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    <copyright>Copyright © 2026. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.</copyright>
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    <managingEditor>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</webMaster>
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      <title>Research in Progress (RIP)</title>
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      <title>CTA's Third Rail Safety Enhancement Pilot Project</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2096554</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The project will fund new safety features for the electrified third rail at Oakton Skokie Station. The rail, which powers CTA subway cars, will be buffered and feature warning labels,]]></description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 13 Jan 2023 14:49:06 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2096554</guid>
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    <item>
      <title>A Comprehensive Analysis of Air Quality in the NYC Subway System</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1844341</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The research team will carry out a comprehensive spatial-temporal analysis of particulate matter air quality across the New York City subway system. This will be achieved through the integration of a high-resolution spatial model and temporally resolved measurements using a field deployable sensor network positioned at selected stations. Data products which will be based on rigorous statistical analysis may subsequently be used by agencies to prioritize system upgrades incorporating public health metrics.  ]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2021 19:57:22 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1844341</guid>
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      <title>The Spatial Effect of Socio-Economic Demographics on Transit Ridership: a Case Study in New York</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1425400</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This research will quantify the spatial impacts that demographics and economics have on public transit ridership. Previous research that attempted to investigate the relationship between ridership at a given transit stop and the social and economic characteristics of the neighborhood in which the transit stop is located have implicitly ignored spatial effects. In reality, the project will observe that the passengers embarking or disembarking at a given transit stop live, work, and recreate in both the immediate neighborhood as well as the adjacent neighborhoods. This research determines the magnitude of the socio-economic influences on public transit ridership and determines at what distance from a transit stop do these influences becomes negligible. In order to accomplish these goals, portions of the New York City subway system and the surrounding communities will be used as a case study.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Oct 2016 15:50:38 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1425400</guid>
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      <title>Broadband Hybrid Electromagnetic and Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting from Ambient Vibrations and Pneumatic Vortices Induced by Running Subway Trains</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1347213</link>
      <description><![CDATA[In 2012, there were 139 incidents in which people got hit by subway trains in New York City, compared with 146 in 2011. Most of the victims slipped or fell or went on to the tracks to fetch personal belongs. A promising approach to reduce future occurrence of such tragedies is distributed sensor nodes that detect obstacles and monitor train motion. In such applications, an important limitation is the near impossible task of maintaining numerous sensors and microsystems. Accordingly, the development of alternate low-cost and reliable distribute power sources would fill an acute need to replace traditional batteries or electricity supply. To this need, energy harvesting of ambient vibrations and pneumatic vortices induced by running subway trains is proposed to enable self-sufficient wireless sensor nodes and/or many other surveillance devices. A primary issue limiting energy harvesting advances is its poor efficiency, as linear generators still use frequency matching to achieve optimal harvesting performance. However, in practice, the power output can be drastically reduced due to many limiting factors that may result in mismatch between the excitation and the resonance frequencies. Recently, piezoelectric energy harvesting using coupled magnets has been proposed to enhance bandwidth and therefore the harvesting efficiency. However, to date, coupling the electromagnetic and piezoelectric transduction mechanisms in one device has not yet been investigated nor has pneumatic vortices yet been used as an ambient power source. This underscores the promising idea of my proposal, which is to develop broadband hybrid electromagnetic and piezoelectric harvesters that rely on ambient vibrations and pneumatic vortices induced by running subway trains. The main objectives of this proposed research are: 1) How to convert ambient vibrations and pneumatic wave vortices to electric power? 2) What is the harvested output power? Is it sufficient to power a sensor network? 3) To use the results from this University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) investment to develop proposals to interested industries and agencies to address this important societal need of public health and safety.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2015 01:01:12 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1347213</guid>
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    <item>
      <title>Very High-Speed Third Rail Insulator Cleaner--FTA SBIR Phase 2</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1258224</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Metrorail systems, also called subways, rely on insulators to keep the electricity that powers trains flowing through the third rail where it belongs. The high-voltage third rail sits on insulators spaced 6 to 10 fee apart, depending on the subway, which means there are about 500 to 900 insulators in one mile of track. Dirt and grime can short circuit an insulator and cause arcing, burning and smoke, which can cause the rail system to be shut down. Rapid rail transit systems around the country report that damaged insulators are most frequently the cause of traction power shut-down. The objective of this Small Business Innovation Research project is to design and fabricate an automated very high speed insulator cleaner technology for cleaning third rail insulators on rapid transit systems in the United States. The novel technology slides on the third rail and is attached to a service vehicle that rides on the track and provides high pressure water. Although the high-speed insulator cleaner is designed and customized for cleaning insulators installed on the New York City subway track, the technology can be designed to meet the needs of any rapid rail transit system in the United States. The Task 5 effort includes the development of insulator materials: fiberglass and porcelain.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 04 Aug 2013 01:00:25 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1258224</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Underground Pneumatic Transport of Municipal Solid Waste and Recyclables Using New York City Subway Infrastructure</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1254182</link>
      <description><![CDATA[While Manhattan's streets may be the most congested--and carbon-emitting--in the country, the subway system that runs beneath them offers an inspiring example of how efficiently--and with what minimal emissions of greenhouse gases--passengers can be transported.  Although the collection and transport of municipal solid wastes produces only a fraction of the congestion and emissions on Manhattan's surface, in absolute terms the hundreds of thousands of annual truck miles these wastes cause are nonetheless quite significant.  Does the subway model offer a suggestion for how waste transport might also be revolutionized?  Perhaps. Since the now-12,000-person full-service community on the New York City's Roosevelt Island (RI) opened in 1975, none of its non-recycled, non-commercial municipal solid waste (MSW) has been collected by truck.  Instead, it is whisked from one end of the Island to the other through an underground pneumatic tube, thus saving building space, labor, and the costs and environmental impacts associated with trucks, and providing the health and quality-of-life benefits associated with the fact that unsightly bags of residential trash are not set out at curbside (as they are everywhere else in New York City) to produce odors and attract rats, pigeons, and insects. These tubes, first installed to enhance the aesthetic experience and lower the operating costs of a utopian island development, may now offer a way for New York City to significantly reduce its carbon footprint by decreasing the number of trucks in midtown Manhattan where traffic congestion and volumes of waste are greatest. Subway tunnels already carry pipe for the transportation system's energy and information needs and additional space is leased to utilities for telecommunications networks. There may also be space for a 500mm pipe like the one that carries waste under Roosevelt Island. The subway could use the system to collect passenger waste, eliminating dedicated trains for waste transport and conserving personnel time and station space for other purposes. In addition to subway waste, inlets on sidewalks and or adjacent buildings could, depending on how the system was organized, collect MSW and recyclables from pedestrians, businesses and residents. By shifting waste collection underground, trucks would no longer be required to make the sometimes daily, or nightly, trips to pick up bagged waste from sidewalks and litter baskets, or containerized waste from loading docks. Not only would there be fewer trucks on the road, reducing fuel consumption and emissions from congestion, there would be more room for other vehicles, including buses and bicyclists. If waste from ground floor retail establishments were included, there would be more room on sidewalks for pedestrians as well. By using subway tunnels this new waste management strategy could be adopted without incurring the expense and disruption associated with trenching city streets. If this initial study suggests that a pilot installation is feasible, and if a pilot project is successful, it would not only provide a model for other New York City neighborhoods, but could reduce carbon emissions in other urban areas around the State and nation.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jul 2013 01:01:55 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1254182</guid>
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      <title>Condition Monitoring of Urban Infrastructure: Effects of Ground Movement on Adjacent Structures</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1236221</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Underground space is an essential element critical to the solution of many problems associated with the emerging large urban clusters around the US and worldwide. Many of these urban clusters have developed initially as smaller, relatively independent entities which have grown into heavily interdependent clusters of entities. This interdependence has wide ranging implications related to transportation. Planners increasingly are finding that underground space is one of the few options available to solve the myriad of problems posed by these urban clusters. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area several underground construction projects are in various phases of design and construction to eliminate important transportation bottle necks (e.g. MUNI central subway, Silicon Valley Rapid Transit, Trans Bay Terminal). Similar projects are underway in Seattle and New York. Damage to buildings adjacent to excavations is a major design consideration when constructing underground facilities in congested urban areas. As new infrastructure is constructed or existing infrastructure rehabilitated, the excavations required for tunnels or basements affect nearby existing buildings, especially those founded on shallow foundations. Often excavation support system design must prevent any damage to adjacent structures or balance the cost of a stiffer support system with the cost of repairing damage to the affected structures. Similarly, tunnel operations often times include provisions, such as compensation grouting, to keep minimize the ground deformations associated with tunneling. In either case, it is necessary to predict the ground movements that will induce damage to a structure. Practically speaking, a designer is attempting to limit/prevent damage to either the architectural details of a building, which occurs prior to structural damage, or to load bearing walls. To evaluate damage potential in buildings affected by ground movements resulting from deep excavations, one must first predict the magnitude and distribution of ground movements caused by the excavation. This may be done using empirical or finite element methods, depending on the importance of the building, budget considerations, and design phase of the investigation. After locating the affected building in relation to the expected ground movements, one then evaluates the impact of these movements on the building. The main two sources of uncertainties in this analysis are the structural evaluation of the affected building and the movement prediction. The key issue in the structural evaluation is to define the level of ground movements that will prevent or minimize damage to the adjacent structures. This depends on the type of building that is being impacted by the operations, resulting in a wide range of possible allowable movements. In many projects, the allowable movements are set arbitrarily, and without consideration of the details of either the structures to be protected or the ground conditions. In past work funded by Infrastructure Technology Institute (ITI), the projects have focused on the predictions of the ground movements. This work with real time monitoring systems at a number of excavation sites in Chicago and Seattle allowed us to develop an adaptive management approach that can be used to predict ground deformations under a variety of ground and support conditions. A key aspect of the methodology is the incorporation of the real time monitoring as a means to help guide construction activities and to allow a quantitative approach to find key soil parameters based on field performance data that result in an accurate prediction of the ground movements caused by excavation. The objectives of this proposal are to collect and evaluate detailed ground and building movement data not normally collected during excavation monitoring to allow development of rational criteria for establishing allowable ground movements associated with excavations. In particular, it is proposed to monitor the ground movements caused by the excavation for the William Jones High School in Chicago and to evaluate the effects of these deformations on two adjacent structures founded on shallow foundations. To this latter end, it is proposed to monitor the movements of the two buildings most affected by the cut. This project provides the opportunity to evaluate in detail the effects of excavation-induced ground movements on the existing buildings. This data will be supplemented with building movements caused by excavation obtained by the PI at several other excavations in the Chicago area. It is likely that the damage levels will be very slight at these buildings, as they were at the other case studies, so that conclusions can be drawn regarding the relation between the deformations at the foundation level at an impacted structure and the initiation of damage. These magnitudes can be used as a basis for setting rationale criteria regarding allowable deformations. 2.0 Excavation for the William Jones High School The proposed structure is located at the southeast corner of State and Polk Streets south of the Loop in Chicago. The proposed excavation is approximately 100 ft by 400 ft in plan, will be 18 ft deep. The excavation will be made using bottom up techniques with a temporary lateral support system consisting of a sheet pile wall supported laterally by two levels of cross-lot bracing. The soil conditions generally consist of about 14 ft of urban fill overlying a sequence of glacially-derived clays. This stratigraphy is typical of those found in the downtown area of Chicago with the important exception at this location of the presence of a very soft clay stratum that underlies the excavation. Because of this soft clay, there is a potential of ground movements that may cause damage to adjacent buildings in spite of the relatively shallow cut. There is a narrow alley that separates the excavation and three buildings, two of which are founded on shallow foundations, at this side of the cut. Access through the alley must be maintained throughout construction. These buildings are 6 and 7 stories with one basement level. Beneath State Street to the west of the site, there are an existing subway, as well as electric, gas, sewer and water lines that will be impacted by the excavation. Along the south end of the site, there is an abandoned 8-ft-diameter city water tunnel located about 60 ft below ground surface. Because of the presence of the public utilities and existing buildings, the Board of Underground of the City of Chicago has dictated that surface settlement points be established and monitored around the site to monitor the ground response close to these utilities, and that inclinometers be placed around the property line to measure lateral movements within the subsurface to evaluate the effects of the excavation on the buildings and utilities. Hayward Baker, Inc., the excavation support subcontractors and designers of this system for the project, is our partner for this project. The matching funds for this project are derived from the excavation support system for the project, the excavation costs and the conventional instrumentation installed at the site, and the effort to collect the conventional performance data. The letter of support is appended to this proposal.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:43:08 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1236221</guid>
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