Cross-cutting Issues

Remote video surveillance has been proven to benefit Departments of Transportation, providing critical information to the travelling public. Normal telephone service, or Plain Old Telephone

Service (POTS), delivers slow and inconsistent performance for the transmission of video images. Higher speed service, including dedicated fiber optic lines, which can provide acceptable performance, is often unavailable or cost prohibitive. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), working in conjunction with a technically oriented distributor and appropriate manufacturers, has successfully tested a license-free microwave video solution over a 3.7-mile hurricane evacuation route. The approach promises effective and reliable video monitoring over distances up to 8 miles without any significant effect on reliability or performance. The very favorable cost and fast implementation time of this wireless solution have important implications for a variety of transportation and other remote monitoring applications.

Core Tec Communications, LLC

Texas Department of Transportation

Hutton Communications, Inc.

Western Multiplex

Presented at the 10th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, May 1-4, 2000 Boston, MA

Video Detection has evolved from its infancy to a mature technology. Primary uses are to
provide stop bar presence detection, and speed and volume detection on freeways as input to
traveler information and freeway management systems. Video detection logic has
traditionally operated with dedicated processor hardware and dedicated video cameras.
Newer developments place the processing logic into the cameras, and CCTV cameras can be
used to analyze video images in dedicated computers. This paper analyzes current trends in
video detection, looking at new developments – providing an outlook to the future, where
video detection plays a key role for infrastructure performance measurement.

Iteris, Inc.

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

Digital Map-linked Driving Support Services, a type of service which will realize
Smartway, is an ITS project of the Government of Japan. Digital map data which
contributes to safe driving is stored in on-board car navigation systems, and based on these
data, the system provides curve entry speed alerts and accident-prone points information to
drivers according to their vehicle traveling speed.
This paper provides an overview and the results of proving tests and on-road tests
conducted on the Metropolitan Expressway in 2007 to verify the effectiveness of this service,
and a report on challenges which must be overcome to deploy this service on expressways in
Japan.

National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management (NILIM)

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

The objective of this investigation is to assess how historical data performs relative to real-time data when compared to ground-truth speed. The motivation for the analysis is two-fold. Within the I-95 Corridor Coalition’s Vehicle Probe Project (VPP) historical data is used whenever there is insufficient real-time data to report current traffic conditions. In this case, the degree to which historical data is a reliable estimate of real-time conditions is of interest. The second motivation is to evaluate the ability of the validation methodology to distinguish between historical data as opposed to a real-time data during recurring and non-recurring congestion. Using the VPP validation methodology in which performance is segregated by four speed ranges; historical data is scored using the validation methodology and compared to the validation results of actual VPP real-time data. All data for this investigation was taken from the VPP validation program in which ground truth data is sampled using Bluetooth Traffic Monitoring (BTM) technology.

Authors: Elham Sharifi, Stanley E. Young Ph.D. PE

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

There is a growing need in the intermodal industry for better tracking of containers in transit to improve handling and throughput, increase security, and enable the use of electronic data interchange (EDI). Since radio frequency (RF) tags or electronic seals (e-seals) are not standardized in the container shipping industry, automation of the container recognition process must be achieved by using the identification numbers printed on the containers.
It is in this context that the Transportation Development Centre (TDC) of Transport Canada, the Montreal Port Authority, and the prime systems integrator DTI Telecommunications have developed and delivered a system that integrates automatic equipment identification (AEI) with an optical character recognition (OCR) system to automate the identification of railcars and containers. This paper describes the final testing and integration phase associated with the delivery of an AEI system with a proprietary, state-of-the-art OCR system for automatic identification of railcars and containers. The integration of these two systems into an information technology (IT) environment meets the Port community’s requirement for timely, accurate information, and provides a basis for customer service improvement.

Transportation Development Centre (TDC), Transport Canada

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