ITS Berkeley

Benchmarking “Smart City” Technology Adoption in California: Developing and Piloting a Data Collection Approach

Frick, Karen Trappenburg, PhD
Kumar, Tanu, PhD
Mendonça Abreu, Giselle Kristina
Post, Alison, PhD
2021

In recent years, “smart city” technologies have emerged that allow cities, counties, and other agencies to manage their infrastructure assets more effectively, make their services more accessible to the public, and allow citizens to interface with new web- and mobile-based operators of alternative service providers. This project reviews the academic literature and other sources on potential strengths, weaknesses, and risks associated with smart city technologies. No dataset was found that measures the adoption of such technologies by government agencies. To address this gap, a methodology...

Pattern Recognition for Curb Usage

Arcak, Murat PhD
Kurzhanskiy, Alex A., PhD
2024

The increasing use of transportation network companies and delivery services has transformed the utilization of curb space, resulting in a lack of parking and contributing to congestion. No systematic method exists for identifying curb usage patterns, but emerging machine learning technologies and low-tech data sources, such as dashboard cameras mounted on vehicles that routinely travel the area, have the potential of monitoring curb usage. To demonstrate how video data can be used to recognize usage patterns, we conducted a case study on Bancroft Way in Berkeley, CA. The project collected...

Meeting SB1 Transportation Systems Performance Goals

Mauch, Michael
McKeever, Benjamin
Skabardonis, Alexander
2018

This research project directly addresses the Caltrans policy question of “How to meet the SB 1 ten-year (2027) mandated preliminary performance outcomes for additional state highway investments?” More specifically, the study focuses on performance outcome number 4: “Not less than 90 percent of the transportation management system units in good condition”. As part of this project, the research team evaluated the Caltrans performance-based methodology to achieve the 90% performance goal in addition to completing a review of relevant reports from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),...

Can Rebates Foster Equity in Congestion Pricing Programs?

Sallee, James M.
Tarduno, Matthew A.
2022

Congestion pricing improves economic efficiency, but it may lead to inequitable outcomes. A key policy priority in California is identifying ways to avoid the hardship of congestion pricing on low income or other vulnerable populations. This study uses data from a congestion pricing experiment in the Seattle metro area to examine the feasibility of using revenue from congestion pricing to compensate those harmed by the policy. Results indicate that the initial burden of congestion pricing is highly inequitable, with the lowest income drivers paying an average of 7 percent of their weekly...

Vehicle-Actuated Control of a Diamond Interchange

Newell, Gordon F.
1998

We present here a vehicle-actuated traffic signal control scheme for a simple geometry of a diamond interchange. The scheme is guaranteed not to have blockage, to adjust automatically to changing flows and operate on a shorter mean cycle time than most fixed-time plans, at least during times of heavy traffic.

Resource Allocation Algorithm for Multi-Vehicle Systems with Non holnomic Constraints

Rathinam, Sivakumar
Sengupta, Raja
Darbha, Swaroop
2005

Multi-vehicle systems are naturally encountered in civil and military applications. Cooperation amongst individual "miniaturized" vehicles allows for flexibility to accomplish missions that a single large vehicle may not readily be able to accomplish. While accomplishing a mission, motion planning algorithms are required to efficiently utilize a common resource (such as the total fuel in the collection of vehicles) or to penalize a collective cost function (such as to minimize the maximum time taken by the vehicles to reach their intended target). The objective of this paper is to present...

A Safe System Approach to Pedestrian High Injury Network Development in Oakland, California

Chen, Angie
2024

As jurisdictions update their High Injury Networks, discrepancies between the initial and updated HINs are to be expected. However, this lack of stability and consistency can negatively impact the prioritization of limited resources. In order to mitigate known issues with crash data underreporting and statistical biases, I examined strategies for utilizing data on underlying roadway characteristics to augment traditional collision analysis. Using the City of Oakland as a case study city, I assessed the stability of the pedestrian High Injury Network across two consecutive five-year periods...

Development of Fast-Time Simulation Techniques to Model Safety Issues in the National Airspace System

Abkin, Michael H.
Gilgur, Alexander
Bobick, John C.
Hansman, R. John
Reynolds, Tom G.
Vigeant-Langlois, Laurence
Hansen, Mark
Gosling, Geoffrey D.
Baumgardner, William F.
2002

This report constitutes the final report for Calendar Year 2001 (CY01) under Contract Number NAS2-99072 for the third year of a three-year research project entitled “Development of Fast-Time Simulation Techniques to Model Safety Issues in the National Airspace System.” The objective of this research is to investigate and develop techniques to enable NAS fast-time simulation modeling to be useful for conducting safety analysis. The research efforts focus on examining the type of safety issues that could be appropriately modeled by fast-time simulations and developing, testing, and...

Struggling to Connect: Housing and Transportation Challenges of Low-Income Suburban Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area

Pan, Alexandra
Deakin, Elizabeth, PhD
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2024

Suburban areas have lower density development than urban areas, which may make them less accessible for the growing population of low- and moderate-income suburban residents, particularly those without a personal vehicle. This research examines factors that lead these households to move to suburban areas and identifies accessibility barriers they face. We use a mixed-methods approach with Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data from the U.S. Census, online/in-person surveys (n=208), and interviews conducted in English and Spanish (n=25) with households in Contra Costa County with an income...

The Role of Air Cargo in California's Goods Movement

Tsao, H.-S. Jacob
1998

California would be the seventh largest economy in the world, if it were a nation. Efficient goods movement is crucial to California's economy. To support continued growth of the State's economy, Caltrans is leading the development of a Statewide Goods Movement Strategy. This strategy is being prepared as a response to a recommendation of the 1993 California Transportation Plan. It serves as one element, together with the Transportation System Performance Measures report being prepared in parallel by Caltrans, of the 1998 California Transportation Plan update. Air cargo consists...