Future Ready Features: Infrastructure Week Edition

Rethinking how we plan, design and engineer our infrastructure to support sustainable, Future Ready? communities.

RUC n’ Roll

Two things:

• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized new rules on vehicle emissions and expects that electric vehicles (EVs) could account for more than half of all vehicles sold for model years 2030-2032.
• Fuel tax — which we pay each time we visit the gas or diesel pump — funds a significant portion of our roadway infrastructure development and maintenance.

Clearly, these two things are at odds. As EVs go mainstream, how do we close the inevitable funding gap?

That is the question transportation agencies are wrestling with across the country. Various solutions are in play, but one is gaining traction: road usage charging (RUC). An equitable and flexible solution, RUC programs charge motorists based on the number of miles they drive instead of the number of gallons of fuel they put in their vehicles.

In the era of alternative fuel and highly fuel-efficient vehicles, rising construction costs, and increased demand for roadway capacity projects due to population growth, finding a funding solution is critical to keep us rolling. Is RUC the answer?

Find out why it just might be.

One Water: a Future Ready? water management strategy

Effective water management seems an ever-moving target in our dynamic climatic environment. Dealing with too little water supply, or too much stormwater, is an ever-present challenge, and — depending on geographically distinct usage demands, weather pattern variability and pollution concerns — critical to creating the most habitable “Goldilocks zones.”

Consider:

• According to United States Geological Survey 2015 estimates (latest complete data) our total nationwide water use was roughly 322 billion gallons a day.
• Three of the top five states with the heaviest withdrawals — California, Texas and Florida — are among the most vulnerable to intense and disparate climate-related shocks and stressors like drought, extreme heat, hurricanes, wildfire, sea level rise and flooding.
• All of these events threaten communities and infrastructure and impact the reliability and quality of water supply in significant ways, from evaporation to saline intrusion to stormwater runoff, to name a few.

Add to all this the increasing demand from population growth, irrigation, industry, data and energy use, and you can see the dilemma. How do we reconcile these ranging challenges to ensure a water-secure future?

One idea: lead with a One Water strategy that accounts for trends in climate, society and technology, and embeds human health and equity into project planning.

Want more ideas? Dive in. The water’s fine.

Ultra-high performance? It must be good!

And when it comes to concrete, it is.

Calls for increasing sustainability and resilience in the construction of infrastructure and buildings is spurring development of innovative materials to support those ambitions. Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is one such material that might soon have its U.S. moment after a few decades of comparatively limited stateside use.

The cementitious composite material is strong, really strong — it has a compressive strength 10 times that of traditional concrete. It also has other key benefits, like:

• Remarkable durability — 10 times more resistant to wear and 100 times more resistant to deterioration due to corroding reinforcement — that can translate to longer infrastructure service life, reduced maintenance and lower lifecycle costs.
• Prefabrication suitability that can enhance quality assurance and reduce project schedules, as well as reduce construction traffic emissions.
• Superior flexibility that enables its use in intricate or complex engineering or architectural designs.
• Optimized structural design enabled by its strength, that may lead to lighter weight structures and reduced material, as well lower total project embodied carbon.

However (of course there’s a caveat…or two), it’s expensive. Also, its production process can be complex, and it has specific curing requirements that may present challenges. That said, taking a lifecycle cost perspective, and building adequate planning and studies into project opportunities, may quickly reveal the benefits far outweigh the issues.

Here’s one example that successfully bridged the challenges.

A vision of safety

Even one preventable traffic fatality or severe injury is tragic. Over 40,000 of them a year is unacceptable. But, according to Vision Zero Network, that’s where we are in America today.

Vision Zero is not new, but it’s definitely right now here in the U.S. Launched in Sweden in the 1990s, the strategy has recently and rapidly gained traction across the country as cities recognize that taking a systems approach — and accounting for human error — in transportation planning and design, can eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for citizens.

To date, more than 50 communities across the U.S., including some of our largest cities, have committed to Vision Zero goals. The common core pillars they are building from, include:

• Zero is the only acceptable number of deaths within our transportation systems.
• Humans fail, design shouldn’t.
• Collaboration between government, public services, private industry and stakeholders who plan, design and operate our transportation systems is the key to successful implementation.
• Collaboration with police, fire and EMS first responders in addition to road users and society in general is essential.
• The advancement of Vision Zero must focus and rely on a data-driven approach and evidence-based best practices.

But meeting these goals requires projects. And projects require funding. And that’s where this moment in Vision Zero history gets very exciting…

Forecast: offshore wind power’s stormy start will pass

New is harder than tried and true. There will be the inevitable stumbling blocks or hurdles to adoption. The advent of large-scale offshore wind in the U.S. has not been immune.

Several planned projects have been scrapped because power purchase agreements lapsed, and there are challenges related to transmission, inflation and overall cost increases, regulatory issues and protection of the aquatic environment.

But offshore wind has distinct advantages versus onshore wind that make a compelling case for its success, especially when much of the country’s population and major power markets are along the coast:

• The wind resource is often stronger and more reliable than on land.
• There is less potential for impacts on avian species and other wildlife in certain geographies.
• Sound and visual implications of offshore wind projects are fewer.
• There are fewer restrictions on the height of towers and length of blades.

Offshore wind will ultimately be critical in helping to meet ambitious U.S. clean energy goals, so finding a path to success is essential. We must advance solutions to current challenges, such as streamlining transmission permitting, and addressing the priorities of key stakeholders such as the military, harbors and shipping, fishing industry, indigenous groups and property owners.

Positive outlook: as offshore wind becomes more common, the clouds of uncertainty will part, and what once was new will help lead us to a renewable future.