Economics and Finance

Efficient management of a road network requires continuous decision-making based on conditions on the network and an understanding of the impacts of the decisions made. These conditions are usually measured with fixed-point surveillance systems, most of which are deployed in such a manner as to require communication links that are always connected and are polled at regular intervals. All of the sensor data are typically sent to a Traffic Management Center (TMC) for assessment, yet most of the time no action is taken in response to the data, leading to unnecessarily high communication costs...

Recently, bus transit service providers have begun to adopt Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Mobile Data Terminals. These systems taken together have the potential to reduce the cost of providing transportation services through the execution of real-time control strategies, performance monitoring systems and data collection to support service realignment. We evaluate bus control strategies using ITS against those without ITS. Two levels of ITS are considered: (1) system with centralized tracking and (2) system with...

The surge of road pricing projects in the U.S. and around the globe over the past fifteen years has been enabled by a set of new communication and transportation technologies. There is currently a wide array of technical configurations ranging from systems based on “tried and true” short-range radio communications to experimental systems relying on global positioning satellites. These technologies provide for a more efficient collection of simple tolls, and also facilitate a movement toward more dynamic, variable user fees.In this study, we provide a comprehensive literature review of...

The number and quality of sensors available for both on-board vehicle and infrastructure-based sensing is increasing while the cost of these sensors is rapidly decreasing. On-board vehicle sensors can be utilized for both individual vehicle safety as well as automated vehicle control. It is becoming imperative that "fusion" techniques be developed, i.e., methods to combine the wide variety of sensors available so that reliable and accurate information can be obtained even though individual sensors may fail or become extremely noisy. The process of sensor fusion combines multiple sensor...