Online Arterial Simulation
Traffic congestion is an $87 billion “cost” to the US economy. In 2007, Americans spent approximately four billion additional hours and purchased an estimated three billion gallons of additional gas due to congestion. Historically, road congestion was “fixed” by increasing the roadway’s capacity. However, expanding roads, especially in urban areas, has become increasingly difficult and expensive. Thus, there has been a significant push by the government, private industry, and the research community to develop and implement alternate means of alleviating congestion. This research project is developing a methodology to provide both public and transportation facility managers with current and near future arterial performance measures.
Vehicle-to-Vehicle Advanced Traveler Information System
With the recent advent of more advanced technologies, particularly wireless communication technology, more economical traffic information systems are becoming possible. Numerous researchers are exploring in- and between-vehicle communication systems, focusing on hardware and software development and testing, aiming to achieve more efficient and effective exchange of information. Given these recent advances in information technology, the opportunity now exists to evaluate the utilization of dynamic, vehicle-oriented information exchanges with respect to their impact on transportation system performance.
Adaptive Signal Control
Increasingly, adaptive signal control and other non-traditional solutions are being implemented in an attempt to improve signal system efficiencies, reduce congestion, enhance signal control responsiveness to incidents, and reduce signal re-timing costs. As part of a recent adaptive signal control implementation in Cobb County, Georgia, a before-and-after operational comparison of an optimized time-of-day (T.O.D.) and an adaptive control system was undertaken. The focus of this operational analysis was typical operating performance during the weekday peak, weekday off-peak, and weekend travel periods. The initial study resulted in a general conclusion that under typical existing traffic conditions, both the well calibrated T.O.D. and adaptive control systems provided good, although similar, performance.
Transportation Embedded Simulation
Transportation is the largest industry in the world. Our transportation system significantly impacts every individual and the welfare of our entire nation in terms of economics, health, and quality of life to name a few. However, for many decades improvements to our ability to actively manage our surface transportation system in real-time have been stagnant. Today, wide-spread deployment of sensors, computers, and communications in vehicles and roadways is creating new challenges and opportunities to effectively exploit the wealth of real-time data and information that are becoming available. We attempt to capitalize on these rapid technology and communications advancements using ad hoc distributed simulations that features dynamic collections of autonomous simulations interacting with each other and with real-time data in a continuously running, real-time, distributed simulation environment.
Arterial Travel Time Monitoring
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) and Bluetooth technologies have been used in several traffic monitoring applications in recent years. RFID readers identify tags that are typically affixed to vehicles for use at tolls. Bluetooth readers anonymously identify the media access control (MAC) addresses of Bluetooth devices such as cell phones, head pieces, radios, etc. in passing vehicles. By configuring a system of two or more units placed at user-defined distances, travel times may be determined along the corridor by comparing the timestamps of identified RFID tags or Bluetooth devices at each reader.
Cobb County School Bus Anti-Idle Program
The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering is working with undergraduate lab assistants to help the Instrumented Vehicle Laboratory research team that is working on a project that will reduce Cobb County school bus fleet emissions using anti-idling technologies. The system employs GPS tracking, cellular notification systems, and an engine shut-off circuit. When bus drivers idle their vehicles in a no idling zone, a series of notifications and eventual key-off of the engine occurs to save fuel. As part of this project, the group will be manufacturing approximately 500 idle-detection circuits and GPS units. The idle detection circuits were designed by students in the ECE and ISyE departments.