No problem, though making fog remains troublesome. In a part of the state where highway travelers are often bedeviled by blizzards, black ice and poor visibility, Amanna and other researchers at Virginia Tech have figured out how to make it worse. Their project, called Smart Road, has paved new ground in transportation engineering since it started two months ago. Federal officials suggested that a segment of the road be equipped for testing experimental transportation systems. That initial portion was completed over the past three years, and an extension, including what will be the tallest bridge in the state, is under construction.
Interchangeable nozzles control the size of water droplets and, in turn, the type of precipitation.
Magnetic tape embedded at the edge of the lanes monitors how vehicles drift and veer. More than 400 sensors under the blacktop, the size and shape of personal pan pizzas, collect data on stress, strain, pressure, moisture penetration, frost depth and traffic counts, and forward it by fiber optics to the control center on a hill overlooking the highway. The roadside manholes brim with computers and cables. Wiring the road for weather was no small feat. Amanna, the operations director, said running enough electric lines for the power-hungry highway through rocky terrain was daunting.