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In almost every major city in the U.S. and internationally, parking problems are ubiquitous. It is well known that the limited availability of parking contributes to roadway congestion, air pollution, and driver frustration and that the cost of expanding traditional parking capacity is frequently prohibitive. However, less research has addressed the effect of insufficient parking at transit stations on transit use. In the San Francisco Bay Area, parking has recently been at or near capacity at many of the 31 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District stations with parking facilities. Smart...

This is the final report of the research program “Compatibility of Vehicles Within a Platoon (MOU-156).” This research area is continuing under a different, contract and thus, although the work presented herein is complete unto itself, the overall research goals laid out at the beginning of the program will not be attained until the conclusion of the entire related research effort.The material presented in this report provides a description of a simple dynamical model that can be used for determining the physical interaction of vehicles in a collision scenario. Such a model is of use in...

This report describes the evaluation of the effectiveness and adequacy of cellular phones for incident detection as an alternative to infrastructure-based surveillance systems. The analysis was part of the I-880 field experiment using the California Highway Patrol's (CHP) Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) incident database. Cellular phones have the highest detection rate among the examined detection sources. Results from the study, however, indicate that incidents reported by cellular phones show greater incident durations than similar incidents reported by the CHP or the Freeway Service...

This report summarizes empirical research about the causes and impact of non-recurrent congestion. A method is presented to divide the total congestion delay in a freeway section into six components: the delay caused by incidents, special events, lane closures, and adverse weather; the potential reduction in delay at bottlenecks that ideal ramp metering can achieve; and the remaining delay, due mainly to excess demand. The method can be applied to any site with minimum calibration, but it requires data about traffic volume and speed; the time and location of incidents, special events and...