Roads/Highways

Initial Scoping of Bay Area Smart Mobility Corridors and ITS World Congress

Susan Shaheen
Finson, Rachel S.
McCormick, Cynthia
2004

The Innovative Corridors Initiative (ICI) is a multi-year project designed to encourage the early deployment of innovative technologies for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in California. ITS technologies are defined through a broad array of information and vehicle control technologies that are designed to improve traffic and transit management including safety, user choice, congestion, and incident response. For over a decade, ITS technologies have been gaining acceptance and are now utilized in every major metropolitan area in the United States to enhance transportation system...

Smart Parking Management Field Test: A Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District Parking Demonstration: Final Report

Rodier, Caroline J., PhD
Susan Shaheen
Kemmerer, Charlene
2008

This report presents an evaluation of the first transit-based smart parking project in the U.S. at the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District station in Oakland, California. The report begins with a review of the smart parking literature; next the smart parking field test is described including its capital, operational, and maintenance costs; then the results of the participant survey analysis are presented; and finally lessons learned from the institutional, user, and operational perspective are documented. Some key changes in participant travel behavior include increases in...

Commercial Vehicle Parking in California: Exploratory Evaluation of the Problem and Solutions

Rodier, Caroline J., PhD
Susan Shaheen
Allen, Denise M.
Dix, Brenda
2010

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...

An Evaluation of the Consequences and Effectiveness of Using Highway Changeable Message Signs for Safety Campaigns

Rodier, Caroline, PhD
Finson, Rachel S.
Lidicker, Jeffrey
Susan Shaheen
2010

Changeable Message Signs (CMSs), which are also called dynamic or variable message signs, are programmable signs used on highways worldwide to provide drivers with real-time information, such as traffic updates, roadwork warnings, and other traffic and safety-related information. CMSs allow motorists to take immediate action in response to information—to slow down or change routes, for example, which leads to safer driving conditions and less congestion. More recently, in California and throughout the U.S., CMSs have been used as part of public campaigns to promote roadway safety by...

An Equitable and Integrated Approach to Paying for Roads in a Time of Rapid Change

Alexandre Bayen
Susan Shaheen
Forscher, Edward H.
Lazarus, Jessica
2019

A brief overview of transportation user fees (historically and in a contemporary context) is presented followed by a discussion on how segmenting travel into three categories long haul, the last mile, and at the curbcreates a new typology for transportation pricing and access mechanisms....

Creative Reallocation of Curbs, Streets, Sidewalks Accelerated by the Pandemic May Be Here to Stay

Susan Shaheen
Cohen, Adam
Broader, Jacquelyn
2023

Curb space has been traditionally designed for private vehicle parking, public transit, and passenger and commercial loading. However, in recent years, a growing number of newservices and activities have increased the demand for limited curb space, including passenger pick-up and drop-off; last-mile delivery (e.g., courier network services, personal delivery devices); electric vehicle (EV) charging; micromobility parking and use (e.g., personally owned and shared bikes and scooters); and carsharing services. The curb serves a variety of functions such as vehicle and device storage (...

Individual and City-level Variations in Heat-related Road Traffic Deaths in Latin America

Hsu, Cheng-Kai
Quistberg, D. Alex
Sanchez, Brisa N.
Kephart, Josiah L.
Bilal, Usama
Gouveia, Nelson
Ferrer, Carolina Pérez
Caiaffa, Waleska T.
de Lima Friche, Amélia Augusta
Yannone, Ignacio
Daniel Rodriguez
2025

Latin America experiences both high road traffic mortality and extreme heat, which have been shown elsewhere to be interrelated. However, few studies have examined this association in Latin America—one of the world’s most urbanized, fastest-motorizing regions, with a high share of vulnerable road users—and even fewer have analyzed multiple cities across diverse climates and urban settings. Leveraging ambient temperature and road traffic mortality data (2000–2019) from 272 cities in six Latin American countries, we conducted a time-stratified case-crossover study. On the basis of over 1.9...

An Analysis of HOT Lanes in North Carolina

Benjamin, JM
Sakano, R
McKinney, B
Khattak, AJ
Rodriguez, Daniel
Gaskin, C
2007

Many medium and small-size metropolitan areas in the U.S. face increasing traffic problems similar to large metropolitan areas. These metropolitan areas have responded primarily by expanding their road network and capacity. This paper explores the possibility of using a HOT lane in a medium-size metropolitan area for the same purpose. A detailed analysis and a suggested HOT lane solution are prepared for Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point metropolitan area. While high congestion are not widespread in the region now, a highway corridor is identified based on forecasted high...

Risk-Aware Lane Selection on Highway with Dynamic Obstacles

Bae, Sangjae
Isele, David
Fujimura, Kikuo
Moura, Scott
2021

This paper proposes a discretionary lane selection algorithm. In particular, highway driving is considered as a targeted scenario, where each lane has a different level of traffic flow. When lane-changing is discretionary, it is advised not to change lanes unless highly beneficial, e.g., reducing travel time significantly or securing higher safety. Evaluating such “benefit” is a challenge, along with multiple surrounding vehicles in dynamic speed and heading with uncertainty. We propose a realtime lane-selection algorithm with careful cost considerations and with modularity in design. The...

Travel-time Reliability as a Measure of Service

Chen, Cong
Alexander Skabardonis
Varaiya, P
Transportation Research Board
2003

Statistics from a corridor along Interstate 5 in Los Angeles show that average travel time and travel-time variability are meaningful measures of freeway performance. Variability of travel time is an important measure of service quality for travelers. Travel time can be used to quantify the effect of incidents, and incident information can help reduce travel-time uncertainty. Predictability of travel time is a measure of the benefits of intelligent transportation systems. These measures differ from those defined in the "Highway Capacity Manual" and other aggregate measures of delay.