Cross-cutting Issues

Current signal priority strategies implemented in various US cities mostly utilize sensors to
detect buses at a fixed or preset distance away from an intersection. Traditional presence
detection systems, ideally designed for emergency vehicles, usually send signal priority request
after a preprogrammed time offset as soon as transit vehicles were detected without the
consideration of bus readiness. The objective of this study is to integrate the already equipped
GPS/AVL system on the buses and develop an adaptive signal priority strategy using wireless
communications that could consider the bus schedule adherence, number of passengers, vehicle
location and speed. City of Minneapolis recently deployed wireless technology to provide
residents, businesses and visitors with wireless broadband access anywhere in the city.
Communication with the roadside controller for signal priority may be established using the
readily available 802.11x WLAN (Wireless LAN) or the DSRC (Dedicated Short Range
Communication) 802.11p protocol currently under development for wireless access in vehicular
environment. This paper describes our proposed priority strategy, its evaluation using
microscopic traffic simulation, and the embedded prototype systems.

University of Minnesota

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

This paper presents a proposed enhancement to the current methodology for assessing
capacity in work zones. Research into the impact of driver behavior in work zone related
merge areas has revealed the influence of driver behavior on flow quality when drivers
encounter and respond to changing roadway conditions and lane configurations.  The value of
and thereby the influence of the algorithm is based on assessment of driver familiarity, driver
adaptability,  driver aggressiveness, and  driver accommodation tendencies that are unique
demographic groups defined by locality, region, driver experience, and/or driver age.  The
development of the methodology and the underlying concepts are a product of several years
of  theoretical and field-based  traffic flow and human factors research.  The principle
embodied in the adjustment factor is that the efficiency with which drivers adjust to changing
roadway conditions while interacting with other drivers on the roadway directly impacts
capacity.

Utah State University

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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

Traditional ways of directly measuring visual demand while driving (i.e., extracting eye
glance data by manual video tape reduction) are tedious and cumbersome. This paper is a
summary of the results on visual demand associated with various telematic tasks. The
results are based on the data collected from an empirical study. More specifically,
traditional eye glance measures such as Mean Single Glance Time, Number of Glances,
Total Glance Time, and Longest Single Eye Glance are compared to other dependent
measures such as Static/Dynamic Task Completion Times and the Number of
eExcursions committed while completing the task. Previous findings indicated that static
task completion time is a viable surrogate of dynamic task completion times. Results
presented herein provide supportive evidence of previous findings, in addition to the
Total Glance Time being a good predictor of other surrogate measures such as lanekeeping
performance and task completion times.

Ford Research Laboratory

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29-May 2, 2002, Long Beach, California

Based on the spatial data managed by memory tables, we propose a data tracing
approach for navigation digital map production. The creation and management of data tracing
is discussed in this paper, and several methods of its control and utilization are presented as
well. Data trace not only makes data difference and version tracing easier, but also helps
application to realize undo and redo functions.

NavInfo Co.,Ltd.

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

Policy makers sometimes base investment decisions in part on economic analysis, such as benefit-cost ratios of competing highway improvement projects.  Economic analysis of transportation infrastructure has a long history, but the economics of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) is not yet well established, thus ITS or operational strategies are often overlooked.  However, the benefit-cost ratios for these strategies are usually competitive; for example, freeway service patrols typically have ratios in the range of 5:1 to 30:1.  So one might think that pursuit of more economic analysis is in the best interest of many stakeholders, including taxpayers, the traveling public, and the ITS industry.  This paper discusses a framework for valuing benefits of operational improvements, with an example applied to a previous engineering evaluation of a ramp metering installation on a corridor in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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