Legislators to hold statewide transportation meeting in new Advanced Structural Engineering Laboratory

Dozens of Alabama legislators will descend upon Auburn University’s brand new $22 million Advanced Structural Engineering Laboratory (ASEL) on Friday, Dec. 11, as part the legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee’s “Alabama Roadshow,” a weeklong statewide tour intended to provide a workshop environment for legislators to interact with local planners.

The Alabama Transportation Planners Association's (ATPA) will kick off the event with its Southeast Region meeting, organized by Rep. Margie Wilcox and ATPA President Kevin Harrison. Representatives of the Metropolitan Planning Organizations and Rural Planning Organization will also get an up-close look at the brand new ASEL.

Topics that will be discussed include long-range transportation plans, the Transportation Improvement Program and developments in the region’s Metropolitan Planning and Rural Planning organizations.

Located at the corner of West Samford Avenue and Shug Jordan Parkway, the 42,000-square-foot ASEL is one of the most state-of-the-art on-campus structural engineering laboratories in the country, and will provide solutions to the nation’s growing infrastructure issues for years to come. 

Able to accommodate elements up 140 feet long, the facility includes a high bay laboratory with a strong wall and strong floor specially engineered to handle extreme structural testing loads; a geotechnical chamber within the strong floor; a concrete materials research and testing laboratory; wind testing capabilities that can replicate hurricane-level loads; and a 4,700-cubic-foot geotechnical test chamber within the strong floor footprint that will allow Auburn's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering's geotechnical researchers to conduct testing on foundations, anchorages and towers previously only possible in the field.