How research informs transportation decisions

On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation with Michael Townley, engineer of research at the Michigan Department of Transportation. (MDOT).

Townley explains the safety and economic benefits of partnering with Michigan universities on research and why it’s important to MDOT.

One specific project discussed examined the value of financing infrastructure improvements through bonding versus a program of pay-go improvements.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Research Matters

Jeff Cranson 0:07

Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. I had a chance this week to speak with Michael Townley, who is the engineer of research at the Michigan Department of Transportation. He had a lot of interesting things to say about what he and his team do to oversee various research projects and how important they are, both in terms of economic benefits, but also safety. They do work with six universities in Michigan that have a lot of background and research into a lot of different areas. So I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Meet MDOT Research Administration

Jeff Cranson 0:49

So again, I'm with Michael Townley, who heads up the research administration unit here at the Michigan Department of Transportation. A lot of people might not know that MDOT has its own research area. Michael, first of all, thank you. This is your first time doing this, although I've been meaning to talk to you for a long time because I think what you and your team do is uh just fascinating and important. So thanks for taking time to do this.

Michael Townley 1:14

Sure. It's great to be here with you. It's a nice opportunity to talk about all the great research we have going on in the state. I mean, there's six wonderful universities that support MDOT. We're thankful for their partnership: Michigan State, U of M, Western, Lawrence Tech, uh, Michigan Tech, Wayne State. They're all great partners that help MDOT do things a lot better because of their great knowledge that we can tap into and learn from through research.

Jeff Cranson 1:41

So before we get into some of those specifics, uh talk a little bit about yourself and your uh your background and trajectory and how you came to this.

Michael Townley 1:51

Sure, engineer, work at Department of Transportation for 20 years. And prior to that, I was a consultant and uh worked supporting communities throughout the state, counties, cities, state level projects, and so 30-year career, but you know, going back to my original training as an engineer, I learned about research and how you could learn new knowledge, it could help improve systems. And uh I've come to have a real passion for helping improve uh the Michigan Department of Transportation through research, you know, whether it's a safer road that gets someone home safe, whether it's smarter spending of taxpayer dollars or helping our economy grow. There's lots of things that research can do that I'm really excited about, and I like working with people that are excited about it

Picking Projects That Move The Needle

Michael Townley 2:45

too.

Jeff Cranson 2:45

How do you distinguish what we need to do? Because it's unique to Michigan. In other words, we've got a lot of peer exchanges, a lot of committees within Ashtow that uh MDOT people participate in. Um, you know, we always say that uh everything's derivative, right? And that we we don't we don't need to reinvent. A lot of times somebody might have already figured this out and we don't really have an idea to build a better mousetrap. But at the same time, there are unique things uh to Michigan, certainly soil uh and and what we deal with with water. You interact with the Transportation Research Board national group that does this kind of research too. So, how do you determine, I guess, what you think is worth taking on as a project specific to Michigan?

Michael Townley 3:31

Yeah, and and the good news, it's not just me that figures that out, it's it's a lot of experts that think about that. And so that's a great question. I mean, how do we know what to do in Michigan that's gonna move the needle and help us out? Uh, we really have a whole system, an MDOT, of experts that we tap into and ask them, what is it that we need to address right now? And then we go out to our university partners I just mentioned earlier, and we say, you know, what are you seeing as emerging technologies that we should be interested in uh that we could apply here? So we've got both internal and external experts that are advising us on what we should do to really help uh us be prepared for the future or to do better with what we have as infrastructure.

Bridge Flood Sensors In Action

Michael Townley 4:17

You know, like one example uh is that our state was concerned about flooding. You know, you mentioned water and soil, and and so when water levels come up, um, we're concerned about our our bridges and whether we should, you know, should we close a bridge because water's coming up to the water level is so high that it might overtop that bridge. Well, we we had that interest. Uh we interacted with our universities, and it just happened that the University of Michigan had a uh a new water level sensor that we could put remotely on our bridges and send signals back to us, and so our inspectors would know uh if a water level was coming up high on a bridge and we needed to get out there and do something rather than having to drive out there to the site and look, we would know remotely. And so a research project helped us do that, and it was really the information of the experts within MDOT, communicating with experts at the universities that came up with an opportunity that uh we saw that that we could really take advantage of.

Flex Routes Explained In Plain English

Jeff Cranson 5:16

That's a great example. Do you um do you get a lot of questions from uh you know family and friends when you you get together at uh outings um about what you do and you you find that you enjoy explaining it? Yeah.

Michael Townley 5:30

Yeah, I mean there is always the question about you know, why are they building this right now? Um, and and why are we doing this project? And you know, one of the the questions that seems to come up a lot is about our our flex routes, you know, and and how we add a lane in the form of a shoulder that people can drive on now. They couldn't drive on that shoulder before, but now they can. And there's one down near Ann Arbor, um, and there's one near Brighton, talking about getting a new one on Grand Rapids. Um, so I like to talk about that with people because that's often a subject. Is you know, why did why did you add that lane there? And I keep talking about well, we studied that and we found out we could really get people through faster and improve the economy. And with but how do you answer the question about what's that if you well, how do you answer the question though?

Jeff Cranson 6:20

Because the the the one we get the most on social media is if you can use that lane sometimes, why can't you use it all the time? And I I know the answer, but I've never come up with a you know 15-second way to explain it.

Michael Townley 6:34

So yeah, I just always say that uh we need to make sure the roads are safe, and the federal highway administration says they have to be safe, and you cannot uh just add another lane without buying a whole bunch of property, and so we found a way to add a lane without buying property and only run on it certain times when it's safe.

Jeff Cranson 6:58

Yeah, that's really good. I think that's a that's a good explanation. Um, yeah. So

Paying For Roads Credit Or Cash

Jeff Cranson 7:03

one of the one of the projects, and you guys you have so many, and uh people can find them and read about them on our website, but one that interested me in particular because uh we've had to talk about this so much the last several years uh with the legislature and with media uh because of the governor's rebuilding Michigan project, is about debt and when is it, you know, I I think you worded it as a pay-go system, you know, versus uh a financing system. And so can you talk about that project and the findings there?

Michael Townley 7:38

Um that was a project where we were looking at uh how we uh invest in our road system, and it's definitely one that's a a big project. We've had several projects over the year looking at our investments and and how we do that. Um, usually it's more around technology and what it is that we uh spend on. Do we invest in this type of payment or that type of payment? Uh, but that one was more looking at our money. You know, do we put it on the credit card or do we pay as we get the money? So though those are kind of the two evaluations. And there's you know, there's there's advantages to each. You know, you can do a lot of work all at once and make a big impact when you're able to uh invest in a way that's uh more based on your credit, and and then if you're investing as you spend and as you go, you're able to keep up with things, but maybe not do quite as much all at once. So um really our our financial experts uh within MDOT have the have the best answers to that, but the research was able to inform them um of the different possibilities for that.

Jeff Cranson 8:46

Yeah, I I think what I've even without that research, um, I firmly believe this, and I've never actually calculated it out uh in any mathematical way, but that the debt that we're leaving our children and grandchildren by leaving a crumbling system uh far outweighs you know the debt that we're taking on to shore up the system. So that's that's how I look at it.

Michael Townley 9:14

Yeah, we really have a legacy that was passed on to us with our infrastructure, and how we keep that in good shape uh for our next generation is uh a big task that we have so that folks can continue to drive on that and the economy can continue to work well, and uh we can be ready for those future technologies gonna be driving our road, the electric vehicles, the automated vehicles, uh things like that are really important things to think about. Um, so we need to have a system that works well for the future.

Asset Management And The Right Timing

Jeff Cranson 9:48

How do you balance that? Um, because my temptation would be if if I was doing what you do, to always be looking at that kind of stuff, like the new technology, what are connected and automated vehicles going to mean? But there is value in looking back too, right? And and just the the stuff that we take for granted, um, are there different ways to do that? And so you kind of have to to balance that when you assign these projects, I assume.

Michael Townley 10:14

Yeah, definitely have to be forward thinking. At the same time, the uh the problems that we have uh just maintaining the system really keep us focused on that pretty heavily. Uh we've got pavement that we're putting in all the time, and we need to be putting in the best pavement in the best situation uh to be able to keep the system in good shape. Um we we have a research project right now looking at uh our bridges and which bridges are most important, which bridges are less important. We have the same type of project going on with our rest areas, which ones are most important, which ones are less important. So we know where to invest and invest um in the right things and do it in a smart way that saves uh money for for our uh taxpayers and uh provides a system that people can rely on and where where they need that infrastructure, they've got it.

Jeff Cranson 11:14

Well, that kind of fits with MDOT being a bit of a pioneer in using you know asset management metrics and and measures to figure out where to invest. And you know, that's the that's the whole uh necessity mother of invention thing, right? If you're if you're short of funding long enough, you're gonna have to figure out different ways to do things. So it kind of sounds like that's what's informing what you're talking about in terms of payment and other things to stretch the dollars.

Michael Townley 11:42

Yeah, yeah. There's there's the uh the idea of which asset's most significant, and then there's also the idea of how do we uh time our investments properly so that we we have that later. You know, if you have a house, you got to put a roof on it a certain time, or you're not gonna have a good house anymore, and you got to put new windows in at a certain time, or you're not gonna have a good house anymore. So the same thing happens with our roads, and and we do research on what's the right time to put a new surface on top of that road, what's the right time to seal the cracks, what's the right time to fill in the potholes, and in the same way, and that helps us know how to keep that system moving longer. So it's it's not just which assets most significant, but on the assets we are investing in, when do we do it? So that's there for that future generation.

Jeff Cranson 12:29

That gets to another thing that's very difficult to explain to lawmakers and and the public, and that's that that value of rebuilding entirely, which is what you know Governor Whitmer um talked about that if we can rebuild them, um build them, build them right the first time, we wouldn't be out there every couple of years doing the kind of maintenance that you're talking about. And that's a hard thing to explain to people because they'll say, you know, they were just working on that road and they're working on it again. And you're saying that's exactly right, because we've got to extend the pavement life as long as we can because we can't, we don't have the resources to completely rebuild it. Um, is that something you kind of instinctively knew because of your background as an engineer, or did you really become enlightened about that through the research?

Michael Townley 13:15

You know, I think the research has helped. Uh I there's a certain amount of knowledge that we have, we know common sense, but to really know exactly when you got to put that new surface on, you got to have uh, you know, a pretty intelligent team of researchers and professors that are looking at the data and and mining through that and figuring out, you know, here's your your optimum point. And we want to be using those optimum points. We don't want to be just using like, well, it makes sense to invest. We want to do it at the right time, uh, not too soon, because then you're spending money we don't have to, and not too late, because then you should have spent already, and the thing is going downhill, and you and you gotta spend more now. So you got to do it that right time and finding that window, you know, research is is so important for those type of questions. And and that's you know, one of the bigger questions we have, because that's where we spend a lot of our funds is on keeping those roads in the prime shape um for as long as we can, for as many people as we can, so they can get home safely and and and like drive our economy, you know. So it's just so important for all of Michigan, really, to to answer that simple question, but it's a complex one, and you need smart people.

Jeff Cranson 14:27

Yeah, well, uh that's right. And there are smart people all over the country, all over the world, really, looking at that very thing.

Michael Townley 14:34

So um Yeah, and we're blessed with a lot of them here in Michigan. I mean, there's we got a lot of great people that help us out. Um, like I mentioned, six universities, a lot of states don't have that. So we're we're we're in a good place. Uh, we've got a great economy here with with uh the infrastructure that was built here. Um, and we just we need to maintain and and keep that system so that people can keep doing what they've been doing over the years here um with uh automobile industry and and the universities that support that and support us and support the economy here. So I think it's uh it's not just about maintaining, it's also building that future economy that's that's um here in Michigan. We

Connected Vehicles And The MCity Sandbox

Michael Townley 15:17

have a test track at the University of Michigan that we build up for connected and automated vehicles, and we help fund the construction of that. And that's like a sandbox that's developing new technologies, making them safe before they hit the road, so that we can for sure be a leader in uh the you know the driverless vehicle of the future. Um and that's that's something that we take seriously here, um, is is supporting some of those G Wiz great inventions that that could really be the next big thing that helps Michigan go.

Jeff Cranson 15:49

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think it's it was really smart a long time ago and on an ongoing basis to to capitalize on that academia that we have in our midst. And you're right, we're very fortunate to have universities doing this kind of work. Um, it's uh it's really a bonus for us. I don't think I've ever heard that metaphor about M City as a sandbox, but I like it. That's a really good one. So uh I'll probably borrow that one from you. Please stay tuned.

MDOT Message 16:20

We'll be back with more talking Michigan transportation right after this. Know before you go head on over to MiDrive to check out the latest on road construction and possible delays along your route. For a detailed map head on over to Michigan.gov / drive.

Work Zone Speed Tech To Save Lives

Jeff Cranson 16:42

Something else that interests me a lot. Um, we recently had, as you know, a very bad crash that uh two maintenance workers for the department lost their lives on 127 south on Lansing. And I saw that you have a project going on the evaluation of digital speed limit signs in work zones. Um, can you talk about that one a little bit?

Michael Townley 17:04

Sure. Yeah, it's like you mentioned um fatalities on the road are are unacceptable. It's it's a it's really horrible to hear about a death on the roadway, and it really is a focus of MDOT to make sure the roadways are safe. And we've done a lot of research over the years on that very subject, uh saving lives through putting in new technologies. We've been looking at speed uh enforcement, speed feedback to drivers in work zones, uh, and we're looking at uh Q warning systems. Um those are three different types of projects that we've had on that subject. Um the Q warning one is one that's coming up in the future. Cues are you know long lines of cars that build up behind uh say a construction zone where people are trying to merge together, um, trying to warn people when that is forming so that we can have people be aware that they need to slow down as they approach that and not have a rear-end collision like we had last year that led to a horrible fatality. Um, and then, like you mentioned, the speed feedback signs, these are signs that show the speed of the driver, gives them a message as to how fast they're going compared to what they should be going in a work zone, and and slows them down so that there's less energy if they were to lose control and impact something to save them or save a worker that's working in that work zone. Real real important technologies. And and I think uh if we can find the best way of doing that, you know, where you place the sign, how you get the radar set up, and all that, then we can have an effective system that can save lives. So doing these studies that are ongoing and coming up are are going to be important for making those work zones safer.

Jeff Cranson 18:58

Yeah, very, very important. Are there any others that you uh particularly would would like to highlight?

Rumble Strips Results And Final Thanks

Jeff Cranson 19:04

I mean, there's so many. Uh you're you and your team and the university researchers have so many things going on, but uh like is there anything that really jumps out at you?

Michael Townley 19:13

Um, one that just I was thinking of related to getting people home safe is a few years back, MDOT was like the first state to roll out the the rumble strip on the side of the roadway, you know, just right there by that paint line you see. Uh you've got those bumps that you hit them with your car and it makes that rumbling sound. And uh we say it's the sound that saves lives. Um, it's really a sound that saves, we calculate 15 people a year. So learning that fact that you can save 15 people a year with a rumble strip um through research really motivates uh us as department to put those in so that folks can uh hear that sound when it's the winter time and they're maybe veering off the road. Um, you know, half of crashes occur in fatalities because of people rolling off the road, um not staying in in their lane, so to speak. So that research right there is one that I I really think was a significant one from a few years back and had an impact. And I think it made a movement that impacted the whole nation. Um other other states followed suit after Michigan did that lead and and did similar things. So there's a lot of lives have been saved from that.

Jeff Cranson 20:30

Yeah, and eventually I think uh all the vehicles will have the lane assist technology that'll you know keep you from going outside the lines, but in the meantime, uh rumble strips. I I agree, and I've actually talked to some legislators who were skeptics at first and then really came around on the value. So I think you only have to uh experience that once as a driver to realize that uh, you know, you really get your attention and that's good.

Michael Townley 20:57

Yeah, for sure.

Jeff Cranson 20:58

Well, thank you, Michael, for talking about these things and for the the work you do. Um, it's uh it's really important. And like I said, I've I've been meaning to to talk to you before because you guys do so many interesting things, but I really appreciate you taking time to talk about it.

Michael Townley 21:12

Yeah, well, thanks. It was good to visit with you about it. And it's really not me, like I say, it's all these experts around me that are uh doing great work, and and it's the department department of the big heart that wants to save lives, wants to do things in a smart way, and wants to protect that infrastructure that we have for for future generations and be a uh you know a future-ready infrastructure that's ready for the next thing, too, at the same time. So I think research is is building a better economy and making a better Michigan and keeping things moving. So I like to be a part of it. It's good to talk about it.

Jeff Cranson 21:50

I agree, very well said. I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout. I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, and Jacke Salinas, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.