Vishal Khanapure’s title at the McTrans Center is “Computer Research Specialist” and it truly does fit him. The McTrans Center at the University of Florida Transportation Institute distributes and supports a variety of software programs for traffic engineering and transportation planning applications, with training courses also available. Passionate about his work, Khanapure assists in a variety of ways to ensure the maintenance and delivery of the center’s flagship product: the Highway Capacity Software (HCS).
The HCS has several modules that correspond with parts of the latest edition of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). The HCM is a publication of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Science (NAS). It contains concepts, guidelines, and computational procedures for computing the capacity and quality of service of various highway facilities, including freeways, highways, arterial roads, roundabouts, signalized and unsignalized intersections, rural highways, and the effects of mass transit, pedestrians, and bicycles on the performance of these systems.
“You could theoretically do the calculations by hand, but it would take a long time,” Khanapure said. “There are so many complicated procedures, and it’s our job is to make sure the software can implement them correctly.”
HCS is sold on the McTrans website, and there will be a new major release this year that will correspond with the release of the 6th Edition of HCM. Before the manual is published for everyone, McTrans gets the draft chapters in order to have an updated HCS ready by the time the new HCM is published.
“The 6th edition will have major changes because it’s affecting many chapters,” Khanapure explained. “Which in turn affects almost all of our software’s modules.”
Each module has a team that varies depending on its size and complexity. McTrans has full time staff, along with graduate (and sometimes even undergraduate) students. Civil Engineering students are generally hired by the director, Bill Sampson, who help in the testing of the software. Khanapure generally hires the computer science and engineering students, who work in the software development side. McTrans provides graduate assistantships to many of these students.
Khanapure himself was once one of them. After getting his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science in 2005 and working in the industry for a little over one year, he came to the University of Florida for graduate school in 2007.
In 2008 he started working in a software development student position at McTrans. Though he was supposed to graduate in 2009, he found himself growing more and more interested in transportation.
“Phil (Hill), my supervisor back then and colleague now, suggested that I get a degree in transportation as well after my Masters in Computer Engineering.”
After looking into it he discovered that it would only take in another 21 credits, which was just about another year of school. So, in 2010 he graduated with a Masters in Civil Engineering, focusing in Transportation. With such a focus and love for his work, it was no surprise that McTrans hired him in a full time position after graduation.
Besides managing development teams, Khanapure provides technical support for users having issues with HCS. In addition, he performs website maintenance and administration, and talks with companies to ensure that their software can integrate with HCS.
“We also work on research projects with UF faculty,” he said. “Dr. Elefteriadou, Bill Sampson, and I are currently all working on a Federal Highway Administration project together.”
Currently, McTrans is assisting in software development based off of Dr. Elefteriadou’s research on developing procedures for evaluating interactions of freeways and urban streets.
“Vishal and all of McTrans are a great resource for the UFTI,” Dr. Elefteriadou, director of the University of Florida Transportation Institute said. “They can take our research and immediately develop products that can be used by transportation professionals.”