Formula and grant funding play a crucial role in the civil engineering industry, allowing for the development of innovative projects that improve infrastructure and support sustainable growth. Without these public funding sources, many engineering projects would not be possible. While infrastructure funding has typically been legislated on a formula basis, in recent years, we have…
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What does a fruit have to do with engineering? Well, in this case, it’s one of the first steps in the preliminary engineering process. The Advanced Planning, Programming, and Logical Engineering (APPLE) program is administered by the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham (RPCGB). The goal of the program is to assist local governments in…
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In 2022, the United States Department of Transportation adopted a Safe System Approach as the guiding paradigm to address roadway safety. It recognizes that people make mistakes, and the road system should be designed to forgive those mistakes. This is especially true for wrong-way driving prevention – we must do something before people drive the…
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A few weeks ago, I was traveling out of state to meet my newborn niece for the first time. My wife and I encountered many rural roadways that needed some TLC along the way. To my wife’s amusement, my engineer’s brain could not stop noticing all the deficiencies of the roadways. Abrupt curves with no…
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Microtransit is a flexible transit service that bridges the gap between individual private transportation and public mass transit. It is a demand-response service that uses existing buses, paratransit vehicles, passenger vans, and cutaways enabled by various mobile technologies. Rides are scheduled through a smartphone app, traditional phone, or website. The goal of microtransit is to…
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Who doesn’t love to ride a bike or walk around their city? Have you ever thought about the planning that goes into making a street bicycle- or pedestrian-friendly? Historically, roads have been designed to get vehicles from point A to point B as quickly as possible, without a lot of regard for other road users…
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As a Senior Project Manager at Sain, I lead our transportation and sustainability practices in the Traffic Department to help communities plan for future growth. Sain’s approach is to take a look at the community as a whole to map out a plan that will include transportation analysis to shape a community’s future growth and…
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If you’re like me, when you hear the word “diet,” your first reaction isn’t the thought…sign me up! However, in transportation, it may often be an easy solution that provides a favorable outcome for all involved. A “Road Diet” is essentially a reallocation of space on an existing roadway to better meet the needs of…
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Cut-through traffic and speeding issues on local roadways are two of the more common complaints that city engineers and public works employees receive from concerned citizens. Traffic engineers have developed a variety of strategies to help mitigate these issues. These strategies are known as traffic calming. Per the Federal Highway Administration and Institute of Transportation Engineers: “traffic calming…
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When Sain Associates opened its doors in 1972, the business consisted of consulting engineering services and land surveying. Many projects included site engineering for enclosed shopping malls across the southeast. Believe it or not, some of the mall projects from the 1970s are still in operation today, including the Santa Rosa Mall in Mary Esther,…
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