Personal Mobility

Until recently the focus in traffic signal preemption and priority has been on developing and extending the capabilities of various technologies and studying their impact on real or hypothetical traffic flows. As these technologies have been implemented, however, institutional issues both before and after implementation have been recognized as significant. This paper examines the differing issues, needs, and concerns that elected officials and transit, traffic and emergency personnel in the Washington, D.C. region have regarding the implementation, installation, maintenance and use of both types of systems. Based on interviews with 37 area officials, system objectives and requirements were identified. The agencies and jurisdictions represented have very different levels of familiarity and experience with preemption and priority systems. For a signal preemption system the objectives identified were that it shall significantly reduce response time to emergencies, improve the safety and health of emergency personnel, and reduce accidents between non-emergency vehicles due to the passage of responding emergency units at intersections where it is installed. Stakeholders also suggested four policy requirements for priority systems. A signal priority system for transit shall improve schedule adherence, improve the efficiency with which buses run, be part of a lager ITS system that includes improved rider information and other services, and increase the overall efficiency with which the road network is used by contributing to an increase in bus ridership. The interviews also revealed that in order to achieve these objectives the systems were required to meet a number of requirements such as regional interoperability and the potential to hold users accountable. In all six system requirements were clearly defined.

George Mason University

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

Presented at the 11th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, June 4-7, 2001 Miami Beach, Florida

The GCM Gateway TIS is currently being developed as the central traveler information hub for the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor and will be operational this fall to replace an existing legacy system. The Gateway TIS collects transportation related information from geographically widely distributed agencies of varied natures, validates and fuses the information collected, and disseminates it to interested public and private entities and the general public via internet and intranet. The Gateway handles a wide spectrum of data types, including traffic related incidents, roadwork and special events, vehicle detector data, DMS (Dynamic Variable Sign) and HAR (Highway Advisory Radio) messages, weather sensor data, traffic operational parameters derived from electronic toll collection system. Eventually, The Gateway will also provide real time video services.

This paper presents at a high level the CORBA based system architecture design of the Gateway system primarily from the perspective of ITS Center-to-Center interoperability. It also introduces the object oriented Gateway external data model that is specified in CORBA IDL (Interface Definition Language) and the Gateway Publisher/Subscriber based message oriented middleware for data collection and distribution. In addition, the Gateway’s decision on the selection of object oriented DBMS (Database Management System) versus relational DBMS is also discussed.

Illinois Department of Transportation

Parsons Transportation Group

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

TransGuide, San Antonio's Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), has been in operation since July of 1995. Initially covering 26 miles of freeways, TransGuide has expanded to cover more than 60 miles of freeways throughout San Antonio. The expanded coverage of freeway conditions in San Antonio has been coupled with arterial traffic data to provide traffic information on over 150 miles of the San Antonio area roadway network. The San Antonio Model Deployment Initiative (MDI) expanded TransGuide system capabilities, and brought together traffic information from multiple agencies. Since the conclusion of the Model Deployment Initiative, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has implemented new programs to build upon that program's success. Expansion of the TransGuide system on heavily congested freeway corridors outside of downtown allowed the benefits of the system to be available to drivers who did not encounter the TransGuide system when it was located only in the downtown area of San Antonio. The development of the MDI Data Server combined information from TxDOT, the City of San Antonio and VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority to form a single depository of traffic related information available to all local public agencies and private sector Information Service Providers (ISPs).

Texas DOT - TransGuide

Presented at the 11th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, June 4-7, 2001 Miami Beach, Florida

This paper illustrates the use of a technology review as part of a regional ITS Architecture development. The paper identifies market and equipment packages that are available in the market but are not defined as part of the National ITS Architecture. These packages include Pedestrian Management and Information, Surface Street Control Enforcement, Joint-Use Vehicles, Parking Facility Enforcement/Security, Automated Parking Systems, Vehicle-Based Transit Information, Advanced Commercial Vehicle Safety Advisory, Emerging Probe Surveillance Technologies, and Speed Limit Enforcement/Dynamic Speed Limits.

The results presented in this paper indicates that a review of existing ITS technologies and products is useful in identifying market packages/equipment packages that meet specific regional, local and project needs.

PBS&J

Presented at the 11th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, June 4-7, 2001 Miami Beach, Florida

The paper reports on a study comparing alternative presentations of freeway speed data on maps. The goal of the study was to inform the design of displays of real-time speed data over the Internet to the general public. Subjects were presented with a series of displays and asked to rate their preference. We looked at different choices of color (3 colors, 6 colors or a continuous range), and proposed line, sensor, and segment representations of the speed data. We also collected feedback on more complex displays such as comparison between current and "normal" speeds, and a chart of speed variation over a period of time at given locations. Finally we discuss issues of color blindness.

University of Maryland

Presented at the 11th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, June 4-7, 2001 Miami Beach, Florida