Cross-cutting Issues

The SafeTrip-21 (Safe and Efficient Travel through Innovation and Partnerships for the 21st Century) initiative was established to test and evaluate integrated, intermodal ITS applications, particularly those that do not entail extensive public sector infrastructure but can achieve immediate benefits and demonstrate the potential for sustainable deployment. These efforts and resulting applications support the U.S. DOT goals to improve safety, reduce congestion, and advance the nation’s transportation system. A total of 8 applications were deployed and tested across two test beds. SAIC was selected to conduct an independent national evaluation of these technologies which concluded in May 2011 and provided lessons learned to the ITS community related to technology use, consumer response, user-perceived benefits, and technical and institutional issues. Keywords: real-time traveler information, smart phones, geofencing, in-vehicle safety warnings, transit, multi-modal trip planning, probes, connected vehicles.

Author: Christopher Armstrong

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

Author:      John A.A. Opiola

Senior Partner/Vice President

D’Artagnan Consulting LLC

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is currently a focus of research and standardization in the USA, Europe and Asia. It is believed that V2V safety applications are able to reduce traffic fatalities significantly. Data security was identified as a major technical aspect to resolve before potential deployment. In particular, communication security and privacy are main aspects to consider but also physical security of the microcontroller, key injection, privacy mechanisms implemented by government agencies, and policy questions around security. This article provides an overview of the current state and of open issues.

Author: André Weimerskirch

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

The U.S. Department of Transportation recently began an initiative to improve roadway safety by preventing distracted driving. To explore the efficacy of this goal, this research explores ways to encourage drivers to use their phone in a safe manner (i.e., refrain from using “texting” applications while driving). An engineering prototype was developed that limits phone applications that are available while the vehicle is in motion. The prototype uses a driver identification system to identify drivers based on their cell phone and intelligently limits driver access to phone applications without affecting passenger phones.

Authors: Donald K. Grimm, Shih-Ken Chen, Bakhtiar B. Litkouhi

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

Accurate and reliable travel time prediction enables both user and system controller to be well informed of the future conditions on roadways, so that pre-trip plans and traffic control strategies can be made accordingly. This paper studies short-time travel time prediction for stochastic freeway applications using real time Bluetooth travel time data. A set of four prediction models including Historical average, ARIMA, Kalman filter and K-nearest neighbors are implemented. A modified nonparametric model KNN-T is proposed which will enhance the traditional KNN model with trend adjustment. Performances of each model from case studies are investigated and reported.

Authors: Wenxin Qiao, Ali Haghani, Masoud Hamedi

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida