The stretch of highway is a Smart Road that is monitoring more than 20 transportation-related experiments involving everything from lighting to asphalt design to pavement markings. The road is also a piece of a planned 5.7-mile connector that will eventually link Virginia Tech and Interstate 81, helping to stimulate the area's economy and improve traffic.
The Smart Road isn't an ordinary piece of blacktop: On one half-mile section, weather towers off to the side can create up to 2 inches of rain or 4 inches of snow per hour, or even a layer of ice. Another section features three types of overhead lights on height-adjustable poles. The pavement itself has 12 sections of different asphalt designs, plus two of concrete. And sensors built into the road collect data that is fed via fiber-optic cable to the nearby control center, where engineers can begin evaluations. The state, Virginia Tech and private firms are all running tests.
One experiment aims to improve road visibility at night. In the test of ultraviolet headlights and fluorescent paint, "you can see a half mile down the road," says David Clarke, VDOT assistant resident engineer.
So far the project has cost the state about $37 million, much of which will be eligible for federal reimbursement. Plans call for the remaining 3.7 miles and lanes to permit public traffic to bypass the testing area in 10 years, with final expansion to four lanes in another 10 years. Testing then would be done during off-peak hours and at night.
