Infrastructure

This report presents the results of TO 5302, Extracting More Information from the Existing Freeway Traffic Monitoring Infrastructure. This report represents significant advances in the PATH sponsored research into vehicle reidentification from conventional loop detectors, first by extending the methodology across major merge and diverge freeway sections. Second, it extends the methodology to single loop detectors. The report also extends the understanding of traffic phenomena impacting both traffic flow and the performance of the reidentification algorithms. It examines the impacts of lane...

This research demonstrated two potential VII (vehicle-infrastructure integration) services, one in traffic data probes and the other with safety. A real private vehicle, operating on California roadways, “talked” to the roadside, with the roadside backhaul interfacing into an existing California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) database and archival application. Demonstration of a probe application showed great promise for supplementing Caltrans’ database with VII- or DSRC-based probe data. Similar promise was shown with a road condition monitoring system, which demonstrated the...

Although the performance advantages of cooperative ITS systems are generally appreciated, the deployment challenges that they pose represent a significant impediment. This report begins with a summary of the types of deployment challenges faced by cooperative information systems and cooperative vehicle-highway automation systems (CVHAS), both of which require coordination of deployment of vehicle and infrastructure-based elements. The institutional challenges are discussed first, followed by the technological challenges. In each case, current progress in overcoming these challenges is...

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has the potential to improve mass transit service and contribute to reduced traffic congestion in urban areas. To achieve this improvement in service BRT will require the use of dedicated bus lanes together with lane assist and precision docking (LA/PD) to accelerate the passenger boarding process. Using this approach, BRT lanes can be reduced somewhat in width. However, such a reduction will result in increased channelization of traffic which in turn can lead to a more rapid development of pavement distress. With today’s improved pavement engineering technology, it...