Center for International Intelligent Transportation Research

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The Right Tools for the Job: Predictive Planning for Transportation Infrastructure Can Save Lives

by Jeff Shelton

When extreme events occur, the transportation network is vital to relief and recovery. For example, when a hurricane makes landfall, getting citizens to safety—particularly from low-lying areas at risk for flooding—is top priority. But once the heavy rain is falling, what routes should they take? Which roads are most likely to flood? After how many inches of rainfall do we begin diverting traffic from Main Road A because it’s likely to flood in the next hour?
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Center Researchers Provide Guidelines for Ports Seeking TRZ Financing

In 2007, The Texas Legislature enabled a new financing mechanism, the transportation reinvestment zone (TRZ), to encourage local infrastructure development. TRZs have proven very successful over the last decade for highway development.

TRZs designate an impact area around a needed improvement project. A municipality or county can use some or all of the property and sales tax increment revenue projected to accrue from the improvement to fund the project. While the original legislation applied to most transportation projects, port projects weren’t included — until now.

Thanks to TTI, new guidelines will soon be available for Texas ports looking to finance expanded operations with financing from transportation reinvestment zones.

“The funding tools available to Texas ports have traditionally been focused on improvements within the ports themselves,” explains Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) Senior Research Scientist Rafael Aldrete, who heads TTI’s Center for International Intelligent Transportation Research. “The legislation in 2013 recognized the positive impact expanding ports can have on the broader local landscape.”

Once the legal framework was in place, port authorities and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) saw the need for guidelines ports could use to set a TRZ. Under TxDOT’s direction, TTI developed webinar materials, case studies and evaluation tools, which are now available for any port to use.

Deog Bae, a Texas A&M University Ph.D. student in civil engineering, played a key role in Aldrete’s research team.

“The quality of the roads — both within and outside the port — can impact a port’s effectiveness, and that in turn impacts the local economy,” says Aldrete. As ports expand by, say, increasing warehouse capacity, they naturally employ more local residents to work in those warehouses. And the residents need places to live (helping create a healthy real estate market) and buy goods (improving the local gross domestic product). In short, a healthy port makes for a healthy community.

“We used the ports in Beaumont and Brownsville to refine our model,” explains Bae, “and now it’s applicable to any port, anywhere, seeking funding through a TRZ.”

Texas has often led the nation in advancing transportation, and it was the first state to implement TRZs. Now, once again, TxDOT is setting the standard for ports nationwide to take advantage of this innovative financing tool.

Originally published as “Student Insights Lead to Research Innovations: TTI Provides Guidelines for Ports Seeking TRZ Financing” in the Texas Transportation Researcher, Volume 53, Number 1 (2017).

Reducing the Domino Effect at LPOEs

by David Salgado Manzano

Travelers at the U.S.-Mexico border are experiencing longer and longer wait times. While NAFTA has proven economically advantageous for both countries—partly by encouraging tourism and trade in border towns—one negative consequence of increased economic activity has been longer lines at land ports of entry (LPOEs). The demand to cross from one country to the other usually exceeds a port’s capacity to efficiently process that traffic. This is particularly true in highly populated, bi-national regions such as El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. [Read more…] about Reducing the Domino Effect at LPOEs