Safety

With actual ITS deployment now underway, this paper looks back on the 7-year ITS curve and some of the issues that have been addressed during that time, including ITS stakeholder development, ITS benchmarking, ITS funding and the realities of “partnerships.” Items of discussion will include the successes and difficulties encountered with ITS partnerships and how contingent funding expectations have affected ITS deployment Nebraska’s statewide plans for roadside instrumentation, communications, and operations centers. It is noted that Nebraska has been very successful in the area of ITS funding and some strategy will be shared, including the pitfalls and difficulties of funding ITS projects. Published by Nebraska Department of Roads.

The status of road surface and its configuration are critical elements for road safety. In order to estimate the road surface condition including ground and underground temperature, humidity, salinity and local weather, road surface sensor that costs very high and causes pavement damage for installation can be considered. Overcoming above demerits of the existing sensor, the paper presents a road condition estimating method using image analysis technique. The method utilizes properties of water molecule on a moisturized road surface, which is dispersed with ultraviolet lays and absorbs the infrared ray energy. Published in 2010 by JT Corporation.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the Department of Transportation was asked to identify areas within the transportation system that were vulnerable to terrorist attack. One major area of concern identified was the transportation of hazardous materials (hazmat). The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is conducting a field operational test (FOT) to quantify the security costs and benefits of an operational concept that applies technology and improved enforcement procedures to hazmat transportation. The FOT will demonstrate an approach that enhances the safety and security of hazmat shipments from origin to destination.

An initial paper was presented on this FOT at the 2003 ITS America Annual Meeting held in Minneapolis, MN on May 19-21. This paper updates the readers on the progress of the overall FOT and focuses on the public sector portion of the FOT. Published by Battelle with input from FMCSA, CVSA, Qualcomm and ATRI.

This paper will discuss the Automatic Incident Detection (AID) system along the I-95 corridor in the Philadelphia area, the first of its kind in this region. The paper specifically focuses on data errors and error sources, and presents findings of the data analysis. The AID system is expected to greatly enhance the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Engineering District 6-0’s (PENNDOT 6-0’s) Traffic Control Center (TCC) day-to-day management and operations. The AID system helps to improve response to incidents by providing rapid information to the proper emergency service providers allowing for shorter incident duration, thereby quicker cleanup operation and bringing the highway back to normal operation. Automatic systems for incident detection are useful in large traffic management systems to detect incidents while operators are busy with other tasks.

Jacobs Edwards & Kelcey, Inc.

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 19-22, 2003 Minneapolis, Minnesota