Instead

18– All roads lead to research with UDOT Executive Director Carlos Braceras l Day 78

May 28, 2020 Utah State University Office of Research Episode 18
Instead
18– All roads lead to research with UDOT Executive Director Carlos Braceras l Day 78
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Utah is the 8th most urbanized state in this country, with 90% of its residence living in urban areas. No wonder there's congestions on your way to work. Last month, we sat down with USU researcher Dr. Patrick Singleton as he painted a picture of what the transportation industry might look like after the COVID-19 pandemic died down. In this episode Wyatt sits down with Carlos Braceras, the executive director of Utah Department of Transportation, and dives in deeper, talking about Utah's unique landscape, weather pattern, and urban issues UDOT deals with, along with the solutions to create greater mobility through mass transit and active transportation. We also dive into the key role USU students play in UDOT, a new way to build freeways, and a little known ferry system in Southern Utah.

Possible take away from this episode? Less frustration during traffic cone season. It's worth the hassle. 

Wyatt: [00:00:00] sometimes getting around is easy. Other times getting from point a to point B is stressful. You might be dealing with connecting flights, freeway congestion, or a coal in your shoe. One thing's for sure. Transportation is important. So we've got another transportation episode for you, but this one's going to be a little different.

In the past 16 or 17 episodes of instead I've interviewed USU researchers to understand what they're doing and how it benefits Utah, but what's happening on the other side of that research. Who's making decisions based on insights from USU research and how do those decisions affect you? I love talking to researchers, but if I want to know how research is being used, I need to talk to somebody else.

In episode 12, I talked to transportation engineer, Dr. Patrick Singleton, we talked about how COVID 19 was affecting the way Utah was commuting and to people's perceptions about active forms of transportation, like walking or biking. And in talking to him, I learned that the Utah department of transportation is often on the other side of his research and a lot of other USU research.

So I figured that you dot was a good place to start. And boy. I got right to the top. So today you're going to hear my interview with Carlos per Sarah's executive director of the Utah department of transportation. In this episode, you'll learn how you dot and other transportation departments use university research to address current and future challenges.

But I want to know more than that. So we talked about the transportation growing pains we're faced with in Utah, you dot functions, you might not be aware of how building transportation infrastructure is different in Utah than it is in other States and how you get people on board with new ideas that are kind of crazy, like driving on the wrong side of the road, across orange university Parkway interchange, my name's WIA Tropper and you could be running home from the grocery store, holding a bag of melting popsicles.

But you are listening to this instead. I'll be popping in occasionally. So get ready to learn more about roads research and the guy directing Utah's department of transportation. Here's my conversation with Carlos per Sarah's. So imagine yourself at a barbecue because. We're not in a pandemic in this hypothetical reality, and you're meeting someone new and they ask what you do for work.

How do you describe your job? 

Carlos Braceras: [00:02:26] Depending on the context, I'll answer it, uh, several different ways, but I usually start that with, well, I'm a, I'm a civil engineer. They usually try digging deeper on that. I work on. Transportation projects. I'm a civil engineer, work on transportation projects, and they usually want to drill a little deeper on that.

And I say, I worked for the state of Utah for the department of transportation and were responsible for, uh, providing for transportation for all the citizens of this state. 

Wyatt: [00:02:55] As a civil engineer, Carlos grew up back East, not a fan of cadavers. He left medical school for the geo sciences, and then he worked as a geologist consulting in oil fields in Montana and North Dakota and Wyoming until.

1980, 81 

Carlos Braceras: [00:03:10] price of oil dropped like a rock, our small consulting company. Uh, we went out of business and I found myself sitting in a hotel room in billings, Montana. They had taken my company truck away and I was watching football games. It was around December and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do.

And I said, you know what? I have friends in, uh, in Utah skiing swung myself a $600 pickup truck went down to Utah, got a job working at snowbird ski resort, where I met my wife and said, I'm going to go back to school. And get a degree in civil engineering, because I remember a professor saying that, you know, if you get a degree in engineering, you can get a job anywhere you wanna live.

Worked full-time or attending. And I went and got my civil engineering degree, you know, I, I thought I would end up in something more related to geology. So I was thinking groundwater or something like that. And there was this bulletin board and the engineering, and they were hiring interns for the department of transportation.

And it sounded like a more, uh, lucrative position than being a bartender. And I went and applied for the job and I got the job, but I thought it was a summer job. And, uh, I will have been here in. Let's see June 15th of this year. So a little less than a month will be 34 years of here at the time. Wow. 

Wyatt: [00:04:23] So you have some roots back East developing transportation infrastructure different here in Utah because of the landscape we have versus back in Vermont or Virginia or places like right. 

Carlos Braceras: [00:04:34] 

Great question. Um, actually grew up in New Jersey and, uh, Went to school in Vermont. Some of the differences that we have out here in the West is our transportation system is newer. Um, so you know, a lot of the, a lot of the folks in the Eastern departments that transportation they're dealing with much older infrastructure bridges that are farther along into K we're also dealing with that.

We are a fast-growing area, lots of areas in the East coast are not growing as fast. One of the things that we benefit from is the foresight of. The Mormon pioneers that came out, they were very prescriptive in terms of how they wanted to lay out their transportation system. And they had, you know, they laid out a grid system.

Everything was based on the Cartesian coordinates system, all from the corner of the temple salt Lake temple. And so you always knew based on what block you were on, how far you were away from the temple or from any other place and those wide streets that they laid out and that grid system have been just.

Tremendously beneficial for us to give us the flexibility as we move forward, you know, for things such as light rail or, or bus transportation or more active transportation. Utah has a pretty spectacular geology every year here at the mouth. In the Wasatch. I see a colleges from back East. They bring out geology students to look at the geology.

Uh, Penn state is one of those schools you see out here every year. Because it's so unique and the geology is so exposed. And what that means for transportation is we're dealing with some very large mountains we're dealing with very unique weather patterns. So take a look at little Cottonwood Canyon, for instance, it is the highest avalanche hazard.

Index rating in the world by orders of magnitude. And so as a department of transportation where we're shooting artillery and controlling avalanches in a place that is extremely dangerous from an evidence perspective, and we have the job to make sure it's safe, you don't see that type of function being performed in Eastern deities by any means.

We have great desert landscapes where we deal with. Temperature extremes. Uh, we deal with, uh, an IED just two days ago. We had four semi-trucks that got blown over because of winds. That's not the type of thing you would deal with Becky. Yeah. So it's a very unique place to be doing transportation. 

Wyatt: [00:06:51] Um, so you mentioned that you guys are doing avalanche control with like artillery and maybe dynamiting and all of those things.

And that's not something I would think would fall under. That DOD would be managing. Um, what other things do average Utahns overlook when it comes to  role? 

Carlos Braceras: [00:07:09] Well, yeah, that's a, that's a great question. There are so many things that go on, uh, I'll say, below the surface of a deity to help us do our job. A lot of people don't realize that we operate a fairer system.

And the state of Utah down on Lake Powell, it's down on Lake Powell. I saw your, I saw your quizzical look there now, where would we be doing a ferry system? They used to be two ferry boats during the budget crisis, back in the early two thousands, we got rid of one of them. So we still operate one ferry boat back and forth across Lake Powell.

You know, we have a captain and crew members and we are just retrofitting the power units in that, uh, I looked 

Wyatt: [00:07:47] this up for the people like me, who haven't spent much time at Lake Powell, it takes two and a half hours to drive from one side of Lake Powell to the other side of Lake Powell. If you want to take the ferry and it's open, it'll cut that down to 30 minutes.

Carlos Braceras: [00:07:59] Um, what else would we do? That might be interesting. Um, we operate the port ports of entry. And so, you know, we have folks, um, at the major entry points for state that are responsible for one inspecting trucks, but also weighing the trucks because the weight of a truck has a huge impact on the, the roads and bridges.

You think about the investment? We have a switch, just, just payments alone. We have a $24 billion asset value of payments as one concrete, the way pavements are damaged, it's really based on weight. And we designed the thickness of payments based on the amount of tra uh, truckloads that are going to cross that payment.

So we actually predict the number of trucks, the amount of wheels that are going to cross section of pavement. We design it for it. So if trucks come in and they're way too much, it's actually exponential curve in terms of the damages that are done to the payments and that costs the public money. So we're managing the trucks, we're inspecting the trucks to make sure that they're safe.

That's a function that most people don't realize, um, that we before behind the scenes, there is an amazing technology. There's just our traffic operation center. We have men and women, 24 seven they're in a traffic operation center. If you could picture what NASA looks like with all the big television screens and these engineers sitting behind multiple monitors and they are managing all the traffic flow in the state.

I'm on every single state facility. And so they can control every traffic signal, all those signs you see out there. Uh, we have an extensive weather network. And so, you know, we want to know when a road's going to freeze. We want to know when it's snowing. We want to know when it's raining because we'll do different maintenance treatments for it.

And it allows us to be more efficient at when to call our people out. So we have a team of weather forecasters, and we keep a weather. Bureau staff 24 seven, we issue, uh, over 80 unique weather forecasts three times a day to all of our individual maintenance areas. So they can optimize their weather, their maintenance activities, as well as two construction crews.

So they know when they should be doing what. Construction activities. We, uh, have an aviation division and we work with the 46 public airports around the state. We have one, one airport under the jurisdiction of, uh, of Utah and we have a fleet of planes that we operate. So we are the, uh, the operators of.

Moving people, the state employees, usually around the state to help them do their, the state business that they have for all the different state agencies. And I could probably go on and on. There's quite a bit behind the scenes that people don't recognize is the department of transportation. 

Wyatt: [00:10:37] So what challenges is Utah facing?

Because we are kind of growing a lot in the recent years and we're feeling some growing pains. And what is Utah DOT's approach to dealing with those. 

Carlos Braceras: [00:10:49] We are one of the fastest growing States in the country. And in fact, if you saw that there was a recently article in the newspaper talking about the ton of vineyard in the town of bluff.

Dale, I think vineyard was recognized as over the last 10 years, the fastest growing city in the country, obviously they were. Pretty small when they started. So, you know, to measure their growth rate, it's a little easier when you're small, but they've continued to see that growth. So the challenge of growth is I think, going to continue to be, uh, at the forefront for Utahns because.

You, you want to make sure that as we grow, we maintain what we all love about Utah. And that's really the quality of life that we have, the access we have to our great outdoor recreation facilities, the ability to go where when and how we want. Um, we have a lot of options on how we do that. And that's people want to have options.

I would say, as you couple that growth with the understanding that you know, and this is hard for most Utahns to appreciate. But the state of Utah is the eighth, most urbanized state in the country. And yeah, I mean, Utah urbanized, you know, I kind of still think of us as the wild West and a little bit here's 

Wyatt: [00:11:57] numbers for a few other States.

California has the highest percentage of urban residents. Nevada is number three Utah's eight. Arizona is number nine. Idaho is 29 and Wyoming is 38. And the state with the lowest percentage of residents living in an urban area is Maine. This is completely blowing your mind. I want to make sure you're not confusing urbanization with population density because when it comes to population density, Utah ranks.

Number 41. You could 

Carlos Braceras: [00:12:25] drive outside the urbanized area and you can go a hundred miles, maybe not anyway. And it's got some of the best camping in the world, but most of our citizens, almost 90% of our citizens live in an urbanized areas, defined by the us census. And that's one of the highest percentage of populations in the country.

So our transportation problems are very urban transportation problems and helping Utah's recognize that. Urban solutions are what we need and not rural solutions for that or urban area. That's a real, that's sometimes difficult for people to get their minds around. And what I'm getting to here is solutions that, um, are things like more mass transit looking at, you know, bus or bus, rapid transit or more light rail, commuter rail.

Um, and helping people appreciate that our future mobility is going to be very dependent on our, um, continuing to develop and make transit more accessible. And then things like active transportation, walking and biking. And I think during this pandemic, um, if you haven't been out. Side your neighborhood walking around your block, walk into your parks.

I've seen many more people out and about that I've that I've seen in a long time. And, uh, I, I'm pretty convinced that a lot of people's dogs are probably saying I can't wait till my owner gets back to work. Cause I'm tired of walking all the time. Um, but active transportation can continue to be a very important element in our future transportation.

Now. The urban area has its challenges, but we also have this challenge of rural Utah. And, you know, we have, you know, out of our 29 States, he said, 

Wyatt: [00:14:02] and we'll be saying States, but he means counties. Utah has 29 

Carlos Braceras: [00:14:07] County, 24 counties that are, would define themselves as rural counties that have not. Um, participated equally in the economic rebound that we saw after the great recession, 2009, 2010, 2008 timeframe.

And they're looking for opportunities to have, you know, that economic growth, but still maintain that rural setting. And so really their linkages to the economy is through the transportation system. So being able to provide that, um, that linkages to our rural Utah, that's really important. And sometimes those solutions are different than an urban areas.

You know, it could be a passing lane for a couple miles on a, us 40 to get up into the, a base scenario or on a, us six to get down to Southeastern Utah. Um, some projects that. Uh, are very meaningful for rural Utah. So we have to recognize that we're not going to, we're not just dealing with one issue.

We're dealing with, uh, uh, this problem of there's this issue of trying to maintain quality of life, but in a rural setting, as well as an urban setting. 

Wyatt: [00:15:10] So U S USU the U and BYU all have research projects with you dot what does you dot get out of those relationships? 

Carlos Braceras: [00:15:17] That's that's great. I mean, The partnership that we have with the universities is critical.

And I like to say success comes through making sure that you, you always look for partners. No one person, no one entity does anything on their own at a national level. Uh, the department participates very actively in what we refer to as the transportation research board. In fact, this year, I'm the chair of the TRB board.

And it's a great honor to really represent that entire organization. We've been involved in it for many, many years. And you know, all the things, you know, that I, I would point to that have been innovations. For us things like doing design build or CMGC or accelerated bridge construction are all things that we picked up through research being done by universities.

And, uh, I could go on about that, but, um, we feel that we can quantify the benefits of the research that we've had through the transportation research board. Uh, probably, uh, Uh, $200 million now at the local level, the department funds of research program as well. And this is where we bring together our division directors.

And with university researchers, professors, and we identify what are our problems, what are the things we're struggling with? And that allows a collaborative discussion with the professors, the researchers at all our different universities here to be able to, um, identify, you know, what I could maybe. Do some research to try to solve that problem.

And this is what my proposal will be. You can point to those projects, the results of the research as being those inflection points of change within our organization, Utah state has 20 of those projects totaling over a million dollars of research that their work. So I talked about designing with Mylar and serving with crews of 15 versus now driving down the road at highway speeds and designing.

Many many times in a day. Oh, I got to tell you. And on this part, so back in the day, planning a road was a ton of work. You needed like 15 people to survey the site, took a lot of hand drawing and a lot of calculations to figure out how to build a road that drains properly expands and contracts with weather properly.

It doesn't have too many blind corners or exit ramps that have a tendency to launch Honda civics off the road. I don't know the complicated stuff like that, that we need engineers for. And to now you can just put some sensors on a truck, scan up, some data, emit into a civil engineers office Presto blammo you have a road design and that road design can be updated as the people building the road, gather more information that incredibly simplified just a bit.

All right. And here's Carlos talking about how we left. 

Carlos Braceras: [00:18:03] The age of scale, rulers and pencil sharpeners behind all those steps that took to get there were small steps taken through research that has been implemented that helped us change how we do our business. And so we have a really strong commitment in our organization where we know that not all research is going to be something we can implement today, but it's going to be ideas that will help move our industry forward.

We have a strong belief and we've benefited. Greatly with the partnership with our universities know, Oh, I was at Utah state university. I think it was just before the holidays, just before Christmas. And I had a chance to speak to the graduate graduate engineering programs came together. We had a dinner there and I had a chance to be the keynote speaker for that.

And it was just amazing to, uh, participate in the awards program for all the amazing engineers that come out of Utah state. When I was a project design engineer. And so this is just a functional level with an organization. This is where I was responsible for designs and I'd have a lot of what we call the rotational engineers come in and these are engineers freshly out of college and they would come and they would start work with the department.

And I could tell you, you know, we had great engineers from the university of Utah, my, my Alma mater, where I went back at my engineering degree. Uh, sorry about that. Oh, B Y U N and Utah state. But what I'll tell you about the Utah state students. So I tell this to everyone, they were the most prepared to go to work day one.

They had the most pride, I would say the most practical engineering education, where the work that we were doing day to day here at the department was stuff that they had already done before in college. It was a little different approach where other universities tended to be more theoretical. And it was a little harder to make that connection between what you learned and what you had actually do for your job.

You touched state provided that practical. Learning opportunity that benefit assist department, 

Wyatt: [00:19:54] Utah state university is Utah's land grant institution, but that drives how we operate. Um, have you noticed USU playing a different role within the research because of that? 

Carlos Braceras: [00:20:06] Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, I think the research pro uh, problems that your professors are willing to take on.

Tend to be closer to the problems that we're trying to solve today. And, uh, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll point out the water lab. Have you had a chance to go through the water line? Yeah, 

Wyatt: [00:20:22] yeah. Yeah. I actually was walking through one of their facilities when they were setting up like a big warehouse sized simulation of the Oroville dam in California.

And it was just so cool to see that like, Oh, like this is important stuff happening here. 

Carlos Braceras: [00:20:36] Nano. Exactly. Exactly. So it's, it's real world modeling. They're creating models of real-world situations and you know, they're doing work all over the world, uh, in that way water lab. And when you walk into the water lab, you now can get a better, you can get making that connection between, you know, the theoretical, the equations that every student learns in classroom.

And all of a sudden, now they're taking those equations. What though, what came out of those equations and they're seeing how it applies in real world. I mean, it's an amazing facility. Utah state stands out for it. I mean, something else that goes on there and it's, it's near the water lab. Most people don't even notice it, but you know, uh, we have always the need to try and find more cost-effective things to put on projects.

And you know, this is pipe culverts. My wife always says, pipe Culver. What are you talking about? You know, it's, it's a pipe under the road there and it's in, it's move water under the road. And there's a lot of engineering that goes into how much dirt, how deep can you put a pipe? Because that pipe has to be able to structurally with load, uh, withstand the load of the dirt.

But also sometimes you don't have a lot of, you know, you don't have a lot of called cover. So the pipes pretty thin close to the top of the road. And that's a big problem too. And we need to know what different types of pipes with stands different situations. And Utah state university has a location where you actually do live loading of pipes, and we've been able to have different manufacturers of a big plastic pipe manufacturer here in North salt Lake.

And it's use your facility up there to test, to see how much load those pipes will take. And we've used that information to design it into different projects around the state.  

Wyatt: [00:22:09] any research project USU has done that sticks out to your mind as having a big effect for transportation in Utah?

Carlos Braceras: [00:22:16] Recently, we went through an effort to basically elevate the types of things we consider. We're trying to achieve with our transportation projects. You know, we, uh, it's not just a, it's not really about moving cars, just about moving cars, you know, we're trying to do. Things like not only be safe, but we want to improve public health and we want to improve the environment.

And so this connection, this idea that transportation has an impact on public health is one that was kind of new to us. You know, we understood the safety piece, but what about health? And, um, you know, when you start asking those questions, we really didn't have a great way. To understand that connection or understand how we could evaluate how our projects might have an impact on that.

And I know you guys are doing some research right now on doing some health impact modeling scenarios for, for Utah. You probably did a podcast with Patrick on this. Yup. Yup. It was doing work. Uh, I'm sorry, Dr. Singleton. 

Wyatt: [00:23:11] I try to be doctor. I try, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Hard to know what to do. Cause it's like, I want to give them credit, but also I don't want to make them seem too stuffy.

Carlos Braceras: [00:23:22] Uh, no, nobody should be too full of themselves, but I mean, just doing really remarkable work and trying to give us some tools to better understand what linkages there is between, you know, health data and transportation decision making. All right.

Wyatt: [00:23:36]  A quick refresher on Patrick. I mean, Dr. Singleton, I don't think he would care that much, but Dr.

Singleton had been analyzing and using data from people pushing the crosswalk buttons. That information can be used to understand where they need to. Give pedestrians more time to cross when to prioritize pedestrian crossings and what places need a mid-block crossing light. All of that will make our cities more walkable.

Like I love our big fat streets, but if you're on foot waiting for that hand symbol to turn in to a stick figure symbol so they can walk across the street. It's a real test to patients. Also, the more walkable our cities become, the more transit friendly they become. If your bus stop is on the wrong side of state street, that's a deal breaker people, all right back to

Carlos Braceras: [00:24:21] Carlos, this is still underway, but I'm really excited to see how this is going to play in to our future decision makers.

And this is, I think something people wouldn't completely understand why we would be doing this, but it's because we understand how important. Health is the people. And when you think about, I've said this a few times, we're all about improving your quality of life for every citizen in the state of Utah.

And when people tell us what's important to them, one of the things, the first things we hear about it, you know, is the health and safety for myself and my family and my friends. We believe we play a role in that another project that's, um, that's going on right now. And it's a, it's a, I think a little bit of responsible pandemic that we're dealing with right now is this idea about healthy inactive street issues.

There seems to be more of a demand out there for open space and outdoor recreation. Trails. You've seen multiple cities, close car roads to cars and make them available for people to walk and bikes. They have more space between them. And so this is an area where we're, uh, we're very interested in understanding is this.

A temporary situation. Is this something we should be looking towards more in the future? And, uh, you know, I don't, I don't know yet, but that's why we're always watching and looking to see what we can learn from the work that people are doing. 

Wyatt: [00:25:41] Yeah. I often ask researchers questions about the future and they don't love answering them, but that's kind of, it's kind of your job or your departments or your organization's job to figure out where roads and sidewalks and infrastructure need to go.

How, what is your. Version of a crystal ball to see where to start making plans. 

Carlos Braceras: [00:26:01] Well, that's a great, that's a great question. And we are always thinking about, um, what we need to do for the future. As you know, as engineers we create with, with our local cities and counties, we create what we call the unified transportation plan.

So that's a 30 year plan. Look ahead for what transportation facilities we need both. Trails for biking, walking roads. How wide should the roads be? What transit sessions we need to have. And that we do that. We update that every four years and we recognize that 20 to 30 year out period is one that we put some, we put the ideas out there, but we realize it's going to change because how fast technology is changing and how fast people's expectations are changing of what they want and what they need.

What do I see happening in transportation? I think there's a couple interesting things that are coming in. I would characterize them into three paradigms. I think we're going to see a greater electrification of the transportation system. You know, currently we have a very small percentage of our fleet.

That's electrified, but you're going to see a greater percentage here. I think we're going to see a huge jump between in the next 10 years of the amount of vehicles that are on the roads that are electric. Now that's going to have. Great benefits for our health, for our air quality. It's going to actually give us an automobile that is more efficient.

If you think about the moving parts and an internal combustion engine versus an electric engine, it's incredibly simple. So we're going to have engines that are going to run for a million miles versus, you know, a hundred thousand miles. And there's going to be much fewer pieces to be replaced. So it's going to be cheaper for people to operate and better for the environment.

It's going to have big impacts on our revenue sources. We currently collect our revenue to do our work by the guests that people buy. And so that's obviously something we're looking at and there's an entire chapter I could write on that, but that electrification piece is going to be a major change in transportation.

You're going to see it both on the car side. You're going to see it on the heavy truck side. That's going to lag a little, we'll probably see a combination of electric and hydrogen to fuel for the heavy load trucks for the long distance trucks. Uh, but you're going to see it for transit as well. And you're seeing it today for bicycles and, uh, the electric bicycle revolution is just right now starting to take off and you're going to see that explode.

And what does that mean? That means that trips that people didn't see as practical for bike commuting for work are now going to be practical. And you're going to start to see a larger percentage of people traveling on bikes because they have electric books. Um, I'm going to say this mobility as a service piece, and this is wrapping up the entire transit piece into it.

And you're going to see a merging of this mass transit systems with more customizable, more flexible. Uh, mobility as a service pieces. So you can optimize, we currently are trying to make mass transit serve, you know, the masses where you have a lot of urban core, you have a lot of people getting on it, and you also are serving heaven has an equity issue where it's trying to serve those that don't have access to a vehicle, but.

They live farther out. And I think you're going to see the transit systems become much more of a system as opposed to individual routes. And you're going to be able to optimize what's best for each different transit to be able to move more people more efficiently. It's going to be critical for us.

We're going to have to have more people in transit. Yeah. So the, 

Wyatt: [00:29:31] Oh, sorry. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was just gonna, I just want to do ask a deeper question about buses. Um, I recently heard a podcast called 99% invisible and they do a lot of design and architecture and urban planning material. And, um, in one episode they were talking about how buses are like really important to, especially for sprawling and more suburban areas.

And there. A key piece to an effective transit system, but people have a lot of negative perceptions about buses. And so, um, are you guys doing anything to help make bus experiences better? Yeah. 

Carlos Braceras: [00:30:06] You know, the, uh, and again, we, you know, we're not a transit operator. We have some rural transit, but we're partners with, you know, the Utah transit authority, cache Valley transit, um, park, city transit.

Um, so. You know, we appreciate the fact that you would put us together like that. Oh, I, 

Wyatt: [00:30:23] sorry. I'm mixing up my departments. Okay. That's 

Carlos Braceras: [00:30:25] okay. That's okay. How I would answer your question is, is I think that, um, that merging of the more, uh, attractive transit to bus is the bus rapid transit systems. And we've got two of them in the state of Utah right now, the one on 33rd and 35th South has been in place for over 10 years.

It's not as highly used. Um, but the one that UVX, it's called, that's the one that connects, uh, uh, Utah Valley university with BYU and downtown Provo, remarkable usage. And it's a very clean, effective, and it's attractive bus system. And so here is we call it a rubber, tired light rail system. And so trying to.

Bring the two worlds together. Uh, but absolutely bought the bus system is the foundation. It's the framework for a good functioning transport transit system. And the third paradigm, you know, so I mentioned electrification. I mentioned mobilities of service, which is essentially this idea of a. Uh, multiple transit system working together.

And it's this idea of the merging of technology and with the automobile. And a lot of people refer to it as an autonomous vehicle, or we call it the connected autonomous vehicle. The Cav, this idea that cars are going to be talking to cars. Cars are me talking to our traffic signals. We're doing that now.

It's happening right now. We've got several routes in the state of Utah where. The transit buses are talking to the traffic signals, the traffic signals to know the bus schedule. They know how many people are on the bus. The traffic signal will know the schedule. So if the bus is off schedule, it will give the bus priority to get back on schedule.

The idea is if you know, you have a reliable transit system and it's always going to be on schedule, you're going to choose to take transit. And so. Uh, we've got snowplows talking to traffic signals. So when the snow played loud is down and we're plowing. No, that, so plow has preemption through the traffic signals so that we can clear the snow faster, make the roads safer sooner.

And, uh, but that technology is about to explode where all cars are going to be able to communicate with each other and with the roadside features. So a stop sign is up there. You might not see that stop sign, but that stops signs also transmitting to your car. So your car knows is the stop sign there as well.

And, um, we're, we're moving towards a transportation system that is infinitely safer, where, you know, you can send your kid out on their bicycle. And they're not going to be injured. They're not going to get in a crash that's possible. And that's coming at us. We're moving into a future where you're going to have reliability, where you want to go.

So you and you'll have choices. So if you want to choose to make a trip from Logan, I'm presuming you're in Logan down to salt Lake city. And you say, you know what? I need to be in salt Lake city at this time, these are my choices. These are the cost of those different choices. This is how long these different choices they'll take.

And based on what's going on in your life at that time, you will make that appropriate choice. Being able to have a choice about where to go, when to go and how to go is going to be part of your future. 

Wyatt: [00:33:37] When you, you.is looking into new solutions or solutions that people are gonna find unusual at first?

Um, I think sometimes maybe that's a hard sell. One of the things that comes to my mind is the first time I found myself on the university Parkway interchange down in Oram. And I'm like, I'm on the wrong side of the road. Um, how do. Yeah. Yeah. How do you guys work with the public to get something like that pushed through?

Carlos Braceras: [00:34:05] 

And that's, that's a, that's a really great question. Why? Because the public wants us to be innovative, but they also don't want us to make mistakes. And you know, if you're an agency that doesn't make mistakes, that means you're doing the same thing over and over again. And if we're growing, like we're growing and the public's expectations keep changing.

We're not going to be successful tomorrow. If we keep doing what we did yesterday, today. And so it really pushes us to be continually innovative. And if you're going to be innovative, you're going to be making a mistake here or there. And so we acknowledge that we're going to make mistakes. So we try to create a safe zone.

For our, for our employees and our partners be willing to push new ideas forward. Now, um, when we came up with this idea, it came out through actually innovative contracting. So we used to actually design every project right down to the finest detail. And we would tell the contractor what to build. Now on this job, we actually said, this is what our goals are for this project.

And the contractors try to cha they compete against each other. To come up with the best ideas. And, um, during this, uh, best value selection, the diverging diamond was introduced to the state of Utah. We looked at it on paper and as an engineering exercise, it looked really good. It looked like it made a lot of sense, but we knew this was not something that was going to be completely intuitive to the public driving on the wrong side of the road, unless you're, you know, think you're going into England there and you're going to.

He driving on the wrong side of the road. So what we did there is we developed simulations. We developed an animation, we built it into a movie. We actually went to a down in Utah Valley and to different movie houses. And it was the, you know, how you go to a movie and they have these opening trailers. We had opening trailers that were showing people what we were doing and how to drive through.

That interchange. We had an animation on our website so that people could actually experience what was expected of them. And we oversized it, we over striked it and we were still pretty nervous that the first day we opened it. But once people use it once they're like, I get it. This works really well.

Yeah. How, 

Wyatt: [00:36:17] what makes that design work better? 

Carlos Braceras: [00:36:20] Well, it, it puts the, it makes it helped people make the left turn from the left side of the road. So it eliminates what we call a conflict point in engineering. So you're not making a left turn across traffic. So if you think about it, you have the full signal to go to the other side of the road.

There's no conflicting traffic, and now you're making that left turn to go get onto the highway. But you're in that you're in that lane. You're not crossing across traffic to make that lane. So we've eliminated conflict point. You know, some of the worst crashes we have are those crossing crashes, where somebody is trying to make a left turn across oncoming traffic that is eliminated.

And so now we don't have to have give time a signal time for cars to be able to make dedicated, left Hertz. And so it's more efficient and it's safer. 

Wyatt: [00:37:10] So as we're finishing up, I've. Read some random news articles. And I can't even remember where I read them, which is probably the problem that project, um, the future transportation in Utah, and they all have horror stories like, Oh, we're going to need a double Decker freeway and all these things.

Um, and it's just kind of it's somebody who loves the slower pace of transportation up here in Logan, um, or the less busy pace at least. What gives you a hope for the future when it comes to Utah's transportation future? 

Carlos Braceras: [00:37:42] You know, what gives me hope for the future of transportation in Utah is the people of Utah.

It's going to take the people of Utah making different choices that we've made in the past. We're going to have to make choices in terms of where we live, how we live again, how we choose to make a trip, just jumping in the car at any time of the day to make a trip, um, might not be the most practical way to do it.

I tell people, and this is based on modeling. That we could solve all of our congestion problems in the state of Utah. If every car out there had, had doubled the vehicle occupancy. So think about what does that mean? That means if you drive by yourself, you now have two people in the car. If we could do that on every trip, we don't have to do any more transportation building.

It sounds easy. It's probably pretty impossible to do. But what it says is, think about, you know, chaining trips together. Think about, um, making a trip at a different time, thinking about carpooling. Carpooling is one of the most effective things we can do. Uh, so the confidence I have in being able to have transportation, the future is the people of Utah are going to make the right decisions when they, and the motivator for Utahns is almost always what is best for my children.

What is best for the future? How can I invest in the future? And you know, we're not as selfish people. And so I have a lot of confidence that we're going to make the right choices, and we're going to have a great transportation system. I like to tell people the best transportation system is one that people don't even notice.

You don't think about how you got someplace, use, leave, everything works. It's only when things don't work that you think about it. And so it's kind of tough in this business. You know, everyone wants to be noticed for what they do, but our success will be when people don't even notice. The transportation system.

Wyatt: [00:39:32] Ah, I'm so happy. I was able to talk to Carlos Perez because now when I'm stuck waiting to be flagged down a road construction zone, I'll have a little more perspective about what's happening and how I will benefit eventually. The Utah department of transportation has a lot to deal with avalanches ferry crossings, big mountains, big city traffic in rural passages.

USU research is helping answer important questions for the department of transportation. USU also helps by churning out civil engineers ready for the workplace. If you have questions for USU researchers, you can follow at instead podcast on Instagram, that's where we'll post about upcoming interviews and you can drop questions in the comment section.

This episode of instead was edited by Nick Vasquez and me why Wyatt Triber is part of our work in the office of research at Utah state university.

 

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