Personal Mobility

Ride Solution is the Community Transportation Coordinator for Putnam County, Florida and, as such, is responsible for the coordination of all of the tax funded, human service transportation in the county. Putnam County is a rural county of 798 square miles and total population of 70,000, approximately 11,000 of which live in Palatka, the county seat. Ride Solution operates a fleet of 34 vehicles with about half being buses and half being vans. The operation has been successful in interweaving human service transport so as to form a countywide public transit system with published schedules, bus stop signs and shelters. The service operates on one hour headways in Palatka, the largest incorporated area in the county, and on about two hour headways within a 25 mile radius of Palatka. Four hour headways are maintained three days a week on a 55 mile route to Gainesville in the neighboring county of Alachua. Ride Solution provides 120,000 rides per year about 20,000 of which are general public riders who access the system at published stops. A fare of $1.00 provides the public with a one way trip anywhere in the system. Savings to agency participants includes a $300,000 per year or 33% reduction in Medicaid transportation costs since flex routing began on a large scale in 1996.

Ride Solution

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

The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) of Chicago is investigating the feasibility of implementing real-time Parking Management Systems (PMS) for transit station applications in northeastern Illinois. This PMS study is part of a larger effort in the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee (GCM) ITS Corridor toward development of a Regional Multi-Modal Traveler Information System. The work is being performed in close coordination with the three regional transit service boards (Chicago Transit Authority [CTA], Metra commuter rail, Pace suburban bus).

The PMS study includes an implementation plan that defines initial demonstration project locations, and is establishing both a system architecture and regional standards for design and configuration of real-time parking management components. These standards would assure common types of parking information displays at transit park-and-ride facilities in the Chicago area, regardless of service provider. The uniform standards would facilitate leveraging of capital and maintenance costs between different service boards, thus reducing overall program costs.

Study activities include:

• Needs assessment from both operator and user perspectives
• Review of technologies
• Functional requirements definition
• Conceptual definition of PMS operational schemes and display types
• Implementation plan and identification of demonstration sites
• Standard specifications for system and displays

The study is being performed for the RTA by Wilbur Smith Associates, with subconsultants HNTB and TranSmart Technologies.

Wilbur Smith Associates

Regional Transportation Authority

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

The main goal of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is to improve the overall efficiency of transportation systems by using modern computers, communication, and data processing technologies without substantial capacity additions to the network (Tarko and Rouphail 1997). Surveys show that, next to safety and security, traffic information is among the services most desired by motorists (Orski 2001). Travelers have an implicit expectation that high-technology services have equally high-technology content.

University of Miami

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

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