Solving Problems Through Research
What We Offer: Transportation
At Virginia Tech, transportation research involves engineering, public administration and policy, urban planning, industrial design, economics, agriculture, computer science, mathematics, statistics, construction technology, and business.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute is a federally designated Intelligent Transportation Systems Research Center of Excellence. Primary areas of research are safety and human factors, advanced product testing and evaluation, information application, advanced vehicle dynamics, transportation systems and operations, and roadway infrastructure. A two-mile “smart road” test bed includes embedded monitoring and weather control.
Other research centers addressing transportation issues are:
Advanced Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory
Center for Automotive Fuel Cell Systems
Center for Vehicle Systems and Safety
Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design Center for Advanced Vehicles
Seeing the road on a dark and stormy night
Problem: Rain reduces visibility for drivers.
Solution: Make highway markers highly visible when wet.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute's Wet Visibility II project, sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and Virginia Transportation Research Council, studied drivers' ability to see pavement markings during rainy weather conditions. Participants in the project evaluated three pavement markings while driving on the Smart Road test facility in a controlled rain environment created by the weather-making system. The study results will be available to the Virginia Department of Transportation for a guidelines document on the wet-night visibility of pavement markings.