2017 MATC Scholars Program: Dr. Larry Rilett
Larissa Sazama
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11/02/2017
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8
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Dr. Larry Rilett, Keith W. Klaasmeyer Chair in Engineering and Technology and Distinguished Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, gives a welcome and an introduction to the Mid-America Transportation Center. For more information, please visit http://matc.unl.edu/education/scholars-program2017.php.
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- [00:00:00.500]So good morning.
- [00:00:01.830]Good morning.
- [00:00:04.157]I'm so glad to have you here, Saturday morning,
- [00:00:05.805]and end of the conference.
- [00:00:08.252]So what I'm going to do today, as Dr. Perkins was saying,
- [00:00:11.029]I want to talk about some things,
- [00:00:12.295]I want to give you an overview of transportation,
- [00:00:14.298]I wanna talk about some of the research going on.
- [00:00:18.162]We're going to make it a bit interactive,
- [00:00:19.405]so you're going to have some questions.
- [00:00:22.270]And we'll talk about careers as well.
- [00:00:25.378]So we talk about transportation, right?
- [00:00:28.130]And what's transportation?
- [00:00:30.121]It's a safe movement of persons
- [00:00:31.237]and goods over time and space.
- [00:00:34.428]Different objectives, different methods.
- [00:00:37.142]Alright, so we have all kinds of ways of doing it.
- [00:00:41.644]We have shipping, we have railroads,
- [00:00:43.258]we have railroads, freeways, airports.
- [00:00:47.301]And we can characterize it by things being transported.
- [00:00:50.856]Alright, are we doing freight or people?
- [00:00:53.001]Type of vehicle, is it a railway,
- [00:00:54.444]is it a car, is it an airplane?
- [00:00:56.618]The type of right-of-way.
- [00:01:00.112]So that's transportation, that's sort of the theme.
- [00:01:02.855]Why is it a theme?
- [00:01:03.740]Well, we're a transportation center,
- [00:01:05.653]USDOT is paying for the conference.
- [00:01:09.113]And they want everyone to be interested,
- [00:01:12.755]they want people to go into transportation.
- [00:01:14.645]Does that mean you have to go into transportation?
- [00:01:16.401]No, remember I started from the beginning?
- [00:01:18.769]We wanna give you information,
- [00:01:20.078]this is what we're doing.
- [00:01:23.049]So I know there's some civil engineering majors in here.
- [00:01:25.853]This is actually,
- [00:01:26.989]could've been what's an engineering system?
- [00:01:29.447]But I'm gonna ask the civil engineers.
- [00:01:30.687]What's a civil engineering system?
- [00:01:34.477]So if you're in civil engineering, you'll allow.
- [00:01:37.310]We take some elements,
- [00:01:40.368]we resist the load.
- [00:01:42.177]That's essentially what engineering is.
- [00:01:43.782]You have a demand
- [00:01:45.936]and you have a supply.
- [00:01:47.707]And you try to do it economically.
- [00:01:50.077]And almost everything we do in engineering
- [00:01:53.332]is that.
- [00:01:55.395]So if we're talking about a structural system,
- [00:01:57.955]we have beams, we have columns, we have foundations.
- [00:02:02.324]And we put those together
- [00:02:04.660]to resist a load, right?
- [00:02:07.386]The dead load, all the weight of that, those things,
- [00:02:09.800]as well as the live load, the people in there,
- [00:02:11.547]or whatever you're putting in the building.
- [00:02:14.441]Wind load.
- [00:02:16.604]And you try and do it for 20 to 50 to a hundred years
- [00:02:20.629]without failure, right?
- [00:02:22.011]That's what a structural system is.
- [00:02:24.368]And that's when you go
- [00:02:25.201]to do civil engineering and structures,
- [00:02:26.558]you learn how to put those together economically, right?
- [00:02:29.743]And we took tours, you saw a football stadium,
- [00:02:32.556]where that was done.
- [00:02:33.775]If you've been walking around,
- [00:02:34.688]you saw the Pinnacle Bank Arena,
- [00:02:36.640]where that was done.
- [00:02:39.777]How old is civil engineering?
- [00:02:42.604]Well,
- [00:02:44.784]Approximately 4 thousand years ago,
- [00:02:46.009]Hammurabi put it together as code.
- [00:02:48.106]If you take law, it's one of the first things you learn.
- [00:02:50.590]But if you take engineering,
- [00:02:51.499]it's also some of the first things you learn.
- [00:02:54.546]If you go to the Louvre, in Paris, you'll find this.
- [00:03:00.491]It's his code.
- [00:03:02.555]And it says, on that code, he has a set of laws.
- [00:03:04.920]One of them is, if a builder build a house for a man
- [00:03:08.862]and it does not make its construction firm,
- [00:03:12.088]and the house which he's built collapses
- [00:03:13.702]and causes the death of the owner.
- [00:03:16.674]Oh, I got music.
- [00:03:18.797]The owner of the house, or the builder,
- [00:03:21.741]will be put to death.
- [00:03:23.697]Okay?
- [00:03:24.530]That's our first engineering code, we don't do that now.
- [00:03:26.478]But we're still.
- [00:03:27.327](students laughing)
- [00:03:29.311]We're still liable, alright?
- [00:03:30.633]Where is Dr. Jones?
- [00:03:32.714]Dr. Jones, you were talking about,
- [00:03:33.945]what did you say?
- [00:03:35.274]That when you don't do something right, people die, right?
- [00:03:37.977]Well, 4 thousand years ago
- [00:03:40.409]we know that if you didn't do something right, people die.
- [00:03:43.279]They put in the law, they must've had trouble with houses
- [00:03:44.930]back then, right?
- [00:03:45.961]So they put in this nice law.
- [00:03:49.964]Here's Mr. Hilman, he does bridgework.
- [00:03:54.413]What's he doing?
- [00:03:55.673]I know he's standing under a bridge.
- [00:03:57.442]What else is he doing?
- [00:04:00.334]Inspecting the roomage?
- [00:04:01.852]No.
- [00:04:03.032]In a way.
- [00:04:04.435]Okay.
- [00:04:05.401]He's actually, it goes back
- [00:04:06.600]to what Hammurabi was writing about.
- [00:04:09.189]So he isn't inspecting a bridge.
- [00:04:11.971](student speaks off microphone)
- [00:04:14.441]That's right, so, when is he inspecting the bridge?
- [00:04:17.490]This is the first time the bridge is used.
- [00:04:20.294]And so for the, if you go work for a railway company
- [00:04:23.025]and you become a bridge engineer
- [00:04:24.886]and you design bridges for the railway,
- [00:04:28.550]they've been doing this for hundreds of years.
- [00:04:30.582]They say, you know what,
- [00:04:31.415]before I drive that train over,
- [00:04:32.518]I want the engineer under the bridge.
- [00:04:36.787]And they still do it, so he's standing there
- [00:04:38.290]the first time the bridge goes.
- [00:04:40.656]Do you have to understand what you're doing
- [00:04:42.403]if you're designing bridges?
- [00:04:43.906](students murmur in approval)
- [00:04:45.300]If you're standing under that bridge,
- [00:04:46.722]are you kinda focused on what you're doing?
- [00:04:48.788](students laugh)
- [00:04:50.185]He's perfectly safe,
- [00:04:51.043]we build bridges all the time and they're safe.
- [00:04:53.115]They do this for fun,
- [00:04:54.253]cause they know they've done it correctly.
- [00:04:56.337]But it goes back to what Dr. Jones was saying, right?
- [00:04:58.479]We want it done correctly.
- [00:05:00.339]How much different would it be if you're designing a damn
- [00:05:02.482]and you have to live under that damn?
- [00:05:06.482]Right, would you do things differently?
- [00:05:07.837]Hopefully you wouldn't.
- [00:05:08.962]Hopefully you would say, I'm gonna design it
- [00:05:10.853]as if I was living by that damn.
- [00:05:13.677]Alright, so that's a kind of a neat picture,
- [00:05:15.090]but that's what we do in engineering, right.
- [00:05:17.679]We design things, put them together,
- [00:05:19.935]that we know are gonna be safe.
- [00:05:22.364]And we have other examples, right.
- [00:05:23.763]There's the Brooklyn Bridge, in New York, on the left,
- [00:05:27.667]been around for about 120 years, 130 years.
- [00:05:32.450]Pont du Gard in Paris, is an aqueduct.
- [00:05:36.450]Built to bring water to Arla, in France.
- [00:05:42.641]Still works.
- [00:05:44.286]And it would still,
- [00:05:45.911]if these aqueducts,
- [00:05:48.249]built two thousand years ago,
- [00:05:50.178]still work, you can still walk across them,
- [00:05:51.863]you can still use them.
- [00:05:53.333]Some of them are still in use today.
- [00:05:55.498]So when we talk the economical life, 50, 100 years,
- [00:05:57.716]sometimes it's two thousand years.
- [00:06:00.629]What's a transportation system?
- [00:06:02.295]Well, we have elements and we have load.
- [00:06:04.152]What are the elements?
- [00:06:05.831]Highways, arterial roads, local streets,
- [00:06:08.875]traffic signals, signs, we put those together
- [00:06:14.608]to handle some demand.
- [00:06:15.682]Vehicles per hours, maybe it's how much freight we have,
- [00:06:18.244]how much tons, how many passengers.
- [00:06:20.877]Right, that's what your transportation system does.
- [00:06:24.543]It's a fail soft system.
- [00:06:26.444]So we would say it's fail soft.
- [00:06:28.516]And that if the system fails, right,
- [00:06:33.117]it's not a huge problem, right.
- [00:06:35.515]A bridge is a fail hard system.
- [00:06:37.450]If a bridge fails, we have a major problem.
- [00:06:39.939]If a damn fails, we have a major problem.
- [00:06:42.560]If our system fails, we have congestion.
- [00:06:46.482]I'm not saying that's good.
- [00:06:48.989]But it's not catastrophic, right.
- [00:06:51.166]People are not dying from that kind of thing.
- [00:06:55.180]Total US expenditures.
- [00:06:57.280]Transportation actually adds about 20 percent
- [00:06:59.435]of the gross domestic product.
- [00:07:01.528]So we spent a lot of money on transportation,
- [00:07:03.998]both personal and freight.
- [00:07:07.562]Which is why it's such a major part of it.
- [00:07:11.016]You're in Nebraska.
- [00:07:14.006]So having a good transportation system
- [00:07:16.371]helps our economy.
- [00:07:18.342]Alright, so,
- [00:07:19.607]if you have a significant impact on the area.
- [00:07:22.243]So, in rail, we're the second largest state
- [00:07:24.457]in terms of ton-mileage.
- [00:07:26.071]If you've walked around, you saw those tracks.
- [00:07:28.812]We get 150 freight trains a day through our state.
- [00:07:32.584]We're probably the largest freight corridor in the world,
- [00:07:35.436]when it comes to freight between BNSF and UP.
- [00:07:38.395]We also have I-80, the interstate system.
- [00:07:41.890]And the whole point on this slide is that countries
- [00:07:44.266]that have a really good transportation network
- [00:07:46.603]are usually leaders in industry and commerce.
- [00:07:49.400]So if you look at US, Japan, Germany.
- [00:07:52.431]When China was developing their infrastructure,
- [00:07:54.625]what was one of the first things they built?
- [00:07:57.600]Transportation system.
- [00:07:59.167]They basically copied the interstate highway system
- [00:08:01.565]in ten years.
- [00:08:02.813]They put in a high speed rail system,
- [00:08:04.734]that covered their entire country, in ten years.
- [00:08:07.213]Because they knew if they wanted to have a strong economy,
- [00:08:09.517]they had to have their people be able to move,
- [00:08:11.468]and their freight be able to be moved.
- [00:08:15.177]So what's transportation engineering?
- [00:08:18.286]Well that's everything.
- [00:08:19.502]And that's really what I wanted to get across today,
- [00:08:22.176]is I'm the civil engineer
- [00:08:23.385]and I'm gonna take all your time civil.
- [00:08:25.112]I talk about civil, but it's really everything.
- [00:08:26.879]It's aeronautical, it's chemical, it's mechanical,
- [00:08:31.888]it's electrical, it's civil.
- [00:08:35.534]It's economics, it's environmental,
- [00:08:38.542]planning, statistics, psychology and human factors,
- [00:08:41.529]all these things that I'm listing.
- [00:08:42.902]Public administration, law, business.
- [00:08:45.157]I've worked with faculty and students in all those areas.
- [00:08:48.469]So it's a very broad,
- [00:08:51.401]very broad profession.
- [00:08:53.000]And we need lots of professionals
- [00:08:55.131]in every aspect of it.
- [00:08:57.130]So if you're thinking, oh, I'm not an engineer,
- [00:08:59.419]I can't go into transportation
- [00:09:00.842]or I might not have any.
- [00:09:02.488]That's actually not quite true.
- [00:09:04.569]There's so many components to it.
- [00:09:07.689]And if you wanna solve engineering problems,
- [00:09:09.587]which we're about to talk about,
- [00:09:12.694]you need all these expertise.
- [00:09:15.520]So one of the things you probably heard
- [00:09:16.599]over the last few days,
- [00:09:17.511]that you wanna develop yourself,
- [00:09:18.711]you wanna go and do a masters,
- [00:09:20.439]one of the things you're gonna learn as you get,
- [00:09:24.529]as you go on your career,
- [00:09:26.915]and work in your jobs,
- [00:09:27.841]it's gonna be a lot more multi-disciplinary.
- [00:09:29.791]We used to work, well, the engineers work over here,
- [00:09:32.615]and these people work.
- [00:09:33.753]But if you're trying to operate something,
- [00:09:35.460]or solve a problem,
- [00:09:37.146]you really need everyone working together.
- [00:09:39.474]So when they talk to you about,
- [00:09:40.539]oh, you need to work in teams.
- [00:09:42.278]That's not a joke.
- [00:09:43.111]You're gonna be working in teams.
- [00:09:44.106]You're gonna be working with people
- [00:09:45.163]with different expertise than you.
- [00:09:47.670]And you're gonna be important
- [00:09:48.535]cause you have your set of expertise.
- [00:09:51.786]They're gonna have theirs.
- [00:09:52.779]And you're gonna have to be able to work together
- [00:09:54.734]to solve common problems.
- [00:09:59.135]The nice thing about transportation,
- [00:10:00.798]it's people oriented, okay?
- [00:10:03.104]Cause what are you doing?
- [00:10:03.937]You're doing things for people.
- [00:10:06.301]Alright.
- [00:10:09.386]It's also taking problems and finding solutions to them.
- [00:10:13.288]So it's one of the things I enjoy,
- [00:10:15.929]is we have issues and problems.
- [00:10:17.717]Can we come up with solutions to those problems?
- [00:10:22.827]So, what's a transportation problem?
- [00:10:26.006](students murmur)
- [00:10:28.903]What do you guys think a transportation problem is?
- [00:10:33.524]Traffic, so congestion.
- [00:10:35.974]What else do you thinks a problem?
- [00:10:37.416]Poor road condition?
- [00:10:38.664]Poor road condition, I'll agree on that.
- [00:10:41.341]Anything?
- [00:10:42.332]Accidents or crashes.
- [00:10:44.726]Flight delays?
- [00:10:45.763]Flight delays, yep.
- [00:10:47.142]So, congestion, both on the road and in the airport.
- [00:10:50.050]All those things.
- [00:10:51.197]And those are things you experience, right?
- [00:10:54.107]So let's see what I have.
- [00:10:56.496]Ah, congestion.
- [00:11:00.031]And it can come in many forms.
- [00:11:02.704]So let's see if we can get this going.
- [00:11:05.061]Oops.
- [00:11:10.149]And they warned me not to run this.
- [00:11:14.427]Okay, so Dr. Norton talked about being in Japan?
- [00:11:19.422]Okay.
- [00:11:26.005]Okay, notice the white gloves?
- [00:11:27.578]As they push you into the subway?
- [00:11:40.051]Okay.
- [00:11:53.602]So I wish Dr. Norton was here,
- [00:11:54.821]cause I could ask her if she's been on that train.
- [00:12:00.002]Yeah.
- [00:12:01.993]There they go.
- [00:12:06.788](students clapping)
- [00:12:12.265]Okay.
- [00:12:14.154]I have been.
- [00:12:19.040](students laughing)
- [00:12:21.362]I did not get pushed on, but I know when the train came up,
- [00:12:24.483]it was packed.
- [00:12:25.701]And when I say packed,
- [00:12:26.534]I mean people were like pushed against the glass.
- [00:12:28.402]There must've been 20 people in front of us.
- [00:12:31.029]I thought, well, there's no way we're getting on this train.
- [00:12:32.739]And it just was like a human wave right into it.
- [00:12:36.022]And the doors shut.
- [00:12:37.972]Classic engineering problem, right.
- [00:12:39.891]We have supply and then we have all these things
- [00:12:41.223]we can put in supply.
- [00:12:42.311]We have all these trains.
- [00:12:45.379]We have this demand for people.
- [00:12:47.814]Alright, so you can think well I can make the trains longer.
- [00:12:49.666]But you can only make them so long
- [00:12:51.046]because you have an underground system.
- [00:12:52.937]And it can only be as long as the platform.
- [00:12:55.366]Those trains come every three minutes in that picture, okay.
- [00:12:59.154]Which is why they have to get the people in
- [00:13:00.547]for the next train to come in.
- [00:13:01.847]It's that busy.
- [00:13:03.319]Okay, so it's a congestion problem.
- [00:13:05.502]But you have to figure out a way.
- [00:13:06.520]How do you take all that demand
- [00:13:09.771]and handle it safely?
- [00:13:11.899]Now, we are not that way in the US, fortunately,
- [00:13:15.518]our worst congestion isn't like that in trains.
- [00:13:20.235]But it's the same principle.
- [00:13:21.544]You know, we find that with our cars, right.
- [00:13:23.689]We're in the awful traffic jams.
- [00:13:26.646]What's a transportation problem?
- [00:13:28.441]Right, we said crashes.
- [00:13:30.678]Alright.
- [00:13:31.946]Is that a problem?
- [00:13:35.626]Okay.
- [00:13:48.390]Okay.
- [00:13:52.705](students gasp)
- [00:13:55.863]So everyone actually walked away from that accident.
- [00:13:57.994]So we're not showing anything really awful,
- [00:13:59.590]other than a horrific accident.
- [00:14:05.625]So red light running is a problem.
- [00:14:08.126]How many people die in the US every year
- [00:14:10.381]from traffic crashes?
- [00:14:12.365]Does anyone?
- [00:14:15.264]30 thousand?
- [00:14:16.675]35 thousand?
- [00:14:17.683]It's actually going down.
- [00:14:19.560]The rate's going down, the number going down.
- [00:14:24.802]Still way too many.
- [00:14:27.301]Alright?
- [00:14:28.134]Probably everyone in this room knows someone
- [00:14:31.365]who has been in an awful crash, alright.
- [00:14:33.896]And it has impacted their family.
- [00:14:40.099]And, in fact,
- [00:14:41.524]our accident rate, for the first time in years,
- [00:14:43.890]our crash rate is going up.
- [00:14:45.121]Anyone have any ideas why?
- [00:14:48.427]Cellphones.
- [00:14:49.260]Cellphones, right.
- [00:14:51.562]Distracted driving.
- [00:14:54.009]Alright, so we have to come up with solutions.
- [00:14:55.654]What's a solution to what I just showed?
- [00:14:57.483]Does anyone seen any
- [00:14:59.486]red light running solutions
- [00:15:01.150]that they've seen over the last five years?
- [00:15:02.927]Yes, ma'am.
- [00:15:03.760](students answers off microphone)
- [00:15:07.430]That's right, so we can give advanced warning.
- [00:15:09.432]And we have that in Nebraska.
- [00:15:11.684]The camera.
- [00:15:13.030]They could put on cameras, they could do enforcement.
- [00:15:15.600]Sometimes there's a delayed
- [00:15:17.926]response to the green light.
- [00:15:19.979]So even though it's like,
- [00:15:21.390]so two lights can be red at the same time.
- [00:15:23.383]That's right, so they do an all red phase,
- [00:15:25.577]where everything's red.
- [00:15:27.333]Alright, and then people get smart about that.
- [00:15:28.982]And they go, ah, we got time, we're gonna run the red light.
- [00:15:31.520](students laugh)
- [00:15:34.476]You've probably also seen that you can change
- [00:15:36.397]the way you set up your system.
- [00:15:38.267]Right?
- [00:15:39.242]You get rid of the traffic signals
- [00:15:40.765]and you put in roundabouts.
- [00:15:42.198](students murmur in agreement)
- [00:15:43.073]Right.
- [00:15:43.906]So why are roundabouts safer than intersections?
- [00:15:48.463]You have to slow down.
- [00:15:51.186]Right?
- [00:15:53.317]There's a set right of way.
- [00:15:56.397]The biggest thing, you're slowing down.
- [00:15:59.301]What type of accident did you see here?
- [00:16:01.584]Head on collision.
- [00:16:02.417]Yeah, a T-bone, right?
- [00:16:04.604]You do not wanna be hit from the side
- [00:16:07.347]or head on.
- [00:16:08.862]With a roundabout,
- [00:16:10.476]if there is crashes, and there are crashes in a roundabout,
- [00:16:12.752]you're going slow and you're sorta going into each other.
- [00:16:16.052]And I'm not saying you wanna do that.
- [00:16:18.432]But it's much safer than a T-bone
- [00:16:20.789]or a head on.
- [00:16:28.022]Another transportation problem.
- [00:16:30.020]Increased freight.
- [00:16:32.431]Truck traffic, railway traffic, truck weights.
- [00:16:35.324]This is actually a picture from Canada
- [00:16:37.619]of trucks waiting to come into the US
- [00:16:40.049]to clear with security.
- [00:16:44.879]And if you go down to the Mexican border,
- [00:16:46.324]you'll have the same thing.
- [00:16:48.063]It's a huge issue,
- [00:16:49.666]is the amount of congestion we're getting with freight.
- [00:16:52.094]Because our freight network really hasn't grown that much.
- [00:16:54.564]But the amount freight has gone up a lot.
- [00:16:58.209]This one was related to security.
- [00:16:59.745]How do we get things into our country
- [00:17:02.547]and still be secure?
- [00:17:05.565]So freight.
- [00:17:07.922]We're gonna increase it by 40 percent by 2040.
- [00:17:10.961]If you've driven on the highways over the last 20 years,
- [00:17:13.198]you're probably seeing a lot more trucks.
- [00:17:14.975]You're probably seeing a lot more trains.
- [00:17:16.856]All that's going on.
- [00:17:18.519]Another issue related to it,
- [00:17:20.066]is about four to eight percent of that movement
- [00:17:22.486]is hazardous goods.
- [00:17:25.357]Alright.
- [00:17:27.545]In our area, we have highly flammable crude oil
- [00:17:30.136]from the Bakken oil fields up in North Dakota,
- [00:17:32.217]coming through Nebraska down to Texas.
- [00:17:35.288]In 2009, there were 10 thousand carloads of this stuff
- [00:17:38.995]going through the US.
- [00:17:41.769]2014, five years later, 500 thousand carloads
- [00:17:45.781]of crude oil being shipped on our railways.
- [00:17:50.201]And where are they shipped through?
- [00:17:52.375]Communities.
- [00:17:54.040]Alright, these things.
- [00:17:54.873]Yes, ma'am.
- [00:17:55.706]Is carloads a unit or is that like?
- [00:17:58.583]It's a unit.
- [00:17:59.708]So think of a tanker car, on a railway.
- [00:18:02.452]You've probably seen them, they're like.
- [00:18:04.566]They're sorta roundish, cylindrical.
- [00:18:07.207]So there's 500 thousand of those going through,
- [00:18:11.890]through the US.
- [00:18:15.932]It's amazing how much bad stuff we have.
- [00:18:18.402]Toxic and poison inhalation hazards.
- [00:18:19.952]We have chlorine gas,
- [00:18:21.104]we have just an amazing amount of stuff
- [00:18:23.978]coming through our communities
- [00:18:26.030]that are hazardous.
- [00:18:27.403]And we have to be prepared for releases from that.
- [00:18:32.448]And, so,
- [00:18:34.209]you know, if we have, for example,
- [00:18:35.592]if we had a chlorine tanker car crash,
- [00:18:41.577]we would have to evacuate everyone.
- [00:18:44.218]There's absolutely no safe way with chlorine.
- [00:18:47.289]And so there've been cases where they've had derailments
- [00:18:49.431]and they've had to evacuate 200 thousand people
- [00:18:51.442]in 10 to 15 minutes.
- [00:18:53.038]So you can imagine you get these warnings.
- [00:18:55.270]You have to get out because if it releases,
- [00:18:59.303]there's no safe way to handle that.
- [00:19:02.727]So here's our freight, here's 2002.
- [00:19:05.216]You can pick out your own part of the country
- [00:19:06.821]where you're at.
- [00:19:08.130]The thicker the line the more freight.
- [00:19:10.928]And that's gonna be 2035, okay.
- [00:19:14.402]So, if you think there's a lot of trucks on the road now,
- [00:19:18.798]you think there's a lot of railway cars,
- [00:19:20.953]we have to figure out a way to solve this problem.
- [00:19:24.204]Alright?
- [00:19:25.110]And the answer isn't we're not gonna have freight.
- [00:19:27.913]Alright, cause freight's critical to our economy.
- [00:19:30.473]But how do we handle these things?
- [00:19:33.898]I talked about
- [00:19:38.866]hazardous goods.
- [00:19:40.495]This is Lac-Megantic, in Quebec, in Canada.
- [00:19:45.200]Which is about 10 miles from the US border.
- [00:19:48.430]They were bringing Bakken oil crude to the eastern,
- [00:19:52.433]eastern Canada.
- [00:19:54.180]So this was crude from North Dakota.
- [00:19:57.277]They had a crash at night.
- [00:19:59.503]There was 50 carloads of this oil.
- [00:20:02.835]It's highly volatile.
- [00:20:05.362]This is a picture from the next day.
- [00:20:06.858]So, at the bottom, you can see the train.
- [00:20:10.355]That was a town.
- [00:20:11.911]Completely burned down by the oil.
- [00:20:14.938]The crude oil.
- [00:20:16.227]So what happened is, there's a crash.
- [00:20:18.667]The train derailed, it all ran into each other,
- [00:20:20.275]it all caught fire.
- [00:20:21.656]And it basically burned down the town.
- [00:20:24.449]I think over 50 people were killed
- [00:20:26.562]in this fire in the middle of the night.
- [00:20:29.174]So when we talk about hazardous goods movement,
- [00:20:31.306]these things are real, they are happening.
- [00:20:33.623]There's been cases in Tennessee where they've happened.
- [00:20:35.879]There's been cases in Texas.
- [00:20:38.364]Probably not as bad as this.
- [00:20:40.357]But it is a problem.
- [00:20:41.608]And it's something that we have to address.
- [00:20:43.640]Our center is looking at how do you react
- [00:20:45.944]to these type of events.
- [00:20:47.082]How do you prepare communities
- [00:20:50.069]for hazardous goods?
- [00:20:51.134]How do you perform evacuations?
- [00:20:52.684]So when we had the hurricane in Houston,
- [00:20:54.815]we talked about evacuations.
- [00:20:56.574]Well, evacuations can happen anywhere
- [00:20:58.151]where you have this type of thing.
- [00:21:00.040]How do you get information out to people?
- [00:21:02.296]And how do you get them evacuated
- [00:21:04.327]if something like this were to occur?
- [00:21:08.777]What's a transportation problem?
- [00:21:10.280]We talked about aging infrastructure.
- [00:21:11.752]I heard that one, yes.
- [00:21:13.853]So when did we built the interstate system?
- [00:21:17.177]Anyone know their history?
- [00:21:21.148]How about the 1950s, it started.
- [00:21:22.776]It was probably completed in the 1970s.
- [00:21:25.243]How long did we build highway bridges for
- [00:21:27.469]and roadways?
- [00:21:29.053]About 50 years.
- [00:21:31.146]Pavement, about 30 years.
- [00:21:32.679]So every time you drive around your interstate,
- [00:21:34.214]what do you kinda notice?
- [00:21:36.091]Always under construction, right?
- [00:21:38.278]Why?
- [00:21:39.111]Cause we built it 50 years ago.
- [00:21:42.391]Okay, so.
- [00:21:43.366]People from Houston.
- [00:21:45.926]Would you know where that is?
- [00:21:49.275]Eh, close, it's Galveston Highway.
- [00:21:51.127]So that's the road from downtown to Galveston.
- [00:21:55.211]Slightly different view now, right?
- [00:22:00.525]What's another issue coming into the US?
- [00:22:05.604]One of the things you're gonna find out,
- [00:22:07.187]particularly for the students in this room,
- [00:22:08.835]is aging population, right?
- [00:22:11.589]So this is a graph.
- [00:22:14.820]On the Y axis here is the ages.
- [00:22:17.856]Alright, so how many people, zero to four,
- [00:22:19.493]how many five to nine.
- [00:22:21.452]And it just shows percentages, alright.
- [00:22:24.287]So this is how many 20 million, right.
- [00:22:27.933]But you can see, percentage wise, how many people.
- [00:22:30.754]What do you notice about this one?
- [00:22:34.200]1970.
- [00:22:35.462]Sorry, go ahead.
- [00:22:37.293](students speaking off microphone)
- [00:22:40.270]Yeah, so 20 million were over 65.
- [00:22:45.634]And they were about 10 percent of the US population.
- [00:22:48.722]Okay.
- [00:22:51.120]When we come up to 2010, not that long ago,
- [00:22:55.102]41 million people over 65, 13 percent.
- [00:22:58.466](students laugh)
- [00:22:59.703]And notice that we don't have this distribution
- [00:23:01.859]of lots of young people and very little old people.
- [00:23:05.524]Older people.
- [00:23:06.561]Thank you.
- [00:23:07.650](students laugh)
- [00:23:10.157]I'm at that stage where, yeah.
- [00:23:12.752]Not young people.
- [00:23:15.239]But notice here, it's more evenly distributed, alright.
- [00:23:21.184]And then if you project this out to 2050, alright,
- [00:23:26.455]well within your careers,
- [00:23:29.940]we're gonna have 90 million people over 65, 21 percent.
- [00:23:33.850]Is that a problem?
- [00:23:35.210]Yes.
- [00:23:36.889]No for me.
- [00:23:38.107](students laugh)
- [00:23:39.336]But for you people that have to.
- [00:23:40.697]So.
- [00:23:41.875]But we have to have, you know,
- [00:23:43.187]how we set up our system to drive.
- [00:23:45.556]Alright, we have aging drivers,
- [00:23:47.059]we're gonna have to help them be able to live.
- [00:23:50.371]To get to the places they need to go.
- [00:23:52.980]Alright.
- [00:23:53.987]There's actually another problem for you.
- [00:23:55.559]This one has nothing to do with transportation.
- [00:23:58.132]There's another issue for the students in this room.
- [00:24:01.159]How does social security work?
- [00:24:04.408]You don't get it until you're 60?
- [00:24:05.873]You don't get it until you're 65,
- [00:24:07.202]but there's more.
- [00:24:08.340]People have to work first.
- [00:24:10.263]You have to work.
- [00:24:11.612]So, when you pay social security,
- [00:24:13.352]do you just go into a bank
- [00:24:14.518]and then, when you're done, you get that money back?
- [00:24:18.319]It goes to the people there, right?
- [00:24:20.114]So when we start, back in 1970,
- [00:24:23.701]these peoples social security came from all these people.
- [00:24:29.724]When you are in this cohort,
- [00:24:32.600]where is your social security coming from?
- [00:24:34.815]These people, alright.
- [00:24:36.777]There's less workers for the retirees.
- [00:24:39.660]So when they hear, oh, social security's going broke,
- [00:24:43.369]social security won't be able to handle itself,
- [00:24:45.766]it's because of these graphs.
- [00:24:48.283]Alright, there're not going to be enough workers
- [00:24:50.460]to keep the same benefits we have now.
- [00:24:53.995]So they're gonna have to do.
- [00:24:55.238]They can increase what the social security tax is.
- [00:24:58.263]They can reduce how much people get for social security.
- [00:25:02.327]You know, I'm not sure what they're gonna do.
- [00:25:05.141]Here's what I tell my kids.
- [00:25:08.038]It'd be great if social security was around,
- [00:25:11.074]I'm not convinced it will be.
- [00:25:13.491]So when you start your jobs,
- [00:25:15.889]what I tell my son is 10 percent of your income,
- [00:25:18.358]go into retirement.
- [00:25:20.438]It's gonna be tough.
- [00:25:22.594]But your banking on something that may not be there,
- [00:25:26.161]if you're worrying about social security.
- [00:25:27.542]So it's always good, you talk about planning last night.
- [00:25:30.679]Right, it's good to plan ahead.
- [00:25:32.519]Nothing to do with transportation,
- [00:25:33.798]nothing to do with this conference.
- [00:25:36.359]Not gonna be quizzed on it but,
- [00:25:39.652]there's that, well.
- [00:25:41.408]That graph is why.
- [00:25:43.542]It's just the way it is.
- [00:25:44.920]Right, so.
- [00:25:46.295]I have a feeling that we're gonna be,
- [00:25:50.425]my children's generation is gonna be much more
- [00:25:53.394]self-supporting themselves.
- [00:25:56.393]These ideas of pensions and all that.
- [00:25:58.687]My son got a job, there's no pension.
- [00:26:01.360]And the first thing I said, I told him was,
- [00:26:03.204]and he has a very nice job, he's a computer scientist,
- [00:26:05.809]the first thing you have to do is set up your own.
- [00:26:08.246]You're gonna have to save your money
- [00:26:09.606]and you have to start now.
- [00:26:11.000]And don't touch that, alright.
- [00:26:12.647]You think you wanna go to Cozumel or Thailand, that's fine,
- [00:26:17.399]but you also have to take care of business first.
- [00:26:20.264]You have to take care of yourself.
- [00:26:21.474]Cause when you get to this age, right,
- [00:26:24.513]it's not like oh, I'm gonna keep working.
- [00:26:25.942]You might not have the opportunity, you might not want to.
- [00:26:28.359]You wanna have the position to do what you wanna do
- [00:26:30.710]when you get older.
- [00:26:31.928]So, that's my soapbox, I'm sorry, but.
- [00:26:34.245](students laugh)
- [00:26:35.238]But that graph also effects
- [00:26:37.301]what we need to do in transportation.
- [00:26:41.489]Oh, I got that again.
- [00:26:44.545]Oh, here we go.
- [00:26:45.419]So what are the potential solutions?
- [00:26:47.553]So, one of the things we talk about,
- [00:26:51.181]so I'll just build more.
- [00:26:53.375]Let's build some more roads, right?
- [00:26:54.818]We'll have a construct, we'll make it wider.
- [00:26:57.535]If you live in Dallas or Houston,
- [00:26:59.506]they're always making,
- [00:27:00.356]how long does it take to widen a highway in Dallas?
- [00:27:04.289]Any ideas?
- [00:27:08.384]Yeah, I'm not exaggerating, it's 30 years.
- [00:27:12.510]By the time they plan it.
- [00:27:14.378]Cause you have to do environmental,
- [00:27:15.476]they have to get the money, they have to get the land.
- [00:27:19.021]So let's expand the ring road.
- [00:27:22.262]You're talking 30 years, by the time they thought about it
- [00:27:24.793]to the time it was done.
- [00:27:27.220]So, what are the issues?
- [00:27:28.967]Well, there's politics.
- [00:27:29.820]Right, I don't wanna bigger road.
- [00:27:32.012]There's limited resources.
- [00:27:33.660]We built right up to the highways,
- [00:27:34.989]how do you take that land back?
- [00:27:37.022]Right, you have to pay people, you know, it's not fun,
- [00:27:39.836]right, to take peoples land, expropriate it to build things.
- [00:27:43.900]So one of the things that we're doing,
- [00:27:45.598]and you're gonna see in your careers,
- [00:27:47.975]are new techniques.
- [00:27:49.484]More intelligent use of available resources.
- [00:27:51.783]We call that ITS.
- [00:27:54.160]So you have a problem on the freeway.
- [00:27:56.210]You have a crash.
- [00:27:58.305]You detect that crash.
- [00:28:01.634]You have a traffic management center.
- [00:28:04.532]Then all that information comes back.
- [00:28:06.879]You can use it for dispatching,
- [00:28:08.464]you can use it for evacuations.
- [00:28:12.722]You can do it for variable message signs.
- [00:28:15.749]You can put it on the internet.
- [00:28:16.884]You can give it to the in-vehicle.
- [00:28:19.875]ITS.
- [00:28:23.330]Alright, so gather information,
- [00:28:24.520]we say we're in the information age, right.
- [00:28:26.642]Eric says we're out of the information age.
- [00:28:28.855]But that's sort of what we're doing.
- [00:28:31.945]What do you notice about this slide?
- [00:28:38.986]You're saying, ah, Dr. Rilett uses really old technology.
- [00:28:41.706](students laugh)
- [00:28:42.829]Look at those computers,
- [00:28:43.756]no one has a screen like that anymore.
- [00:28:46.793]Who has that in their car?
- [00:28:48.134]Right, I got my own, my cellphone.
- [00:28:50.328]I used this slide 25 years ago.
- [00:28:53.672]And the reason.
- [00:28:56.789]And it hasn't changed.
- [00:28:57.905]What's changed is the technology, we have better detection.
- [00:29:00.954]We have better video.
- [00:29:02.368]We have better computers.
- [00:29:03.778]But, you know, you get on and how do I find my route?
- [00:29:06.298]How do I get data?
- [00:29:07.679]The data might not be coming from the computer,
- [00:29:09.357]it might be coming from the car itself.
- [00:29:11.247]It's probably coming from you cellphone, right.
- [00:29:14.996]Do the cellphone companies know where you are?
- [00:29:17.313](students murmur in agreement)
- [00:29:18.654]All the time, right.
- [00:29:19.824]When you signed up for your cellphone,
- [00:29:21.467]did you sign away some stuff?
- [00:29:23.385](students murmur in agreement)
- [00:29:24.218]Right, you just hit Yes, right?
- [00:29:26.758]That's right, did you read it, no.
- [00:29:28.406]So what you signed away was, we can track you.
- [00:29:31.666]And we can sell that information to Google or Lays,
- [00:29:35.524]or any of these.
- [00:29:36.804]So they know that if they see the cellphone
- [00:29:39.154]going at 60 miles per hours, you're probably in a car.
- [00:29:42.324]We know how the travel time on the road is,
- [00:29:43.978]we can send that back to people,
- [00:29:45.418]we can sell that information.
- [00:29:47.258]All that's changed, but the concept hasn't.
- [00:29:49.981]Gathering information, providing it to people.
- [00:29:53.864]And in the last one that you're gonna see, related to ITS,
- [00:29:58.232]is just getting smarter.
- [00:30:00.232]You've probably heard about autonomous vehicles, right.
- [00:30:02.650]Cars that drive themselves.
- [00:30:05.323]Alright.
- [00:30:06.806]Where are we gonna see it first?
- [00:30:09.387]Well, you see these pilots around,
- [00:30:10.919]my prediction is we're gonna see it on trucks,
- [00:30:13.257]freight trucks on the road, on the highways,
- [00:30:15.948]cause it's simpler to be on a highway than anywhere else.
- [00:30:20.072]The logic, the algorithms.
- [00:30:22.560]Because you're on a fixed location,
- [00:30:24.574]there's benefits to having the trucks together from a
- [00:30:29.166]platooning point of view.
- [00:30:30.855]So my prediction is we'll see those on the roadways,
- [00:30:33.305]on the highways first.
- [00:30:37.966]The other concept is connected vehicles,
- [00:30:39.815]where the vehicles talk to each other.
- [00:30:42.070]Hopefully so they don't crash into each other.
- [00:30:44.825]Hopefully so they don't crash into a bridge.
- [00:30:47.150]So that they can, that the car will make decisions
- [00:30:50.075]before the driver will.
- [00:30:51.997]And avoid some of those crashes.
- [00:30:54.171]There's all kinds of legal and technical issues.
- [00:30:57.134]But that's sort of where the future's going.
- [00:30:58.972]Where all these problems, crashes, congestion.
- [00:31:02.837]If the cars drive closer together, do you reduce congestion?
- [00:31:07.348]Sure.
- [00:31:08.799]If you can make it safe.
- [00:31:10.689]You can reduce congestion.
- [00:31:11.635]So you don't have to build more roads.
- [00:31:13.286]You just have to use the roads you have better.
- [00:31:15.475]But that would involve connecting the vehicles,
- [00:31:18.287]getting them closer together in a way that's safe.
- [00:31:22.229]Alright.
- [00:31:23.062]That's the future.
- [00:31:24.758]The question is, can we reach there or not?
- [00:31:28.417]So what I wanted to do
- [00:31:29.299]is give ya an overview of transportation,
- [00:31:32.054]transportation careers, I wanted to show
- [00:31:33.923]that it's very broad.
- [00:31:35.903]Alright, we have at our center,
- [00:31:38.068]I was talking about the chemical,
- [00:31:40.310]we have chemical engineers working on ways to make it safe
- [00:31:42.993]if there is an accident, you don't have that oil
- [00:31:47.301]vaporize and explode.
- [00:31:49.846]You can add supplements to it so that saves it.
- [00:31:53.391]So it's very broad.
- [00:31:55.309]Almost anyone in this room.
- [00:31:58.052]Everyone in this room could go into transportation.
- [00:31:59.776]Doesn't mean you have to.
- [00:32:01.483]But there is an opportunities there.
- [00:32:04.238]And that's sorta what we wanted to get across
- [00:32:06.412]on this presentation.
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- Tags:
- ntc
- matc
- nebraska transportation center
- mid-america transportation center
- matc scholars program
- scholars program
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- transportation engineering
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- laurence rilett
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