Traffic Operations and Management

The purpose of this report is to provide a research-driven analysis of options that can put California on a pathway to achieve carbon-neutral transportation by 2045. The report comprises thirteen sections. Section 1 provides an overview of the major components of transportation systems and how those components interact. Section 2 discusses the impacts the COVID-19 pandemic has had on transportation. Section 3 discusses California’s current transportation-policy landscape. These three sections were previously published as a synthesis report. Section 4 analyzes the different carbon scenarios...

Ethanol produced from cellulosic feedstocks has garnered significant interest for greenhouse gas abatement and energy security promotion. One outstanding question in the development of a mature cellulosic ethanol industry is the optimal scale of biorefining activities. This question is important for companies and entrepreneurs seeking to construct and operate cellulosic ethanol biorefineries as it determines the size of investment needed and the amount of feedstock for which they must contract. The question also has important implications for the nature and location of lifecycle...

This paper proposes a deep learning-based Kazantzis–Kravaris–Luenberger (KKL) observer design to estimate position and speed in mixed-autonomy traffic environments. The approach relies on position measurements of vehicles surrounding the autonomous vehicle (AV), obtained through remote sensing, resulting in a subsequent time delay due to communication latency. The proposed deep learning KKL observer is designed to compensate for this delay and to ensure global asymptotic convergence of the estimation of position and speed by using a chain of sub-observers. We employ an unsupervised...

Motorists going through a bottleneck during the morning rush hour have to time their departure times to ensure they arrive to work at a reasonable time. Traffic and congestion levels at the bottleneck depend on the motorists' work schedule and the disutility of unpunctuality. This paper shows that, under certain conditions, there is only one equilibrium order of arrivals; an order under which motorists do not have an incentive to jockey for position in the queue.