Commercial Operations

The U.S. Department of Transportation maintains a repository of ITS lessons learned on the
ITS Lessons Learned Knowledge Resource Web site, www.itslessons.its.dot.gov.  The ITS
lessons learned are based on the experience of stakeholders from numerous ITS projects and
programs and collected from case studies, best practice compendiums, planning and design
reviews, and evaluation studies from the U.S. and abroad.  A major focus of the Web site is to
produce lessons which would benefit stakeholders across a range of ITS areas, including the
Management and Operations (M&O) of ITS programs and projects.  This paper presents a
synthesis of lessons learned about Management and Operations (M&O).  The lessons learned
on M&O discuss decision-making approaches to implement, operate and maintain
transportation facilities with the intent of optimizing system performance and improving
safety, mobility, efficiency, and reliability of the Nation's transportation infrastructure.

Noblis, Inc.

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

In order to safely reduce congestion and efficiently move people, goods, services and
information vital to the economy of both the State and City of New York, a strategy for a large, multi-stakeholder program for improved transportation safety and traffic management was developed including the build-out of a new Joint Transportation Management Center in Long Island City, NY.  This plan also specifically addressed the need to integrate existing field
devices along with emerging technologies including wide ranging data sources and automated
situation management to improve the performance of the overall traffic network.

VidSys, Inc.

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

The rapid deployment of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) field devices has heightened the need for coordinated management of such systems, usually performed at Transportation Management Systems (TMCs). Until recently, TMC operations have been focused more on monitoring and reaction to events and incidents as they occur. With the increase in field reporting mechanisms and infrastructure, a growing body of available data has made this function more difficult, while at the same time providing opportunities and challenges for expanding the role of TMCs into real-time predictive, situational awareness, and integrated corridor management functions. There is a growing need for expanded and enhanced software tools and solutions to address this expanded requirement.

GeoDecisions/Gannett Fleming, Inc.

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

This  paper  presents  an  overview  for  a  multi-hop  communication  system onboard freight trains based on wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Because a WSN with nodes  in  each  freight  car  has  a  linear  chain-like  topology  of  significant  length,  the existing  IEEE  802.15.4  communication  protocol,  assuming  a  star  topology,  is  unable  to provide  acceptable  service.  The  end-to-end  communication  between  nodes  relies  on individual  nodes  communicating  with  their  respective  neighbors  to  carry  the information  over  multiple  hops  and  deliver  it  to  the  desired  destination.  The  routing performance  and  reliability  degrades  significantly  with  the increasing  number of hops. We  propose  a  practical  solution  for  large-scale  multi-hop  wireless  sensor  networks  in railroad  environments  that  overcomes  this  problem.  Our  simulation  results  show  that our  proposed  multi-tier  communication  approach  is  a feasible and reliable solution for implementing chain-topology WSNs with a high number of hops onboard freight trains. The  protocol,  based  on  the  IEEE  802.15.4  network  stack,  is  implemented  and  tested  in ns-2.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 3-5, 2010, Houston, Texas

A simulation of vehicle infrastructure integration (VII) implementation for highway rail grade crossings (HRGCs) is constructed. The driver behavior, vehicle maneuvering, and communication characteristics are considered by providing a user interface for updating parameters of the vehicle, train, latency, and simulation. The simulation emulates communication standards of the railroad, roadway, and vehicle system. Instead of simulating the send-and-receive process of dedicated short range communication (DSRC), the eventual latency is emulated. The mobility improvement is significant in terms of delays, travel times, and queue lengths, with the implementation of simple vehicle control logics. As the train information is provided to VII vehicles, the drivers are able to respond to avoid complete stops in a queue. The transmission range and market penetration rate are key issues for future implementation. The simulation results indicate that longer transmission ranges and higher market penetration rates will be beneficial to mobility improvement.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 3-5, 2010, Houston, Texas