Commercial Operations

The City of Vancouver, Washington, located directly across the Columbia River from Portland,
Oregon, is the second largest city in the region after Portland.  Increasing traffic volumes created by economic and population growth in the City, and traveler delay exacerbated by recurrent and non-recurrent congestion have contributed to the transportation deficiencies in the region.  The Vancouver Area Smart Trek (VAST) Program was initiated by the City and developed as a cooperative effort by several public transportation agencies in the region to enhance and integrate transportation mobility, efficiency, and safety through Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) solutions.

City of Vancouver

Meyer, Mohaddes Associates, Inc.

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 26 - 28, 2004 San Antonio, Texas

Throughout North America, selected public agencies have been assigned the responsibility for monitoring commercial vehicle traffic to make sure the commercial vehicles operating on public roadways are in safe operating condition, have proper registration and operating authority, are within legal size and weight limits, and have paid all appropriate fees and taxes. To accomplish this goal, all 50 States have established roadside monitoring and enforcement programs.

In recent years, technologies have developed which offer the potential for automated roadside identification of commercial vehicles. Two of these technologies, radio frequency identification (RFID) and optical character recognition (OCR), have already been deployed for commercial vehicle screening purposes.

The Roadside Identification Feasibility Study was undertaken to identify methods of unique identification of commercial vehicles at the roadside for slow and high-speed electronic screening purposes. It was designed to be a comprehensive look at the technologies, focused on the needs of the Federal Highway Administrations Office of Motor Carrier and Highway Safety (FHWA/OMCHS) and the States.

University of Kentucky - Kentucky Transportation Center

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

In the United States, congestion pricing has always been a controversial solution to
mitigating the negative impacts associated with traffic congestion. Because of the past history
associated with congestion pricing and its limited implementation, it is interesting to note how
the U.S. Department of Transportation has been able to fund five large-scale congestion pricing
schemes in the United States as part of the DOT’s plan to reduce traffic congestion on America’s
transportation network. This research explores the rise of congestion pricing as a controversial
solution to an ever-growing public concern using Kingdon’s Multiple Stream Analysis
methodology. Kingdon’s methodology is used since it enables a structured analysis of a very
complex public policy issue. Kingdon recognized that policy making does not happen in a neat
and orderly process but is instead a composition of critical events that occur and trigger a
window of opportunity for new policy to be made. Kingdon’s model demonstrates how key
political events combined with the awareness of entrepreneurial individuals created a window of
opportunity that had a significant impact of the scale of the National Strategy to Reduce
Congestion on America's Transportation Network by increasing available funding by nearly tenfold
from $100 million to $1 billion.

Matthew H. Hardy

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

In the United States, congestion pricing has always been a controversial solution to
mitigating the negative impacts associated with traffic congestion. Because of the past history
associated with congestion pricing and its limited implementation, it is interesting to note how
the U.S. Department of Transportation has been able to fund five large-scale congestion pricing
schemes in the United States as part of the DOT’s plan to reduce traffic congestion on America’s
transportation network. This research explores the rise of congestion pricing as a controversial
solution to an ever-growing public concern using Kingdon’s Multiple Stream Analysis
methodology. Kingdon’s methodology is used since it enables a structured analysis of a very
complex public policy issue. Kingdon recognized that policy making does not happen in a neat
and orderly process but is instead a composition of critical events that occur and trigger a
window of opportunity for new policy to be made. Kingdon’s model demonstrates how key
political events combined with the awareness of entrepreneurial individuals created a window of
opportunity that had a significant impact of the scale of the National Strategy to Reduce
Congestion on America's Transportation Network by increasing available funding by nearly tenfold
from $100 million to $1 billion.

Matthew H. Hardy

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

To acquire both the flexibility and the reactivity capabilities required to act in the global
market, production systems have to enhance the efficiency of their external product logistics,
i.e., their delivery policies. On the other hand, due to the continuously increasing demand in
freight transportation, seaports, especially those European ones still located inside cities and
then operating under a systematic shortage of space, need efficient and rapid freight handling,
so as to minimize the useless time spent by goods inside the seaports themselves. In this
paper, the challenge of optimizing the performance in freight delivery in a Distributed Supply
Chain (DSC) is faced by first designing a suitable model. In turn, an optimization problem
which not only takes into account the transportation costs of each node of the DSC, but also
the costs due to both the earliness and the tardiness of freight, is stated. A heuristic
algorithm is then applied for the solution to the single node problem, analyzing some relevant
numerical results.

DIMSET, University of Genoa

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