Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2013
Decision makers in state transportation agencies typically manage budgets approaching or exceedin... more Decision makers in state transportation agencies typically manage budgets approaching or exceeding $1 billion. Historically, the data used to make investment decisions have been quite coarse and have been typically based on short-term volume counts fed into models to forecast performance. As a result, it is not uncommon for construction projects to address needs that were forecast to be a priority 5 to 10 years earlier, while more pressing congestion challenges go unmet. It is essential that long-term planning begins to be supplemented by more current performance measures. The emerging private-sector probe vehicle data obtained from commercial providers offer an opportunity to augment traditional forward-looking planning models with performance measures that reflect the conditions motorists are experiencing today. This paper proposes scalable, analytical probe data–reduction techniques to create technically sound, yet visually intuitive, system-performance measures of current freewa...
Probe vehicle speed data are being used to evaluate traffic congestion characteristics, resilienc... more Probe vehicle speed data are being used to evaluate traffic congestion characteristics, resiliency, and network response at local, corridor, and regional levels. A better understanding of changes in traffic characteristics, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, can be realized through the analysis of spatially located, temporal speed data. This paper explores the possibility to use probe vehicle data sets to quantify the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19), which closed New Jersey State schools and buildings starting around March 18, 2020. The preliminary research analyzed about 500,000 speed records over a 21 week period at two intersections in Northern New Jersey to numerically and visually characterize the speed patterns. A simplistic comparison of average speeds binned in 15, 10, and 1-minute increments was conducted to quantify the change in vehicle travel speeds. Although further research and statistical analysis is necessary to evaluate the data as it relates to the New Jersey State pa...
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2011
A wide variety of alternative optimization objective functions, such as minimizing stops, minimiz... more A wide variety of alternative optimization objective functions, such as minimizing stops, minimizing delay, and maximizing arrivals on green, has been reported in the literature. An extensive literature evaluates these alternative objective functions with models. This paper reports on the field deployment of these alternative optimization functions, developed with high resolution controller data, to adjust offsets on an arterial system of eight coordinated signals. The deployment consisted of a 1-week base data collection and four 1-week deployments of offset plans developed with four alternative optimization objective functions. Travel times of anonymous probe vehicles were measured during the study period to evaluate the impact of these alternative optimization functions on corridor travel time. All objective functions were successful in reducing median corridor travel time significantly. Median travel time decreased by more than 1 min in both directions on the 5-mi corridor. Trav...
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Smart Infrastructure and Construction, 2022
Internet of Things (IoT) devices allows data to be efficiently communicated using low power to a ... more Internet of Things (IoT) devices allows data to be efficiently communicated using low power to a central server to report location, movement, temperature, and environmental attributes. With improvements in device connectivity distance, improved link margins, reductions in IoT hardware platform costs, and the availability of higher-capacity batteries, non-powered temporary construction equipment (e.g., concrete barriers) can become smart and trackable. For this study, a Long Range (LoRa) sensor platform is connected through an IoT Low Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) to test the feasibility of tracking construction equipment related to transportation. The signal strength relative to distance is analyzed along with the RF signal attenuation of signal strength through construction materials. The preliminary results show that a commercially available LoRa sensor, with an omni-directional antenna operating on an LPWAN can transmit up to 1,310 meters at-grade. It is expected that these typ...
Track clearance green phases are used at railroad preempted intersections to provide time to clea... more Track clearance green phases are used at railroad preempted intersections to provide time to clear the railroad tracks of highway vehicles before a train arrives. This paper describes preemption performance measures developed in Indiana that use high resolution, real-time traffic signal event data, and a gate-down confirmation circuit at an active railroad crossing. These performance measures are used to quantitatively assess the synchronization of the track clearance phase with the railroad gate position. Performance measure plots from over 4,000 preemption events over six months are presented. The lessons learned from the assessment of these performance plots are described along with changes made to the test site during the study period. The paper concludes with recommendations for incorporating a highway-railroad synchronization performance measure using the start of railroad active warning time as a surrogate gate-down confirmation circuit.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2013
Decision makers in state transportation agencies typically manage budgets approaching or exceedin... more Decision makers in state transportation agencies typically manage budgets approaching or exceeding $1 billion. Historically, the data used to make investment decisions have been quite coarse and have been typically based on short-term volume counts fed into models to forecast performance. As a result, it is not uncommon for construction projects to address needs that were forecast to be a priority 5 to 10 years earlier, while more pressing congestion challenges go unmet. It is essential that long-term planning begins to be supplemented by more current performance measures. The emerging private-sector probe vehicle data obtained from commercial providers offer an opportunity to augment traditional forward-looking planning models with performance measures that reflect the conditions motorists are experiencing today. This paper proposes scalable, analytical probe data–reduction techniques to create technically sound, yet visually intuitive, system-performance measures of current freewa...
Probe vehicle speed data are being used to evaluate traffic congestion characteristics, resilienc... more Probe vehicle speed data are being used to evaluate traffic congestion characteristics, resiliency, and network response at local, corridor, and regional levels. A better understanding of changes in traffic characteristics, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, can be realized through the analysis of spatially located, temporal speed data. This paper explores the possibility to use probe vehicle data sets to quantify the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19), which closed New Jersey State schools and buildings starting around March 18, 2020. The preliminary research analyzed about 500,000 speed records over a 21 week period at two intersections in Northern New Jersey to numerically and visually characterize the speed patterns. A simplistic comparison of average speeds binned in 15, 10, and 1-minute increments was conducted to quantify the change in vehicle travel speeds. Although further research and statistical analysis is necessary to evaluate the data as it relates to the New Jersey State pa...
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2011
A wide variety of alternative optimization objective functions, such as minimizing stops, minimiz... more A wide variety of alternative optimization objective functions, such as minimizing stops, minimizing delay, and maximizing arrivals on green, has been reported in the literature. An extensive literature evaluates these alternative objective functions with models. This paper reports on the field deployment of these alternative optimization functions, developed with high resolution controller data, to adjust offsets on an arterial system of eight coordinated signals. The deployment consisted of a 1-week base data collection and four 1-week deployments of offset plans developed with four alternative optimization objective functions. Travel times of anonymous probe vehicles were measured during the study period to evaluate the impact of these alternative optimization functions on corridor travel time. All objective functions were successful in reducing median corridor travel time significantly. Median travel time decreased by more than 1 min in both directions on the 5-mi corridor. Trav...
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Smart Infrastructure and Construction, 2022
Internet of Things (IoT) devices allows data to be efficiently communicated using low power to a ... more Internet of Things (IoT) devices allows data to be efficiently communicated using low power to a central server to report location, movement, temperature, and environmental attributes. With improvements in device connectivity distance, improved link margins, reductions in IoT hardware platform costs, and the availability of higher-capacity batteries, non-powered temporary construction equipment (e.g., concrete barriers) can become smart and trackable. For this study, a Long Range (LoRa) sensor platform is connected through an IoT Low Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) to test the feasibility of tracking construction equipment related to transportation. The signal strength relative to distance is analyzed along with the RF signal attenuation of signal strength through construction materials. The preliminary results show that a commercially available LoRa sensor, with an omni-directional antenna operating on an LPWAN can transmit up to 1,310 meters at-grade. It is expected that these typ...
Track clearance green phases are used at railroad preempted intersections to provide time to clea... more Track clearance green phases are used at railroad preempted intersections to provide time to clear the railroad tracks of highway vehicles before a train arrives. This paper describes preemption performance measures developed in Indiana that use high resolution, real-time traffic signal event data, and a gate-down confirmation circuit at an active railroad crossing. These performance measures are used to quantitatively assess the synchronization of the track clearance phase with the railroad gate position. Performance measure plots from over 4,000 preemption events over six months are presented. The lessons learned from the assessment of these performance plots are described along with changes made to the test site during the study period. The paper concludes with recommendations for incorporating a highway-railroad synchronization performance measure using the start of railroad active warning time as a surrogate gate-down confirmation circuit.
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