PATH

Traffic congestion and trucking activities in the San Francisco Bay Area are increasing due to the rapid population growth and economic expansion. It is imperative to explore transportation alternatives, and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, with 63 percent unused capacity on average in non-peak hours, presents such an opportunity. If BART’s service is extended to include air-freight movement, extra revenue can be generated, truck miles travelled on highways will be reduced (potentially leading to a reduced traffic congestion and pollution), and traffic safety could be improved....

This report details the design and implementation of wind tunnel tests to evaluate the aerodynamic performance of individual members of 2,3, and 4- vehicle platoons. The purpose of the tests described here is to quantify the behavior of vehicle drag, or--or more properly--drag coefficient, as a function of vehicle spacing. One-eight scale models of the 1991 GM Lumina van are used as the prototype vehicle. The design and fabrication of force balances capable of measuring drag, side force and yawing moment is described. Models are mounted above a porous ground plane surface designed to...

This report documents the procedures the PATH team has implemented for calibrating the NGSIM oversaturated flow model in the Aimsun micro simulation environment. The goal of the calibration is to identify suitable driving behavior parameters of the NGSIM oversaturated flowmodel, which is used to describe the behaviors of human drivers. With these parameters, the model should be able to reproduce traffic flow patterns like those observed in the 18-km State Route 99 corridor to the south of Sacramento, CA. The Geoffrey E. Havers (GEH) statistic is adopted to quantify the relative difference...

Normal Communication Networks require the Sender to specify the address of the Receiver before communication can take place. In problems that a rise in an Automated Vehicle Highway System, the Sender can identify the Receiver by its physical location only (i.e. a car wanting to communicate with the car immediately in front of it). Normal Communication Procedures that use the Receiver's Address to establish communication must be preceded by an Address Finding Protocol. An Address Finding Protocol which uses the Absoulate Location of vehicles has been proposed in [2] and is reviewed in...