Commercial Operations

A current problem faced by all jurisdictions, including Missouri, is how to create an intelligent, efficient way to deal with the problem of congestion at commercial vehicle weigh stations. Problems now include frequent back-ups, outdated equipment, closures of the station due to long lines, and checking of compliant vehicles while violators speed by at odd hours or while the station is busy checking those in compliance. All contribute to an inefficient and ineffective system of checking and/or waving through commercial traffic. A solution now being implemented in many states is automated weigh station clearance, a system which “approves” or “denies” the vehicle for all credentials through electronic means as it passes by the weigh station. This is accomplished through the use of a “transponder” installed in each vehicle, with corresponding high-tech “reader” equipment at roadside or in the station. The result is a saving of the time and expense of actually going through the weigh station for those already in compliance. This advanced system also deters the non-compliant by “freeing up” station personnel to focus their efforts on potential violators.

This paper will address the experience of the state of Missouri in drafting the statutory framework necessary to accomplish automated weigh station clearance, getting legislative approval for such provisions, and will further examine the need for such legislation.

Missouri Department of Revenue

Presented at the 10th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, May 1-4, 2000 Boston, MA

Buffalo County has an ITS project implementation underway encompassing a brokered public transportation system in South Central Nebraska. As a part of this project discussions with FHWA led the project partners to want to develop a project ITS architecture that would meet federal guidelines established in the rule for conformity with the National ITS Architecture that went into effect on April 8, 2001. The Division Office of FHWA requested support in this effort from the Midwestern Resource Center of FHWA and several meetings were planned to aid the local partners in their efforts. In the first of these meetings a need to address the more regional issues of a regional ITS architecture were identified. The stakeholders decided to move forward with the development of a regional architecture that would include the project architecture for the ITS project that was already underway.

This paper will outline the partners in the ITS project, the project itself, and discuss the development of the project and regional architectures. The architecture development is still underway at the time of this writing. The schedule calls for completion during the year of 2002.

Federal Highway Administration

R.Y.D.E Transit

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29 –May 2, 2002 Long Beach, California

Outline of Presentation

• Background of Houston METRO

• Introduction to IVOMS

• What Makes IVOMS Special?

• METRO’s Existing System

• Project Approach

• Challenges

• Next Steps

Chris Bausher, Dena Jackson, Mike Burns

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29 –May 2, 2002 Long Beach, California

This paper describes recently completed research investigating corridor travel time mean and variance estimation. Simultaneous travel time data were collected along two corridors from several sources including instrumented test vehicles, commercial vehicles, and an ITS data source. The ITS data source included automatic vehicle identification (AVI) in Houston, Texas and inductance loop detectors in San Antonio, Texas spaced every 0.5 mile (0.8 kilometer).

This paper identifies several important findings. First, ITS travel time data sources, such as AVI in Houston, were found to provide a very cost-effective data collection method. They also provide accurate travel time mean estimates while providing more confidence in the travel time estimate. Second, commercial vehicles were found to have longer travel times than those reported by the ITS data sources. This demonstrates that it may be reasonable to provide travel time maps and information in real-time specifically; for commercial vehicles for just-in-time or fleet operations. Third, the difficulty of using spot-speed measurements (i.e., estimates from loop detectors) for corridor travel time estimates is also identified. Finally, the correlation between adjacent links along a corridor was investigated. It was found that the covariance is generally non-zero and positive with the Houston AVI data. This indicates that the link variances cannot simply be summed to calculate corridor variance.

Texas Transportation Institute

Texas A&M University - Department of Civil Engineering

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29 –May 2, 2002 Long Beach, California

In this paper, the authors continue the discussion of the TFC system evaluation framework and plan developed by Collura and Plotnikov (2001) and address the issues of: (a) TFC system alternatives available on the market in the U.S. and (b) TFC system performance measures to compare alternative systems in terms of their operating costs.

The authors conclude that while there are a number of independent factors affecting the composition, functions, and performance of a TFC system, the type of payment media, fare media, TFC equipment, and mode of transit are four major factors associated with TFC system performance in terms of operating costs. The authors also suggest that cost effectiveness and labor-intensiveness metrics would be useful evaluation measures to assess the operating costs of existing and new TFC systems. Finally, the authors present statistical data on selected heavy rail systems in the U.S. to illustrate the use of the framework and evaluation measures and to support the notions that cost-effectiveness and labor-intensiveness may vary considerably among heavy rail TFC systems and that this variation is due, in part, to the TFC technology including the type of fare media.

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29 –May 2, 2002 Long Beach, California