Donald Katz

My graduate studies have begun this week at Georgia Tech. I have received my desk in the transportation lab, spoken with my advisor about possible research topics, and begun classes. This semester I am taking the following courses, the first four of which are required for my curriculum.  They are listed below along with the instructors’ names.

CEE 6601 - Statistics in Transport (Dr. Laurie Garrow)
CEE 6602 - Urban Transportation Planning (Dr. Randall Guensler & Dr. Catherine Ross)
CEE 6603 - Traffic Engineering (Dr. Michael Hunter)
CEE 8811-C - Masters Transportation Seminar (Dr. Laurie Garrow)
CEE 4803-A - Freight Transportation Systems & Airport Planning (Dr. Michael Meyer & Dr. Frank Southworth)

My advisor is Dr. Michael Meyer and with him I will be researching how transportation plays a role in megaregion growth, but the specific topic will be nailed down later. Currently I am reading through Dr. Catherine Ross’s new textbook Megaregions: Planning for Global Competitiveness to get a better handle on the topic.

Also this semester I will be applying to the City and Regional Planning department to become a dual degree candidate. I would then begin my coursework in that department next semester.

Today was my final day working at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education. I started the summer working on a project that looked at new pavement marking retroreflective technology. We looked at the effect of these in nighttime rainy conditions. The beginning of the summer had some potential rainy nights that had me driving to our test sites at 8pm, but as the summer continued, the rain decreased.

To supplement my time on this project, I came on board a project examining access management techniques across North Carolina, and how they affected businesses. We specifically looked at median constructions, when a 5-lane road with a two-way left turn lane was removed and a 4-lane road with a median was constructed. An eleven question survey was designed for businesses to give their opinions about the median and respond with how the median affected customer flow. We visited sites in Wilmington, Raleigh, Salisbury, and Charlotte. Each had unique characteristics, including one in Charlotte which had a light rail line as part of its median. We had an excellent response rate, over 70% for most sites, and we attributed it to our study’s face-to-face interviews. Previous studies in other states achieved less than 20% but had only mailed out surveys.

Both of these projects are still ongoing, and it is difficult to leave them when they are both still near the beginning. Tomorrow though, I leave for Atlanta to begin graduate school at Georgia Tech.

Last Friday I finally wrapped up the data processing for my Fulbright research. The hundreds of hours I put in riding buses in Dhaka, Bangladesh did not end my project there. Processing the data by entering it into my main spreadsheet and database was the next step before I start my analysis. Having this step complete is a big milestone.

The overcrowded bus data has taken a long time to move through. The first step required me to listen to the recordings I had of what occurred at the hundreds of bus stops (I had over 1400 left to process upon returning to the United States). On this listen I recorded on a piece of paper the boardings, alights, and bus movements that occurred. A second relisten allowed me to time each bus stop and get the time points of each board and alight. I then entered this time data into my spreadsheet. Once a full route’s of bus stops were recorded in this fashion, I could enter the route’s information, including how crowded the bus got and how far it stopped from the curb, into my database.

Below is a typical scene of a bus boarding. Shown here is the #6 Motijheel-Banani bus at its northbound Shat Rasta stop in the south end of Tejgaon, Dhaka.

Last Wednesday through Friday, I attended the Fulbright Pre-departure Orientation for U.S. Scholars and Students Going to South and Central Asia. Held in Washington, D.C., the orientation is the first chance new Fulbrights have to meet others going to their country, meet the staff from the U.S. Department of State and the Institute for International Education, and get questions answered regarding their award.

As a returning student, I hosted the Bangladesh country session for the nine new Fulbright Students and five new Fulbright Scholars. Facilitating along with me was Geoffrey Hiller, a Fulbright Scholar from 2008-2009, who lectured at the Independent University of Bangladesh on interactive media. For the session, I produced a 16-page briefing on topics new Fulbrights to Bangladesh might find useful. You can view that document here and it is also posted in the Writings section. Below is a photo of our session room with some of the new Fulbrights to Bangladesh. I really enjoyed meeting them and getting to share stories and advice about life in Dhaka.

On Monday June 15, I participated as a panelist in a webinar for potential Fulbright applicants. This particular webinar was for applicants to South and Central Asia, and I was joined by another Fulbright alumnus, Scott Sorrell who did his Fulbright in Nepal last year, and a another Fulbright student who had just received a Fulbright to go to India next year. The format was a roundtable discussion of our experiences applying and researching abroad.

I was invited to participate by the Institute of International Education who manages the Fulbright for students. The webinar was watched by over sixty potential Fulbright applicants. In the webinar, just over an hour long, each us alumni gave a ten minute talk on our time in our respective countries and what our experiences were with the application process. As we talked, a slideshow of photographs from our time in our respective countries ran for the viewers to see. After, a question and answer period moderated by Tony Claudino of IIE was ran.  The viewers messaged in their questions to Mr. Claudino, who then read them aloud for the alumni panelists to respond to.

The next webinar of this type, which I might be a panelist for, is Monday August 3.

I received notice this past week from the National Science Foundation that I earned an Honorable Mention in this year’s Graduate Research Fellowship competition. This was the final item I was waiting to hear back on from my round of applications this year.

Two weeks ago the Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Association held its Championship Regatta at Melton Hill Lake in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  I attended the regatta with my former North Carolina State University rowing team.

It was not until after the regatta that I was alerted by one of the current NC State coxswains that my likeness was on the SIRA Champioship Regatta’s t-shirt. He scanned the shirt he had purchased there and sent me the image, and sure enough, the single sculler on the bottom was me! Knowing roughly where that photo would be from, I scoured the photos I have on my laptop and found the original picture they used: a picture of me racing in the Men’s Senior B Lightweight Single Heats at the 2006 Canadian Henley in St. Catharine’s, Ontario. This is from the summer when I was a member of Undine Barge Club in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I have been trying to get in contact with Bob Jaugstetter, the regatta director of the SIRA Championship and head coach of Tulane Rowing, but have had no success so far.

The t-shirt scan and the likely original photo are below:

The final study report from my internship over the winter at the Regional Plan Association has been posted in the Writings section. Entitled Assessing Increased Rail Speeds in the Northeast Corridor, it summarizes the issues facing the Northeast Megaregion’s rail backbone, and what could be done to improve it.

For the summer, I have come on board as a research assistant on a project at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education. This research center is located on NC State’s Centennial Campus. I found myself here after emailing my friend and former classmate (while he was still a PhD candidate) Dr. Bastian Schroeder who works in their Highway Systems Group.

The project I am working on is a study of an all-weather paint product for use in work zones, headed up by my former mentor Dr. Joseph Hummer. The new pavement marking was developed by 3M and tested earlier at the Texas Transportation Institute, but we have been contracted by 3M to study it through a field evaluation. Typical pavement markings are retroreflective in dry conditions through the use of glass beads embedded in the paint, but when it rains, they do a poor job reflecting the headlights back to the user. The 3M system has special elements that are retroreflective even when under a layer of water, making it safer for the user to drive in dark rainy conditions. The image below shows a microscopic closeup of the 3M system with both glass beads and 3M’s specially designed elements. The two following show pavement markings without the 3M elements and with the 3M elements. In both of those, the image on the right shows the lane lines’ retroreflectivity in wet conditions. Note how the lane lines are much more difficult to see without the 3M elements when under water.

In our experiment we are choosing work zones that will require lane shifts in Wake and other neighboring counties in North Carolina.  Our goal is to see how drivers react to the different lane markings in nighttime rainy conditions. To gather this data, we are monitoring the placement of the pavement markings, and setting up cameras at the work sites to collect video of vehicles operating in nighttime rainy conditions. For me, it means I’m out in the field a lot with my hardhat and orange vest setting up cameras, running retroreflective tests on the lane lines, and overseeing their placement by contractors. It will be an exciting summer.

I took the image below during my first day in the field on I-85 near Henderson, NC. On the left is the standard pavement marking with only glass beads. On right is the 3M pavement marking with the 3M’s retroreflective elements also dropped onto the paint with the glass beads.

In order to help fund my graduate studies, I was recently awarded a Dwight D. Eisenhower Fellowship by the Federal Highway Administration. I had to quickly notify Georgia Tech so that the award could be processed. Although I did not receive the top level of funding, the version of the fellowship I received provides funds aimed to help students attend the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, held every January in Washington, D.C.