Personal Mobility

Kansas City Scout is Kansas City's bi-state traffic management system. The Kansas and Missouri
Departments of Transportation (KDOT, MoDOT) designed Scout to lessen traffic jams by
improving rush-hour speeds, to increase safety by decreasing the number of rush-hour accidents,
and to improve emergency response to traffic situations. Kansas City Scout first became
operational in January 2004. Kansas City Scout manages traffic on more than 100 miles of
continuous freeways in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area. Scout uses closed-circuit
television (CCTV) cameras to monitor the highways from its traffic management center in Lee's
Summit. The Scout system relies on sensors to gauge traffic flow, uses large electronic message
boards to send urgent traffic notices to drivers along the freeways, and activates a Highway
Advisory Radio system that motorists in Missouri can tune to in the event of a freeway incident.

Kansas City Scout Traffic Center

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

Transportation agencies need effective ways to inform the traveling public about current road
conditions and to manage congestion. Travel time systems and variable toll pricing systems
are two proven ways to meet these goals. These two systems require similar data, perform
similar calculations to produce correct results and both need to distribute the final
information to motorists on the roadway. Combining the systems makes sense from
technological and operational perspectives. However such a system must be designed
carefully to manage complexity while maintaining data integrity, performance, and
reliability.

Wavetronix LLC

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

In April 2006 the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) completed its 511 strategic
plan, which encompasses both phone and web services. In this strategic plan, MTC highlights its
commitment to determining whether further investment is warranted in comparison to other
regional transportation commitments. A valuable input to this determination is having a
quantified estimate of the benefits to users of the 511 system, which is what this study provides.
Noblis and MTC worked jointly through the support of the Federal Highway Administration to
quantify the annual mobility benefits for routine users of the traveler information service through
the application of the HOWLATE (Heuristic On-line Web-Linked Arrival Time Estimator)
process.

Noblis, Inc.

511 Traffic Operations

511 New York is a free, comprehensive travel information system geared to meet the
multimodal needs of commuters, long-distance and local travelers, tourists and
commercial-vehicle operators. The up-to-the-minute, comprehensive transportation
information available to customers through this new 511 system strengthens efforts to
improve mobility, allowing people and goods to move efficiently through New York
State. System development required the cooperative integration of existing databases
into a single public source for multi-state, real time and static highway and transit
information, as well as the coordination of information for call transfers, highway data
points, voice recordings, and modal information. The result is a system that promotes
sustainability by providing information that expands transportation choices and
encourages the use of more efficient methods of travel. Users can access a first of its
kind statewide and regional transit trip-planning feature, which includes over sixty
transit operators' schedules and routes; as well as park-and-ride lot info; carpool,
vanpool and rideshare referrals, and bicycling information. The system is a critical,
single-point information source during transportation emergencies. With extensive
outreach to transportation partners and neighboring states and provinces, 511 NY was
successfully deployed at the ITS World Congress in November 2008, only 9 months
after contract execution. Because of the unique, comprehensive multi-modal and
regional nature of 511 NY, innovative federal funding for the system has been
identified.

New York State Department of Transportation

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

This project sought to develop algorithms to improve the robustness and accuracy of travel
time predications in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Advanced Traffic Management
Systems (ATMS) in support of Advance Traveler Information Systems (ATIS). First the
project explored various techniques to synthesize missing data from traffic detection systems,
finding that simple linear spatial interpolation provided better results when compared to
quadratic or cubic spatial interpolation or temporal extrapolation; however better results are
obtained when historical data is available that meets existing traffic conditions. Further, the
project explored techniques to relate travel time computations using current detector data to
travel time calculations utilizing “aged” data finding inconclusive results under steady state
conditions (free-flow and congestion), but very promising results mining historical data
during transition from free flow to congestion and the reverse. The “standard” against which
improvements were compared was the method of travel time computation utilized in the
Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) SunGuide® ATMS.

Southwest Research Institute

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition