Safety

Several successful ITS deployment scenarios added credibility to ITS by meeting the motorists’ needs. Through ITS and TMC integrated operations, the incident detection, verification, and response processes have been refined to offer additional tools to agencies involved in incident management. These tools also created more challenging interagency and intra agency  protocols that are more complex for agencies responsible for incident management, ITS deployment, and operations. The focus of this paper is on development of a framework of protocols to complement ITS deployment and operation for Florida’s Turnpike System. The protocols address ITS device and TMC operational issues and the related inter and intra agency functional and jurisdictional boundaries that govern the management of recurring and  non-recurring incident operations on the Turnpike System. Florida’s Turnpike System is a tolled roadway and part of the Florida Intrastate Highway System (FIHS) administered by Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). ITS deployment efforts on Florida’s Turnpike Mainline presented a unique opportunity to blend basic transportation requirements such as safety,  mobility, etc. with the varying interagency operational frameworks such as Florida Highway Patrol, Fire Department, Local Police, FDLE, and intra-department units such as Roadway Maintenance, Public Information Office, and other Department District offices. This study provides several insights into the needs of agency protocols that are a must to maximize the use of ITS field and TMC elements to better manage incidents on the Turnpike System. Where applicable, traffic engineering analyses was performed to determine safety and traffic operational criteria that are used as inputs to develop the mapping procedures to arrive at these protocols.

Turnpike Traffic Operations

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

This paper describes the results of using Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) generated incidents as an incident detection method in an Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS). An effort was completed in April of 2002 at TransGuide, the Texas Department of Transportation’s Traffic Management Center (TMC) located in San Antonio, Texas, to integrate CAD or 911 call center incidents from the City of San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) into the TransGuide ATMS.

Southwest Research Institute

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

Relationships between speed choice and crash occurrence have been difficult to identify. This work examines detected speeds derived from single loops for several Southern California freeways, within and across freeway lanes, together with corresponding crash data. While a variety of factors clearly influence speed and speed variance, there is no evidence that speeds or their variation trigger crashes.

The University of Texas at Austin

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

The University of Texas at Austin

Monitoring activities in outdoor traffic scenes has applications in areas such as data collection, monitoring for traffic congestion, and surveillance for safety. In this project, we develop a camera based sensing system for monitoring activities at intersections. Two different components of the system are the vision module and the incident detection module, the former being responsible for providing information about the scene such as vehicle position, velocity, shape, etc. The incident detection module is responsible for detecting incidents such as collisions and near misses. The focus of this work is on the vision module, in particular vehicle tracking. Tracking in outdoor scenes using camera is aected by illumination changes, traffic congestion, clutter, and stop-and-go motion of the vehicles. In this paper, we show that we can attain decent tracking despite these conditions by using two different tracking modalities. The rst one is a region tracker which uses the results of the scene segmentation for tracking. The second tracker known as the Mean Shift Tracker, makes use of the color distribution of the vehicles. The results from the two trackers, namely, the vehicle's position
are combined sequentially in each step.
Keywords{ Motion segmentation, tracking, Mean Shift Tracking, data association.

University of Minnesota

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

The Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport is currently designing an ITS network that adds 15 CCTVs and 2 DMSs, and upgrades 2 traffic signal intersection controllers and 4 portal lane use controllers. In an effort to leverage the benefits derived from the ITS network, the information is being shared among various departments at the Airport. ITS field devices are controlled from the TMC and are operated by Police Dispatch personnel. In addition to the CCTV images being available at the TMC, all CCTV images are available to the Security Control Center (SCC) for use by Airport Security personnel. A primary objective of the ITS network is to provide integrated ITS solutions for Airport Public Safety and Security personnel while increasing mobility for the Airport patrons. From a Concept of Operations perspective, after all phases of the project are completed, the system shall also provide the tools to detect changes in current traffic operating conditions, verify the change in traffic conditions, and implement appropriate response plans to enhance motorist safety and mobility while providing efficient use of available roadway.

Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport

Iteris

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