Commercial Operations

Recent European studies showed that Germany's road infrastructure has now slipped down to
the middle of the field with regard to quality. In particular main roads and engineering works
suffer from inadequate financial resources. Every year, an additional 1 billion Euros would be
necessary to keep the federal autobahns and main roads in good condition. To solve this
problem once and for all, Germany must continue to change the road financing modus
towards usage-based financing. The first step has been done with the introduction of a
satellite-based truck tolling system in 2005. This paper shows that an expansion of the
German highway tolling scheme to incorporate state main roads and all vehicle classes would
be both technically feasible and economically expedient.

Dornier Consulting GmbH

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

The criticality of the urban/inter-urban interface to traffic management operations in
the UK and Europe has long been recognised. This paper provides background and
context through a brief description of current inter-urban and urban traffic
management systems in the UK. A number of case studies are described that provide
examples of operational data exchange across the urban/inter-urban interface. A
theoretical scenario is used to demonstrate the potential benefits of integrating
existing technologies prompting discussion regarding the barriers to implementation
and associated conclusions.

Mott MacDonald

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

This study presents a mixed integer model for an integrated control between off-ramp and arterial traffic flows. The proposed study intends to minimize the queue spillback from off-ramp to the freeway mainline that may significantly degrade the performance quality of the entire freeway system. In this study, the Cell Transmission Model (1, 2) is employed to capture the traffic propagation on both freeway an surface streets, and to capture the interactions between those two types of flows within the target control boundaries. An efficient solution method based on Genetic Algorithm is provided along with a numeric case study to demonstrate the benefit of this proposed model.

University of Maryland

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

This paper presents the development of an advanced real time decision support system
currently being implemented in New York City for effective adaptive signal control. This
system integrates on-line simulation with actual field traffic controllers and detectors, thereby
enabling real time signal optimization while providing immediate visualization of different
control alternatives and time-dependent measures of effectiveness. A computationally
efficient adaptive signal control algorithm has been developed, tested and integrated with the
decision support system. This algorithm handles both oversaturated and under-saturated traffic
conditions and strives to optimize cycle length, offset, and split in real time. When in
operation, the decision support system assists the operator in performing real-time demand
estimation and prediction, generating just-in-time (JIT) simulation scenarios, dispatching and
coordinating multiple simulation instances, and visualizing and comparing quantitative
measures. The operator can verify the algorithm-optimized signal timing against other
alternatives (e.g., pre-loaded fixed timing plan) before updating field signal controllers. The
decision support system also allows autonomous signal optimization without operator
interaction. New signal timing settings are to be transmitted to field controllers using NTCIP
protocol and get implemented in the next control interval.

KLD Associates Inc.

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

FleetForward is an operational test designed to demonstrate the impact of real-time traffic information on commercial vehicle operations, such as dispatching and routing. While real-time data is an important element of transportation condition information, its availability in the operational test also highlights the need for forecasted information. One specific need in FleetForward is the ability to forecast the duration of a current traffic incident.

This paper describes research focused upon forecasting incident duration using nonparametric regression. This forecasting technique is data-driven, as it searches a database to find a neighborhood of past incidents similar to the current incident. The data source for developing this model was the Information Exchange Network (IEN) of the I-95 Corridor Coalition. The general conclusion of this paper is that the quality and scope of the data in the incident database is a major factor in the performance of a forecasting model.

University of Virginia: Smart Travel Laboratory - Department of Civil Engineering

Presented at the 11th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, June 4-7, 2001 Miami Beach, Florida