Cross-cutting Issues

One of the most important traffic parameters in Intelligent Transportation Systems applications is travel time. Most recently Bluetooth sensors have been successfully used for estimating travel time on freeway segments. In this new technology travel time of individual vehicles is sampled at consecutive stations by recording the unique address of the electronic devices that are equipped with Bluetooth and are in discoverable mode. Similar to other travel time estimation methodologies, Bluetooth technology only captures the travel time of a fraction of vehicles in the traffic stream. To understand the average detection rate of Bluetooth sensors, an extensive data collection effort was conducted on several highways segments in the states of Maryland and Delaware. The traffic volume data reported by inductive loop and radar detectors have been used as the ground truth for actual vehicle count. Statistics on hourly detection rate for the case studies is presented.

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland

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

During the last five years, the Road Commission for Oakland County, Michigan (RCOC) made
major breakthroughs in the area of communications between our adaptive traffic signals and the
computers that run them. For the first time, we are successfully replacing the traditional
dedicated phone lines, which are the industry standard for this type of communications, with
wireless communications. This advancement is significantly improving the functionality of the
system, reducing “down” time and promises to save significant money over the long term.

Road Commission for Oakland County

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

Recent studies have indicated that lower urban speed limits result in lower vehicular
emissions. With the implementation of traveler information provision services, travelers with
better information about a transport network may change their route choice behavior and this
may affect the impacts of the speed limit control on vehicular emissions as well as congestion.
With this consideration, in this paper, we studied the impacts of the traveler information
provision services and the speed limit control on the vehicular emissions and congestion. We
model the route choice behaviour of the equipped and unequipped travellers as following a
mixed-Stochastic User Equilibrium (SUE) with elastic market penetration. This mixedequilibrium
problem with elastic market penetration is modelled as a nonlinear
complementary problem (NCP). Results indicate that both higher and lower speed limits, such
as 110 and 50 km/hr, do not lead to lower vehicular emissions. It is largely dependent on the
service charges of traveller information services. Additionally, the information quality has
different effects on vehicular emissions and congestion with varied speed limits.

Trinity College Dublin

National University of Singapore

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

This paper aims to explore applicability of ITS device to CO2 emissions reduction when a
multi-objective optimization problem to minimize the freight cost ensuring a certain level of
CO2 emissions at corridor level is developed. CO2 emissions quota at the corridor level is
used as a constraint in the multi-objective optimization problem. In estimating the CO2
emissions quota, traffic data at the corridor level collected by ITS (Intelligent Transportation
System) devices plays an important role to set up the quota since the quota should reflect the
current traffic flows on the corridor and dynamically update itself. The expected outcome is
the Pareto-optimal solution, which is the trade-off between CO2 emissions and freight
transport cost. In this paper, the required data that would be collected by ITS devices are
identified in the multi-objective optimization problem.

Department of Transportation System Engineering

OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies

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

National parks in the U.S. are facing increasing difficulty in trying to preserve unique resources while supporting increased visitation levels. The transportation infrastructure in national park units is increasingly inadequate to support vehicle movement and parking. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) may provide a set of tools to help address transportation challenges within parks. This paper summarizes the results of a research project funded by the California Department of Transportation examining the applicability of ITS to meet transportation challenges in and around the state’s national parks. This paper summarizes current ITS efforts in several national parks. It describes the case study parks that were selected for the research project. It reviews methods that were used to identify transportation challenges. The paper presents ITS objectives and themes that were developed for the study parks. The paper concludes with lessons learned regarding future ITS applicability to national parks.

Western Transportation Institute

Texas Transportation Institute

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