

Each summer West Virginia University organizes and hosts several engineering camps aimed at middle and high school students. These camps are intended to introduce and demonstrate different aspects of engineering. Many of the demonstrations and activities are done by those in engineering fields interested in sparking a passion in the next generation of engineers. Proud Mountaineer (and great friend of mine), Sarah Soliman, connected me with the Freshman Engineering program, who organize the Engineering Challenge camps, and before I knew it, I was planning a presentation on transportation safety.

I had never had to communicate to pre-college students about what I work on before but I was up for the challenge. I came up with so many ideas but when I tested these ideas on my husband and even ran some across my advisor at Penn State most fell flat. I did not learn about transportation safety in an hour long seminar, I could not expect the same from high school students.

I thought it was going to be a disaster. One afternoon, Chris and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings, ordered a bunch of appetizers and lemonade, and decided we were going to figure it out. We went through page after page on a legal pad. We realized that we had found gold when we had listed the different sources of safety countermeasures and I had a case study in mind. The presentation came together.

First, I introduced myself and how I found myself in this field. How, when faced with the closure of I-15 while en route to Las Vegas, I both enjoyed an afternoon at the outlet mall in Barstow and found my direction for life. Second, I explained, in very broad terms, the different areas that may contribute to safety countermeasures: education/the social environment, design and operations, vehicle characteristics, and policy/law.

So, I effectively gave the campers four different tools. Then I presented a case study. West Virginia House Bill 4223 increased the potential penalties for passing a stopped, unloading school bus in the wake of the death of 6-year-old Haven McCarthy on a dreary Lincoln County day. I divided the campers up into groups and asked them to develop a technology that could prevent similar, future crashes and then lobby each other for the best solution. Each group was given a different field to develop a countermeasure from.

At both camps, the in-vehicle countermeasure was the most popular. But the overwhelming majority of groups developed reasonable and often ingenious solutions to helping prevent future school bus related pedestrian strikes. Likewise, it helped to illustrate the different types of engineering necessary to improve road safety as well as the importance of good communication, even in engineering.

I could gush for hours but the bottom line is that it was just so much fun! It was awesome to get to share my enthusiasm for this field with, hopefully, future engineers and that they also seemed to have a great time. Let’s Go Mountaineers!

The Mountaineer and I (wearing the t-shirt from the first camp I participated in)

Pitching It: Social Media and Transportation

Tomorrow is going to be a big day.

The first part of a PhD program is spent mastering the work of others. It marks the beginning of the process of narrowing down to an area of expertise. In my case, I’ve compiled experience with transportation topics including safety, policy, human factors, design, operations, and network analysis. Ultimately, I found myself most comfortable in safety and intelligent transportation systems. Last school year, I developed topics in conjunction with my advisor in each of these fields.

Emerging in the lead was the use of social media by transportation agencies. You’re probably thinking that’s a pretty light, fluffy subject—especially for someone getting a PhD in Civil Engineering. However, with time, even I’ve become more and more convinced that this research has its merits.

First, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 67% of Americans are regular users of social media. Because so many people use social media, it is important to know if they would use social media for transportation information. If they would, it is important to fully understand what they want to know and how they want to know it. For some agencies, developing social media outreach has been a shot in the dark. Sometimes it’s worked out for the better and, occasionally, it’s been a flop.

Second, some platforms of social media have potential for integration in vehicle infotainment systems. If key traffic information can be delivered to a driver hands-free through their own vehicle, using social media as the means, it could help folks make smarter choices about their routing or trip timing.

Third, as social media has developed as a platform as have other mobile technologies. Over half of all social media use occurs via mobile devices. Because people are spending so much time on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, there could be other, more useful technologies to develop.

Ultimately, the goal is to define the state of social media in transportation organizations, both highway and public transit. Developing this profile poses a challenge because so many agencies have taken so many different approaches to developing their social media programs. To address these differences, three different methodologies are being employed, including surveys aimed toward agencies as well as the general public. A finished product will find the most effective strategies, identify particularly successful Twitter and Facebook feeds, and describe how social media users of the general public want to receive information via social media.

While working on this research, from time to time, I may even solicit your help. It’s only social!

Drunk Driving Policy with Beer Goggles On

Recently the National Transportation Safety Board made a public endorsement to reduce the legal limit blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.05 from 0.08 (g/dL). The existing 0.08 limit was set about 10 years ago by Congress and soon afterward the number of drunk-driving related fatalities began to fall. However, the number of drunk-driving related fatalities has seemingly plateaued at about 10,000 fatalities per year.

While it is true that consuming any alcohol can impact judgment and reaction times, I am not convinced a substantial number of fatalities are accounted for by the 0.05 to 0.08 range. In fact, I am concerned that reducing the legal limit to 0.05 from 0.08 will be more dangerous than leaving well enough alone.

I was discussing this proposed change with a friend of mine and we agreed that when a limit is considered to be set too low, it is ignored more than a more reasonable rule or limit. A favorite example of mine is the speed limit on I-99 in and near Altoona, PA. Through Altoona the posted speed limit is 55 mph because it is a developed, urbanized area. When I-99 is traveling through undeveloped areas the speed limit is 65 mph. I drive this route a lot. From this experience, I have observed that the mean speed tends to be about 70 mph. The lower speed limit has no apparent effect on actual speed, yet in that area drivers are putting themselves at risk for a much costlier ticket.

Given that for some individuals, 0.05 is not even one drink and the average drunk driver drives 80 times before getting caught, the change seems meaningless. And if one drink puts you over the legal limit and you elect to drink anyway, why stop after one drink?

My additional concerns regarding this proposed policy are related to how we look at drunk driving. Drunk driving is still very often considered a white man’s problem (although incidence is greater in Native American populations, there are fewer of them overall and some areas have virtually no Native American population). However, the involvement of women and minorities in alcohol-related crashes is rising. Yet, few campaigns are directed at these groups and their drunk driving habits.

Flavored alcohols are really taking off. Flavored alcohols are largely targeted toward women—women who are driving and working in greater numbers than ever before. Yet, when you think of the relationship between women and drunk driving, your first thought (if you have one regarding this matter) is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, MADD. Our collective first thought should be: almost equally likely to get behind the wheel when they shouldn’t after a night on the town.

My experience with drunk driving checkpoints reflects these gender differences. Once, while traveling with my dad we went through a checkpoint. The police officer asked my dad a series of questions. He hadn’t been drinking and after about a minute we were on our way. On the other hand, I have never even been asked a question by an officer at a checkpoint.

Furthermore, given how often many regular drunk drivers must drive before getting caught, more emphasis needs to be placed on recidivism. If that is not possible, why not increase the penalties? Here is an example of a guy with 15 DUIs that is still on the road! How about after 3 DUIs an individual gets a permanent license suspension without exceptions?

Before the BAC is lowered, I want to know how many fatalities were tied to a driver with a BAC between 0.05 and 0.08 and what percentage that is of the whole of drunk driving fatalities, and I believe that is what the public should demand before surrendering the 0.08 limit. Addressing the issue of drunk driving is a lot more than reducing the legal BAC. Lowering the BAC is an attempt to grasp the low hanging fruit but, truthfully, the low hanging fruit has been snapped up. Law enforcement, the court system, and transportation agencies need to get together and try something new, something radical, something never done before.

But please, if you're reading this, just don't drink and drive. Don't even make this an issue we've got to talk about. Ultimately, drinking and driving is something we should all be preventing.

The Last Child Walking to School

Since when was it reckless or dangerous for children to walk to school?

I’ve seen a lot of school construction projects where there is absolutely no way students could ever walk to school. Perhaps the most egregious of these is Huntington High School, serving Huntington, West Virginia. The prior Huntington High was situated on the edge of a residential neighborhood where many of the school students could walk to school. Then Huntington High and Huntington East High were consolidated into a new facility past the interstate (which was not permitted to go through town, rather it passes a few miles south of town) where few live and, even if they did, the situation of the school on top of a tall hill with a road traveling up to it lacking sidewalks hinders that opportunity.

Meanwhile, I was an elementary school student in the mid-1990s. I went to the same elementary school from grades one through seven. The school was about a half mile from my home. Every day I walked to and from school. For the first few years I walked with a babysitter and then as I grew older I either walked with friends or, gasp, by myself. I wouldn’t consider the neighborhood to be the best neighborhood, but it wasn’t a bad neighborhood either.

Walking to school taught me a number of things.

• Be careful around traffic. Look both ways before crossing the street.
• Wayfinding around and understanding who lived where in my neighborhood.
• Responsibility for myself: pay attention to my surroundings and act in a safe manner.

Your author in grade 3, no visible damage from playing in traffic

Building schools away from residential neighborhoods takes the opportunity for students to learn about navigating the world away from them (part of my theory why there are so many GPS-related gaffes), it removes an opportunity to be physically active, in many cases it increases the amount of time students spend neither at home nor in school, it has perpetual transportation costs that are almost always heavily subsidized by school districts, and I think it takes one more place for communities to come together away.

After reading Kids, Carpools, & Walking: How a Safety Mentality Creates Unsafe Spaces on streets.mn, I thankfully realized I’m not the only one with these concerns. Most dangerously I think we’re deferring the understanding of how to interact with traffic, public personal responsibility, and wayfinding until people are older and these concepts are less inherent.  At least, that’s my observation watching 17-year-old students at Pennsylvania’s flagship university step into traffic without so much as looking both ways. We’re also removing an opportunity for children to understand and get to know the environments they’re living in. The world is a far less scary place when you know who your neighbors are.

Q. Why are Transportation Engineers so Cranky?

A. Because we get to listen to everyone complain about what we do!

I am a very lucky person in that I get to pursue my favorite hobby as a profession. I absolutely love transportation. I find how we get from Point A to Point B genuinely fascinating. I find it incredible how so much movement is accomplished relatively safely in the United States and Canada. Terms like green wave, Clearview, SPUI, and SHSP drive me wild! But just like you occasionally need a break from your favorite TV show or videogame, sometimes transportation folks need a break from that which they love most. In fact, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

When most people find out what I do and study they simply cannot wait to tell me how bad traffic is where they are from, what I should do to fix traffic, or enthusiastically share some very minor, regional (often agency specific) change to their local road network. I appreciate people trying to relate with what I do. In fact, I think it’s really cool that what I do is so universal. As soon as you leave your home, whether you walk or drive, you’re interacting with what I and people like me do. There aren’t too many professions that touch every single individual (and virtually every living thing) so much!

But there are a few things to consider.

First, most people have pretty limited experience with the transportation network. Furthermore, they only have their experience and the reported experiences of their friends to base their comments on. I hate to point fingers, but even a lot of transportation professionals are guilty of this lack of network experience. Basically, unless you’re a trucker you’re not going to tell me something I haven’t heard before or that will surprise me. My response is always some variation of: each agency sets different priorities and depending on the agency responsible for the area/road you’re telling me about, there will always be some things done exceptionally well and some things done exceptionally terrible. Unless you want to pay more in taxes, it is what it is.

Second, “fixing” traffic is a team sport. I cannot fix traffic alone. I do not have direct access to your tax dollars. Projects take time to develop, involve many people with many different backgrounds, and plans and priorities can change at any time. Furthermore, traffic is a moving target. Efforts to improve the network are just as often met with jeers as they are cheers. I get nagged at constantly over the “disaster” that is the Gateway Connector in Fairmont, West Virginia—even though research I performed independently lets me sleep quite soundly over the existence of the project.

Third, while I love transportation and am pretty good at what I do, I don’t catch every single detail of every single regional change. I put a lot of miles on my car each year and visit a lot of places that eventually start blending together. But I can say without reservation, it makes me indescribably happy to hear people enthusiastic and interested in their immediate transportation network. While I can’t “fix” your traffic situation, you can help! Your personal interest can be translated into letters and phone calls to your elected officials or local transportation agencies. Enough of this input will mobilize projects that I and others like me will be part of, and we will work diligently to do our absolute best to “fix” your transportation problem!

So if you run into me on a day off or grabbing dinner and I’m not taking your bait, try asking me about the book I’m reading (currently about two-thirds of the way through Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee!), what I ate for lunch, or about my cats (bonus: I have adorable pictures of them on my phone that I love to share!).

A design exception: I promise I will always enthusiastically answer any questions about transportation. While I don’t always want to hear complaints, I unconditionally love to teach people about the networks they can’t help but interact with.

State of Emergency

Emergency medical services (EMS) is a funny discipline. It is a little bit health care and a little bit transportation, and it is certainly more of an art than a science to make an ambulance service work for a community. A fundamental problem rests in the EMS vehicle fleet. There are very few standards governing the design of an ambulance. Indeed, as my good friend Dr. Nadine Levick of the EMS Safety Foundation likes to point out, there are more standards governing the transport of cattle than sick and injured people in the United States. What this has given us in the United States is a lot of large, bulky ambulances that perform poorly in crashes and are not ergonomically optimal for the care of patients or safety of healthcare providers. Indeed, if the box of an ambulance is struck or rolls over, the result is often devastating. Attempting to alter the system is as altering any behemoth machine or bureaucracy is, next to impossible. But there’s a small group of renegades who have kindly invited me along as they work to incite change.

My direct relationship with the Transportation Research Board (TRB) dates back to Fall 2009 when I was a Christine Mirzayan Fellow assigned to the board under the guidance of Dr. Rick Pain, the guy everyone goes to if transportation safety is involved. Dr. Pain’s responsibilities include the oversight of safety related committees and subcommittees (if you’re interested in learning about TRB committees, click here), one of which is the EMS Transport Safety Subcommittee. The real beauty of TRB committees and subcommittees is that they often bring together many perspectives on an issue. I often think of it in terms of shining a white light through a prism. In terms of the EMS subcommittee, it brings together physicians, civil engineers, ergonomists, emergency medical technicians, and even vehicle designers. Seminal to the mission of this subcommittee has been the presentation of three EMS safety summits. The second was in October 2009, and the third was this past month on February 29^th.

The goal of this third summit was to tie together the results of the previous two summits, set an agenda for moving forward, and illustrate solutions—both that can be implemented today and others that may require a greater depth of planning. For me this meant making the trek from State College, PA to Washington, DC. But when it’s your colleagues at stake, it’s a no-brainer to make the trip and be committed as an agent of change.

During the summit we looked at tackling the problem through improved education, application of scientific research, and shifting fleets over to safer equipment. Some of the highlights included:

• The introduction of NAEMT’s 8-hour safety class
• Illustrations and diagrams of ergonomic studies looking at where providers actually touch and reach within an ambulance
• Implementation of the “safest ambulances on the road” in Ontario and Texas
• Fleet management systems for reducing fuel costs, improving driver behavior, and understanding area needs in large emergency medical services systems
• Listening to EMS leaders consider system improvements from an interdisciplinary perspective.

The final result of these summits is intended to be a document. The summits culminate in the span of a day. A written document, as well as the recordings of the summits, have a much longer life and ability to reach a broader audience. The recordings from the last summit are already online here. The document, on the other hand, is a greater project, brining all three summits together and describing where we’re going and ways to get there. That document is may area of greatest influence and a responsibility I am keen to manage.

But perhaps most importantly, contributors are not paid. All participants have day jobs who do this just because it is import. We are all volunteers even though it doesn’t match the stereotype of the high school candy striper or young male volunteer fire fighter. Volunteerism is alive and well in transportation, and in this case we’re conquering a true state of emergency.

January Sets the Tone

The culmination of a year’s efforts in the transportation business comes to a head every January. Every January brings the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. At the heart of this meeting are over 11,000 transportation professionals covering every mode of transportation as well as every discipline contributing to the field. For the past three January’s, making the trek to Washington, DC has been a ritual. And every year, I along with many others, emerge with new ideas and fresh perspective on the happenings in our field.

From the exterior it seems like a standard conference, with a nice shiny program filled with educational presentations and workshops, as well as a vendor display area. But as the past three years have progressed, it has grown into so much more for me.

I am a new addition in this field. But at the Annual Meeting, there are people who have been working in transportation for decades, in addition to the hordes in the peak of their career, and the others who, like me, are relatively new. This, of course, means that the networking opportunities are second to none. But opportunities to learn outside of the list of sessions and committee meetings abound.

Despite budget cuts and unpredictable actions from governments, the mood at the Annual Meeting always seems to be a positive and progressive one. There is always this overwhelming feeling that we are still going to find a way to keep moving. There is also this feeling that we will accomplish these great things by working together.

Cold weather aside, January sets the tone for the rest of the year for us transportation wonks. And if the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting was any indication, 2012 is going to be another great year.