Cross-cutting Issues

The Integrated Corridor Traffic Management (ICTM) was a field operational test that was launched in 1994 by public-public and public-private partnerships under the Minnesota Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program known as Guidestar. Costing approximately $9 million over the span of 5 years, the test leveraged an effective institutional framework, advanced technologies in adaptive traffic control, ITS field devices, and tailored incident management strategies to optimize traffic operations within an 8-mile section of the I-494 transportation corridor south of the Twin Cities. The corridor encompassed I-494, four parallel arterial streets, and seven perpendicular arterial streets and crossed five jurisdictional boundaries including Minnesota Department of Transportation, Hennepin County, and the cities of Bloomington, Richfield, and Edina. Despite operational challenges with unstable communications network, ICTM proved valuable institutionally, procedurally, and technically. It resulted in a strong partnership that perceived and addressed the corridor transportation issues as an integral operational unit, provided valuable ITS elements and resources, established the first generation adaptive ramp metering control, improved corridor operations and management, and produced significant deployment best practices and lessons learned. This paper summarizes the ICTM evaluation recommendations, conclusions, best practices, and lessons learned based on findings derived from a variety of quantitative and qualitative data sources.

Booz-Allen & Hamilton

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

The primary objective of the National Transportation Communications for ITS Protocol (NTCIP) is to provide a communications standard that ensures the interoperability and interchangeability of traffic control and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) devices. To continue their role as a leader in the development and deployment of ITS, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has embraced such national standards in an effort to develop more cost-effective solutions with regards to development, deployment, and maintenance.

Southwest Research Institute

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

In 2001, VDOT entered into a public-private partnership with a Virginia-based company called TrafficLand to develop and deploy a system to disseminate real-time traffic camera imagery to the public over the Internet. Through the TrafficLand web site, travelers can select cameras from any of the four major transportation agencies in the region (VDOT, DCDOT, Maryland SHA and Montgomery County, MD) for free. The events of September 11, 2001 generated an intense effort on the part of VDOT, and its regional partners, to determine how to improve access to the regional traffic video. VDOT led an effort to develop an architecture that would ensure access to the video by public transportation management, safety and emergency management agencies in the region not only to improve daily operations but also to serve as a resource during periods of emergency. The result is a unique regional video distribution system that makes use of the systems and relationships developed for the public Internet web site to distribute the video at high speed to regional transportation, transit, public safety and emergency management agencies on a fee-for-service basis.

Virginia DOT

TrafficLand, Inc.

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 19-22, 2003 Minneapolis, Minnesota

This paper describes the effort made to develop an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) strategic deployment plan for Chittenden County, Vermont, an area with a population of about 140,000. Developing this plan followed the most recent version of the ITS planning process, which is centered about the concept of market packages. Following a brief description of the main tasks of this process, the regional architecture developed for the area is presented, and the projects recommended for deployment are summarized. To provide insight into the attributes of ITS planning in medium-sized areas, the results from this study are compared to the results from two other ITS planning studies recently completed for two medium-sized areas in Iowa and Virginia. The comparison reveals some strong trends that could be identified with ITS planning in medium-sized areas, including the existence of a subset of market packages that appear to be most popular for deployment in these areas. It is hoped that this study will be of value to other small- and medium-sized areas as they strive to plan for ITS in their regions.

University of Vermont: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Resource Systems Group

Chittenden County Metropolitan Planning Organization

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

“Specialty vehicles” are vehicle types that are outfitted for special purposes. Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technology provides a potentially large benefit to the drivers of specialty vehicles through the use of in-vehicle information systems (IVIS). A preliminary assessment was performed to ascertain the need for in-vehicle information systems (IVIS) in law enforcement specialty vehicles. High-level task analyses were generated for general incident response scenarios. The task analyses were used to find similarities among the response scenarios such that major safety problems or inefficiencies in protocol could be identified. For the problems that were identified, these items were listed in order of priority as tasks that would potentially gain the greatest benefit by incorporation into an IVIS. Finally, a list of stakeholders was generated for a full-scale needs assessment.

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

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