Louisiana State University

The Gulf Coast Research Center for Evacuation and Transportation Resiliency (GCCETR) is a collaborative effort between the Louisiana State University (LSU) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the University of New Orleans' (UNO) Department of Planning and Urban Studies.

The theme of the LSU-UNO Center is focused on evacuation and transportation resiliency in an effort to address the multitude of issues that impact transportation processes under emergency conditions such as evacuation and other types of major events. This area of research also addresses the need to develop and maintain the ability of transportation systems to economically, efficiently, and safely respond to the changing demands that may be placed upon them.

Below are several examples of recent projects conducted at the GCCETR along with brief descriptions of the overall research objectives and significant findings.

• Report No. 13-03; Title: A Dynamic Feedback-Control Toll Pricing Methodology: A Case Study On Interstate 95 Managed Lanes. Congestion pricing emerged as a cost-effective and efficient strategy to mitigate congested freeways. This study develops a feedback-control based dynamic toll approach to formulate and solve for optimal tolls, and compares the performance of the proposed methodology to that of the current strategy deployed on Interstate 95 express lanes. There were two objectives: 1) to maximize the toll revenue, while maintaining a minimum level of service on the managed lanes; and 2) to maximize both revenue and throughput on the managed lanes, while keeping a minimum level of service. When compared to the currently adopted toll pricing strategy on I-95, the proposed strategy with both objectives produces steadier toll rate profiles, while keeping the speeds at 45 mph or more. The success of these strategies led to further evaluation and piloting.

• Report No. 12-06; Title: Transit-Oriented Development: An Examination of America's Transit Precincts in 2000 and 2010. This study creates a typology of all fixed transit precincts across the United States to categorize all stations as a Transit Oriented Development (TOD), Transit Adjacent Development (TAD), or hybrid. This typology is based on an index that accounts for density, land use diversity, and walkable design. This study also presents a separate non-typological, multilevel, multivariate analysis of transit commuting and the built environment, which is unique in that it is the first national study of transit station precincts of its kind to control both regional and neighborhood level variables. The findings lend support for the TOD concept in generating higher shares of transit commuting within station areas, with implications about how America can accommodate population growth by turning TADs and hybrids into TODs. This can result in more sustainable commuting patterns, a new growth market for housing and real estate in a post-recession economy and the potential decoupling of growth in the economy without the growth in carbon emissions. Much of this could be achievable without the need to necessarily make a major national investment in new infrastructure but in utilizing the existing infrastructure better by encouraging more TODs.

• Report No. 11-09; Title: Assessing the Long-Term Impact of Subsidence and Global Climate Change on Emergency Evacuation Routes in Coastal Louisiana. Subsidence forecast models for coastal Louisiana were developed to estimate the change in surface elevations of evacuation routes for the years 2015, 2025, 2050, and 2100. Geophysical and anthropogenic subsidence estimates were derived from ongoing empirical studies published in contemporary scientific literature. Forecasted elevation changes were subtracted from road surface elevation surveys. Individual road segments estimated to have surfaces at or below 0m in elevation (NAVD-88) were quantified by road class and parish. Additionally, the threshold for climate change susceptibility was evaluated relative to storm surge models published by the National Weather Service, which were used to identify and quantify evacuation routes vulnerable to surge inundation. The results from this analysis are presented by parish and reveal the modeled subsidence risks for the forecast years. Findings from this research can provide transportation engineers and emergency managers with data previously unavailable, which are applicable to evacuation modeling, hazard mitigation, environmental sustainability research, costal restoration efforts, and more. These research results were published in GeoJournal, as well as in other relevant professional publications.