PATH

California is home to major international ports in Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland, as well as the second largest border crossing between Mexico and the U.S. California’s highways are critical commercial links from these ports of entry to the nation and carry more commercial vehicle truck traffic than any other state in the U.S. Given the high volume of truck travel in California, it is not surprising that there is a serious shortage of truck parking in the state. This shortage negatively impacts economic productivity, roadway safety, air quality, and public health. This report begins...

This report documents the field test of Variable Speed Advisory (VSA) which is an Active Traffic Management strategy. The test site for the VSA is on State Route 78 Eastbound (SR-78E) from Vista Village Drive (in the City of Vista) to the freeway interchange point of SR-78E and U.S. Route 15 (in the city of Escondido). This test segment is a three-lane freeway with a posted speed limit of 65 mph and it has 10 on-ramps and 10 off-ramps. The project was funded by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Division of Research Innovation and System Information (DRISI) under...

In support of efforts to improve traffic signal timing to accommodate the needs of bicyclists, observations have been made of the timing of bicyclists’ intersection crossing maneuvers. Video recordings were made of bicyclists’ crossings and the video images were processed to extract the bicyclists’ trajectories. These were synchronized with video images of the traffic signals so that the timing of the bicyclists’ maneuvers could be determined relative to the signal phase. The processed data have yielded cumulative distributions of the crossing speeds of bicyclists who did not have to stop...

The safety of both employees and the motoring public is of paramount importance to Caltrans, resulting in a continuing effort to improve the operating vehicle fleet. The potential safety changes that are the focus of this project are those that involve safety equipment enhancement over and above the original specifications for the vehicle or outside of the scope of the original equipment design or purpose, such as rear view backup video cameras.The motivation for this project was Division of Equipment (DOE) managers' need for an objective strategy to address safety equipment deployment...