PATH

Commercial Motor Vehicle Inspection and Screening Stations: Evaluating Performance from the Perspective of Practitioners

Miller, Mark A.
Garefalakis, Antonios
2009

This report presents the findings of a study of commercial motor vehicle inspection and screening station practices with a focus on the use of various technologies to help address problems related to safety, security, roadway infrastructure, and air quality. A review of industry literature identified the various types of inspection and screening practices that have been and are being implemented including weight and size management, on-board equipment checking, driver-related violations and cargo monitoring, credential checking, and exhaust emissions monitoring. The review also identified...

Transit Service Integration Practices: An Assessment of U.S. Experiences

Miller, Mark A.
Englisher, Larry S.
Halvorsen, Rick
Kaplan, Bruce
2005

This report presents the results of its assessment of transit service integration practices in the United States. Initially, a review of the literature was performed that identified the various types of service integration policies that have been and are being implemented including infrastructure, schedule, information, fare payment and special events/emergency service integration. The review also revealed how the introduction of service integration practices is part of overall changes in transit properties' way of conducting business. The research then made use of a twostage survey of...

SPRINTER Rail: Grade Crossing/ Traffic Signal Optimization Study

Wu, Guoyuan
Li, Irene
Zhang, Wei-Bin
Johnston, Scott
Li, Meng
Zhou, Kun
2009

The second phase of this project further investigates impacts to local traffic operations at intersections adjacent to signal preemption by SPRINTER commuter trains and comes up with countermeasures that not only minimize such impacts but also take into account the traffic signal coordination. An extended traffic signal optimization model has been developed to minimize overall traffic delays and the weighted width of “green band” along several coordinated traffic signals around the grade crossings. Based on the train’s movement detection at grade crossings and the waiting queue estimation...

Vehicle Modeling And Control For Automated Highway Systems

Hedrick, J. K.
McMahon, D. H.
Swaroop, D.
1993

This report summarizes recent work done in the area of longitudinal control of a platoon of autonomous vehicles. As a prerequisite to controller design, a twelve state nonlinear model including an internal combustion engine, engine transmission dynamics, and tire friction characteristics has been developed. Two simplified models for simulation and controller design are presented. After outlining the control problem, two platooning strategies, based on spacing or headway criterion, are proposed. To solve the control requirements, decentralized nonlinear control strategies using throttle...

Smart Cards, Slow Deployment: Findings from Interviews with U.S. Transit Agencies

Iseki, Hiroyuki
Taylor, Brian D.
Yoh, Allison
2008

This report summarizes findings from interviews with transit officials at seven agencies in North America about smart card evaluations, expectations, and implementation. As part of the project, “Designing a Policy Framework for a Statewide Transit Smart Card System,” this report was preceded by a literature review of smart card projects and an online survey of transit agencies’ knowledge of and interest in interoperable smart card systems for fare collection. The literature review found a lot of booster-like enthusiasm for smart cards, but few studies that have rigorously evaluated smart...

Design, Field Implementation and Evaluation of Adaptive Ramp Metering Algorithms

Horowitz, Roberto
May, Adolf
Skabardonis, Alex
Varaiya, Pravin
Zhang, Michael
Gomes, Gabriel
Munoz, Laura
Sun, Xiaotian
Sun, Dengfeng
2005

The main objectives of Task Order 4136 are (1) the design of improved freeway on-ramp metering strategies that make use of recent developments in traffic data collection, traffic simulation, and control theory, and (2) the testing of these methods on a 14-mile segment of Interstate 210 Westbound in southern California. To date, the major accomplishments of this project include (i) the development of a complete procedure for constructing and calibrating a microscopic freeway traffic model using the Vissim microsimulator, which was applied successfully to the full I-210 test site, (ii) a...

California Intersection Decision Support: A Driver-Centered Approach to Left-Turn Collision Avoidance System Design

Bougler, Bénédicte
Cody, Delphine
Nowakowski, Christopher
2008

Currently, Federal and State governments are partnering with private industries and academia institutions to pursue the deployment of intersection decision support (IDS) and cooperative intersection collision avoidance systems (CICAS), which seek to combine infrastructure-based and vehicle-based functions to provide optimal solutions for roadway users. The overall (IDS) research plan was constructed to explore the requirements, tradeoffs assessment, and technology investigations necessary to define a Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance System. This report is the third report on...

San Joaquin Rail Corridor Crossing Survey

Greenhouse, Daniel
Christianson, Kent
Johnston, Scott
Kim, Zu
2008

In this project we have accomplished three goals. First, we have merged two existing, complementary databases in an effort to produce a single database that lists all the railroad crossings, and their known properties, in the San Joaquin Rail Corridor (SJRC). Second, we have demonstrated the practicality of using video data gathered from an existing Locomotive Video Data Acquistion System (LVDAS) to search for crossing violations in order to populate a database of crossing violations, which we term “near-misses”. By this means, crossings that are particularly susceptible to violations,...

An Evaluation Taxonomy For Congestion Pricing

Lo, H.
Hickman, M.
Walstad, M.
1996

This paper formulated an evaluation taxonomy to identify a broad range of factors that would be important for a comprehensive assessment. The evaluation taxonomy consists of three dimensions: road pricing strategies, impacted groups and impacts. We classified road pricing strategies by seven elements, and defined three types of impacted groups, and eleven impact types. Projects with different objectives will likely emphasize the impact types and impacted groups differently. This evaluation taxonomy is intended to be sufficiently broad so that a wide variety of road pricing schemes can be...

Shift Reference Manual

Deshpande, Akash
Gollu, Aleks
Semenzato, Luigi
1997

This document is a reference manual for SHIFT, a description language for dynamic networks of hybrid systems. This model offers the proper level of abstraction for describing complex applications such as highway and air traffic control systems, robotic shopfloors, and other systems whose operation cannot be captured by conventional models. SHIFT is planned for use as a mechanism for defining the Automated Highway System Tool Interchange Format (AHSTIF). An automated highway system is a hybrid system with specific characteristics and restrictions. SHIFT supports the definition and...