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Volpe Center Highlights - January/February 2002

Focus

Director's Notes | Focus | Safety | Mobility | Human and Natural Environment
Economic Growth | National Security | Papers and Presentations

Volpe Contributes to the TRB's 81st Annual Meeting

Offering an exceptional environment for knowledge sharing in transportation research, policy, and practice, the Transportation Research Board's (TRB) annual meeting drew approximately 8,000 transportation professionals from around the world to Washington, D.C., from January 13 through 17, 2002. The Center was well represented in this diverse group of researchers, academics, administrators, and others from government and industry. Volpe staff presided over 15 sessions or meetings, participated in nearly 40 sessions or meetings, delivered 15 papers or presentations, and developed and staffed the Volpe Center exhibit, DOT's Small Business Innovation Research Program exhibit, RSPA's University Transportation Centers exhibit, and DOT's Technology and Innovation exhibit.

At the recent TRB annual meeting, the Center's exhibit showcased Volpe's expertise in Motor Vehicle Crash Avoidance, Motor Vehicle Crashworthiness, and Rail Equipment Crashworthiness.

The TRB meeting may be the world's largest transportation forum. With every mode of transportation represented, it is an ideal venue for the Volpe Center to share its knowledge and perspective. Volpe participants covered a broad range of topics, including environmental impacts of transportation, ferry market analysis, educating transportation professionals, intelligent transportation systems, transportation economics, transportation networks, railroad-highway grade crossings, transportation and sustainability, airport capacity management, collision avoidance systems, railroad track structure and maintenance, rail equipment crashworthiness, and critical infrastructure protection.

Volpe Participants

• Ms. Anya Carroll, Railroad Systems Division, presented the paper "North Carolina Sealed Corridor Phase I Study Assessment" at the session titled "Railroad-Highway Crossing for 2002, Part 1." The session was sponsored by the Committee on Railroad-Highway Grade Crossings. She serves as secretary of the Rail-Highway Grade Crossings Committee meeting, and will assume the chair of the committee in 2003.

• Mr. Allan DeBlasio, Planning and Policy Analysis Division, presented findings from the review "Local Funding of ITS and Operations Activities" at the workshop titled "The Truth About the Costs of Intelligent Transportation Systems: Implications for Improving Planning and Operations in Traffic Management." The Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems sponsored the workshop.

• Mr. Robert Dorer, Chief of the Railroad Systems Division, organized and presided over the session titled "Progress in Passenger Guided Ground Systems Safety and Efficiency," which was sponsored by the Committee on Guided Intercity Passenger Transportation. As chair of this committee, he organized and chaired the annual meeting.

"Ferry Market Analysis: National Parks of New York Harbor" noted potential ferry routes in the Gateway National Recreation Area. The park covers 26,000 acres in the heart of the New York metropolitan area and extends through three New York City boroughs and into northern New Jersey.

• Mr. Michael Dyer, Technology Applications and Deployment Division, and Ms. Melissa Laube, Service and Operations Assessment Division, presented "Ferry Market Analysis: National Parks of New York Harbor" at the session titled "Ferry Planning and Market Analysis" sponsored by the Committee on Ferry Transportation.

• Mr. Gregg Fleming, Chief of the Environmental Measurement and Modeling Division, organized and chaired the Committee on Transportation-Related Noise and Vibration; he also organized the session on Highway Noise Modeling and the session on Transportation-Related Noise Issues.

Airport Capacity Management The Volpe presentation "Airport Capacity Management: Arrival and Departure Interactions" presented a new approach that allows for additional airport operational resources by employing the interdependence of airport arrival and departure capacity.

• Dr. Eugene Gilbo of the Automation Applications Division organized and presided over a session titled "New Approaches for Airport Capacity and Demand Management," during which he also presented the paper "Airport Capacity Management: Arrival and Departure Interactions." Dr. Gilbo made a second presentation titled "Airport Arrival/Departure Tradeoff Optimization Tool for Strategic TFM [Traffic Flow Management]" at a session titled "Airport Benchmarking: New Performance Metrics," sponsored by the Committee on Airfield and Airspace Capacity and Delay and the Committee on Aviation Economics and Forecasting. Dr. Gilbo demonstrated the current version of the decision support tool that is being developed at the Volpe Center for air traffic management specialists.

Four-quadrant gates at the School Street Grade Crossing in Groton, Connecticut, the demonstration site for four-quadrant gate technology along Amtrak's Northeast High-Speed Rail Corridor. When all four arms of the gate are down, as shown above, vehicles are effectively blocked from entering the crossing.

• Mr. Adrian Hellman, Railroad Systems Division, presented "Preliminary Evaluation of the School Street Four-Quadrant Gate Highway-Railroad Grade Crossing" at the session titled "Railroad-Highway Crossing for 2002, Part 1." The session was sponsored by the Committee on Railroad-Highway Grade Crossings. The paper was co-authored by the principal investigator for this research, Ms. Anya Carroll of the Division, as well as Mr. Michael Lee and Ms. Marsha Haines of EG&G Technical Services, a Volpe Center contractor.

• Mr. Thomas F. Humphrey, Office of System and Economic Assessment, presided over the session "Educating the Transportation Planning Professionals of the Future." The session was sponsored by the Committee on Intergovernmental Relations and Policy Processes, the Committee on Statewide Multimodal Transportation Planning, the Committee on Transportation Education and Training, the Committee on Transit Management and Performance, and the Committee on Rail Transit Systems.

Simulation programs such as DynaMIT and MITSIMLab (shown above) were discussed in the Volpe presentation "Evaluation of Traffic Estimation and Prediction Capabities" and in "Calibration and Evaluation of MITSIMLab in Stockholm," co-authored by Volpe staff.

• Dr. Haris Koutsopoulos, Service and Operations Assessment Division, presented "Operational Planning with Simulation-Based Dynamic Traffic Assignment: Mesoscopic Supply Simulation" at the session titled "State of the Art in Dynamic Traffic Assignment Modeling for Network Operations Planning, Part 1," sponsored by the Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics. He also presented "Evaluation of Traffic Estimation and Prediction Capabilities" at the session titled "State of the Art in Dynamic Traffic Assignment Modeling for Network Operations Planning, Part 2." At the poster session "Modeling Transportation Networks," he presented a poster titled "Network State Estimation and Prediction for Real-Time Transportation Management Applications."

• Dr. Douglass Lee, Economic and Industry Analysis Division, presented "Defining and Measuring Equity Impacts of Congestion Pricing" at the session titled "Equity Implications of Congestion Pricing." He also presided over the session titled "Economic Analysis of Pricing and Social Issues in Transportation." Both sessions were sponsored by the Committee on Transportation Economics, of which Dr. Lee is a member. He also presented the paper "Fundamentals of Life-Cycle Cost Analysis" at the session titled "Asset Valuation Issues" sponsored by the Task Force on Transportation Asset Management.

• Mr. William Lyons, Planning and Policy Analysis Division, represented the core team of the US DOT Center for Climate Change and Environmental Forecasting at the meeting of the Task Force on Transportation and Sustainability and the Joint Subcommittee on Sustainable Transportation Evaluation and Indicators of Sustainability. He presented an update on the Center and the Volpe project "Integration of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals in Statewide and Local Transportation Planning."

Highway Noise Modeling The Acoustics Facility of the Environmental Measurement and Modeling Division has been engaged in all aspects of transportation-related noise and vibration for more than 30 years. Highway noise work includes the development and ongoing evaluation of FHWA's Traffic Noise Model, which is used by 500 entities in 12 countries.

• Dr. Judith Rochat of the Environmental Measurement and Modeling Division presided over the session "Highway Noise Modeling," which was sponsored by the Committee on Transportation-Related Noise and Vibration.

• Mr. David Skinner, Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division, co-chaired the Committee on Safe Mobility of Older Persons Driving Cessation Discussion.

Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division This Volpe division resolves problems across all transportation modes by analyzing the relationship between human behavior and transportation safety and productivity.

• Dr. Mary Stearns, Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division, presented "Approach to User Acceptance of New Technology" in the session titled "Vehicle-Highway Automated Systems: In-Vehicle and Collision Avoidance Systems." Mr. Wassim Najm and Ms. Linda Boyle of the Accident Prevention Division co-authored the paper. The session was sponsored by the Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation.

• Dr. Donald Sussman, Chief of the Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division, chaired the Subcommittee on Railroad Operational Safety and co-chaired the Committee on Safe Mobility of Older Persons Driving Cessation Discussion.

• Dr. Theodore Sussmann, Structures and Dynamics Division, served as co-organizer and co-presiding officer for the session titled "Track Structure Modeling and Maintenance Planning." The session was sponsored by the Committee on Railroad Track Structure System Design and the Committee on Railway Maintenance. Dr. Sussman is a member of both committees.

"Evaluation of Passenger Rail Equipment Crashworthiness Strategies" compared two alternative strategies: conventional, wherein rail cars are of uniform strength, and crash energy management (CEM), wherein rail cars have weaker crush zones at each end. Volpe's evaluation concluded that CEM provides a significant increase in crashworthiness over the conventional approach.

• Mr. Eloy Martinez, Structures and Dynamics Division, presented "Evaluation of Passenger Rail Equipment Crashworthiness Strategies," authored by Mr. David Tyrell of the Division. The paper was presented at the session "Progress in Passenger Guided Ground System Safety and Efficiency," sponsored by the Committee on Guided Intercity Passenger Transportation.

• Ms. Judith Warren, Information Integration Division, presented a paper titled "The Use of Photo Enforcement at Highway-Rail Grade Crossings in the U.S." at the session titled "Railroad-Highway Crossing for 2002, Part 1." The session was sponsored by the Committee on Railroad-Highway Grade Crossings. The paper was co-authored by Ms. Anya Carroll of the Railroad Systems Division.

• Dr. C. Y. David Yang, Accident Prevention Division, served as meeting co-chair for the Subcommittee on Advanced Traveler Information Systems.

Volpe Exhibit

The Volpe Center exhibit, "Preventing Injuries, Saving Lives," presented recent work in Motor Vehicle Crash Avoidance, Motor Vehicle Crashworthiness, and Rail Equipment Crashworthiness. Volpe's support to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Federal Railroad Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and Federal Highway Administration was highlighted. The Crash Avoidance display featured Volpe's evaluation of an intelligent cruise control system, videos of the Volpe-designed characterization tests of the Volvo-Eaton/VORAD Crash Warning System, and a demonstration of a PC-based, multimedia, data-analysis tool to be used in Volpe's evaluation of the GM Rear-End Crash Warning System. The Motor Vehicle Crashworthiness display featured computer animations of vehicle crash simulations, including full-vehicle, finite element, and occupant models in frontal and side impacts. This display also presented Volpe's Fleet Systems Model, which is used to evaluate the impact of vehicle design changes and the introduction of new safety systems on the U.S. automobile fleet. The Rail Equipment Crashworthiness display included overviews of ongoing, full-scale, impact testing; field investigations of occupant injury in passenger train accidents; and support to federal rulemaking and development of industry standards.