Cross-cutting Issues

Traffic management regulations in the UK have been undergoing a transformation over the last four years.  This has been caused by the realisation that the enforcement of some regulations is a safety issue (e.g. speeding and red-light running) whilst others are entirely a traffic management issue (e.g. parking, banned turns and driving in bus or HOV lanes).  Principal among the changes is the transfer of certain types (not speeding or red-light-running) of traffic enforcement from the Police to appropriately authorised civil enforcement officers.  In order to enable this change, the equipment to be used has to be approved by the Department of Transport (DfT).  This paper reports the process used to define the new standards for enforcement equipment, comments on the format of the new standard and finally looks to how to incorporate new technologies in the future.

Atkins ITS

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

Future vehicles will be equipped with ever increasing number of sensors, including those for driver  assistance:  sensors  for  simple  tasks  as  detecting  obstacles  and  parking,  and  for  more complex tasks, such as lane changing. In this context, this paper presents a novel trajectory-generation algorithm for lane-changing manoeuvres. The proposed scheme is guidance based, real-time applicable, and ensures safety and passenger ride comfort. It can be used as a fully autonomous system or simply as a driver-assistance tool. Extensive simulation runs, some of which  are  presented  herein,  clearly  demonstrate  the  tangible  efficiency  of  the  proposed method.

Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto

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

Transportation practitioners, planners and researchers lack the availability of an easily deployable, non- intrusive,  portable, low cost device for traffic data collection and video recording at intersections and arterials as well as temporary remote surveillance. The necessary data usually includes volumes, speeds, classification, turning movements, queue size and length, conflicting movements, and time headways. They also include recording of traffic characteristics, accidents and other special situations. A visual record of traffic characteristics at intersections, arterials, or other locations can also be used for extensive analysis and research leading to improved safety and control practices. In this paper, the development and demonstration of a low cost, practical, rapidly deployable video recording and data extraction device is presented  along with the design, deployment, and data extraction process. Its major advantage is that only one unit can cover an entire intersection up to 5 lanes per incoming approach wide (20 incoming lanes total);this should be sufficient for the overwhelming majority of intersections. In addition it has the potential of extracting turning movements at optional lanes (through plus turning),  a rather elusive task for sensing or measuring devices.

University of Minnesota

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

Existing traffic assignment models including traffic simulators for scenario evaluations assume fixed OD demand settings, which obstructs their application to Transport Demand Management.  The authors focused on parking lot guidance systems and proposed a dynamic destination choice model for simulators or other assignment models.    The model assumes that drivers choose their destination by minimum travel costs.  A simple verification as well as validation in an actual road network shows that the model was able to explain the drivers’ choice behavior following the dynamic parking information.    The model is also applied to a parking lot guidance service as policy evaluation.

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Japan

Japan Institute of Construction Engineering (JICE)

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

While  road  pricing  (RP)  is  considered  one  of  the  most  effective  means  of  traffic  demand management  (TDM),  its  poor  acceptability  has  been  the  greatest  impediment  to  its implementation.  The  authors  propose  a  “parking  deposit  system”  (PDS)  as  a  new  form  of highly  acceptable  RP,  and  the  aim  of  this  study  is  to  examine  PDS’s  superiority  focusing primarily on acceptability. In a previous study, the authors demonstrated the greater acceptability of PDS compared with RP  using  the  results  of  a  questionnaire  survey  of  the  public  (visitors  to  city  centers).  This study follows this up with a comparative analysis of the acceptability of PDS and RP from the standpoint of businesses, such as store proprietors and enterprises, and an investigation of the effectiveness of PDS.

NAGOYA University

NIKKEN SEKKEI Research Institute

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