Personal Mobility

Traditional driver performance data collection methods have ordinarily relied on experimenters riding with drivers to collect data. Such methods are limited because drivers may exhibit performance that differs from that while driving alone. Alternatively, naturalistic observation methods can be employed by the use of vehicle instrumentation to collect data in an unobtrusive manner.

This paper outlines the data types, data collection, data analysis, expected results provided by these data, and how these data can be used by designers in the development of safe, naturalistic Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) of the future. Additionally, this paper includes an overview of a lane change and passing study that is currently taking place. The study involves 16 commuters who drove to and from work for 20 business days, for a minimum of 50 miles round trip each day. Starting in September 2000, ordinary drivers drove instrumented vehicles instead of their normal vehicles during their commute to and from work. Data collection was fully automated and equipment was unobtrusive. Both a sedan and an SUV were used in this study.

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

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

Finnish Road Administration (later Finnra) is strongly improving the quality of real-time
traffic information in Finland. Finnra provides real-time traffic data free of charge to its
partners, but it does not participate in the development of actual end user services or value
added services. Finnra’s contribution to development is made through a private-public
partnership (PPP) as a provider of information.
In 2005 Finnra started a project for developing a travel time information system. This system
has been in production since June 2008. It is based on two parts: 1) detection of real-time
travel times, and 2) real-time traffic database called Digitraffic. In the future Digitraffic is the
only interface for real time traffic and road weather data from Finnra to the service providers.

Finnish Road Administration (Finnra), South-Eastern District

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

511 has been a successful traveler information system in the San Francisco Bay Area since
the telephone number and Web site (511.org) were adopted and launched in 2002. The
Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) operates both systems and works to
enhance their features. Users send MTC daily comments with ideas on system
enhancements. The most requested enhancement was a tool for users to save their most-used
trips so as to avoid restating their inputs for every call or Web visit. MTC listened and has
created MY 511, a personalized traveler information tool.

Metropolitan Transportation Commission

ICx Transportation Group

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

This paper will discuss the experiences of bringing a 511 system to operation in multiple state environments, and will describe plans for coordinating on-going operations. General cost analysis, challenges faced, lessons learned are included. The focus is on a group of eight-states, referred to in this paper as the CARS-511 consortium. The consortium (consisting of Kentucky, Iowa, Minnesota, Alaska, New Mexico, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire) was formed to develop and deploy new 511 traveler information phone services. The CARS-511 states have discovered that economies of scale have led to cost reductions in application development, software implementation and operational costs. Shared buying power also provides significant leverage to push vendor prices downward.

Castle Rock Consultants

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet

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

Traveler Information Services such as 511 must be easy for the customer to use and
provide useful information. The alternate route information system developed for the
Central Florida area allows motorists to request routes for their origin and destination in
very generic terms such as Downtown and Airport. They are then provided two or three
routes and travel times for those routes based upon a real-time traffic network. Since
some of the alternate routes contain toll roads, a motorist is able to choose a toll/nontolled
route based upon the travel time.

HNTB Corporation

Florida Department Of Transporation

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