Search Content

This report summarizes an evaluation of the first year of the Cambridge Telework Center, where Minnesota Department of Transportation employee volunteers work one or two days a week instead of commuting to Twin Cities sites. Researchers surveyed participants and their supervisors at the beginning of their involvement, six months later, and a final survey a year later. The surveys asked questions about commuting time and distance, expectations about and experiences with telework, job satisfaction and other work attitudes, job performance, day-to-day operations at Cambridge, and other issues. The Telework Center reduces commuting time and distance by a per day average of 32 miles and 74 minutes. In the first survey, participants and supervisors expected to see improvements in a wide variety of areas, including quality and quantity of work, job satisfaction, and reduced stress. One year later, the two groups reported that most of these expectations were met, and they rated their telework experience as positive. However, according to direct measurements, teleworker job satisfaction and commitment to the organization remained unchanged from the program's start to one year later. The same proved true with job performance.

These are the Appendices for report number MN/RC - 1999-24: An Evaluation of the Cambridge Telework Center.

This report describes a long-term study to monitor and evaluate the ecosystem recovery of seven wetland restorations in south central Minnesota. The study looks at the impact of planting on wetland restoration success in inland wetlands and develops a methodology to assess wetland restoration success. The study focused on the following question: To what extent can revegetation stimulate overall biological recovery in isolated restoration sites? Researchers used aspects of ecosystem function and structure to characterize recovery rates in planted and unplanted restored sites relative to one another and to reference wetlands, as well as indices of biotic integrity for plants, invertebrates, birds, and amphibians in addition to other indicators of ecosystem structure, such as soil organic matter and water chemistry. Researchers developed field protocols, created biotic indices, and established baseline monitoring on each site including an as-built topographic survey, installation of groundwater and surface water stations, characterization of soils, vegetation, and vertebrates. A long-term monitoring system is now in place that will allow for the assessment of ecosystem recovery of seven restored wetlands relative to four reference wetlands.

This research looks at bicycle transportation, particularly bicycle commuting, in three North American cities with extensive bicycling activity and programs: Madison, Wisconsin; Boulder, Colorado; and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The study describes bicycle transportation in these cities to gain ideas for further improvements in Minnesota bicycle transportation. Madison, Boulder, and Toronto share a reputation for high levels of bicycling activity. Each city plans for additions to its extensive system of bike paths and bike lanes. Wisconsin's state plan calls for an interconnected transportation system across government boundaries and jurisdictions and completed a Wisconsin Bicycle Transportation Plan in 1998. Boulder completed a Bicycle System Plan in 1996 as part of its Transportation Master Plan Update for the Boulder Valley. It, too, addresses the need to develop a continuous and well-connected provincial government of Ontario recently amalgamated the six municipal governments in the Toronto metro area to form The New City of Toronto, and the new city is now working on a new bicycle plan. A City Cycling Committee, a committee of the city council, looks at programs to increase the quantity and quality of bicycle trips in Toronto. The three cities also have developed public initiatives to promote bicycling, including bike-to-work events, free bike programs, and awards programs. All three cities publish extensive information about bicycling programs and issues on the Internet. Internet sites include official city sites, sites managed by independent organizations and individual bike activists, and electronic newsletters.

This Phase II study involved studying the short-term and long-term effects of the Compliance Review (CR) programs conducted in the Region 5 states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Illinois on the Out-of-Service (OOS) rates of interstate freight-carriers based in those states. A preliminary analysis of the inspections data revealed low OSS rates based on inspection records--across all level of inspection--for the years 1993-94, indicating defective collection/interpretation of data and thereby invalidating any OOS rate analysis for this time period. Also, it was found that Level 1 and 2 inspections together constitute nearly 80 percent of all inspections records, thus marginalizing the effect of the other levels of inspection on the final results of this analysis. The results of both the short-term and long-term effects of OOS rate analysis suggest an overall positive effect of the Compliance Review program on the reduction of OOS (Event and Violation) rates of the carriers. These results are consistent over the rest of the time period (1995-97) and across three levels of inspection (Levels 1, 2, and 3). The conclusions drawn about the nature of the effects of a Compliance Review could be much better validated if the currently spurious inspections data for the years 1993-94 were restored, or a fresh analysis using later available data (1997-99) were carried out based on the same algorithms.

Traffic centers gather information from traffic sensors at regular intervals, but storing the data for future analysis becomes an issue. This report details work to improve the speed and effectiveness of traffic databases. In this project phase, researchers redesigned the data model based on the previous phase's data model and decreased the storage requirements by one-third. Researchers developed a web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) for users to specify the query of interest; the outcome of the performance tuning gave users reasonable response time. The beneficiaries of this effective database would include the driving public, traffic engineers, and researchers, who are generally not familiar with the query language used in the database management system. This report summarizes the detailed reference, such as benchmark query, sample data, table schema, conversion code, and other information.

This report highlights an investigation into concrete pavement performance problems caused by transverse joint misalignment on a segment of westbound Interstate 94 near Fergus Fall