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Volpe Center Highlights - January/February 2006

Mobility

Letter from the Director | Focus | Safety | Mobility | Environmental Stewardship | Security
New Directors | Published and Presented

Sharing ITS Knowledge

The Volpe Center has been at the vanguard of research, development, and deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for more than 20 years. Center staff members apply diverse expertise to help DOT achieve the full potential of ITS to reduce congestion, enhance safety, mitigate the environmental impacts of transportation systems, enhance energy performance, and improve productivity. The Center's experience includes identifying obstacles to ITS deployment and their resolutions at national, state, and local levels; supporting the DOT's ITS Professional Capacity Building Program; developing strategies to promote use of the national ITS architecture and ITS standards; incorporating ITS improvements into regional planning methods; assessing and deploying traveler information systems; and facilitating the exchange of ITS knowledge at international levels. Several Volpe Center staff members exemplified the Center's comprehensive expertise at the 12th World Congress on ITS in San Francisco, California, November 6—10, 2005.

• ITS and Catastrophic Events. The Volpe Center conducted six case studies for the DOT's ITS Joint Program Office on the effects of catastrophic events on transportation systems. In each case, portions of the installed ITS suffered damage or failed during the event. Mr. Allan DeBlasio of the Planning and Policy Analysis Division presented "Lessons Learned about ITS Technologies from a Series of Studies on Catastrophic Events and Transportation System Management." He described the kinds of problems encountered, highlighted the need for ITS during and after an emergency, and offered a summary of lessons learned from the case studies, including measures that agency management and staff can take to minimize disruption in service.

• Determining Driver Satisfaction. Also for the ITS Joint Program Office, the Volpe Center conducted a before-and-after customer satisfaction survey of drivers on an urban arterial roadway treated with an adaptive traffic signal system. (Adaptive signal timing automatically adjusts signal timings in real-time based on current traffic conditions.) The objective of the study was to develop and test a methodology for measuring customer satisfaction with roadway quality, and to provide reliable data on whether the adaptive signal system resulted in increased driver satisfaction along the study route. The study findings attest to the robustness of the method developed to measure driver satisfaction with their roadway experience. However, the study did not find an increase in driver satisfaction resulting from the adaptive signal system. Ms. Margaret Petrella of the Economic and Industry Analysis Division presented "Driver Satisfaction with an Urban Arterial after Installation of an Adaptive Signal System," detailing the study method and results.

• The Future of ITS Professional Capacity Building. For several years, the Volpe Center has supported the DOT's ITS Professional Capacity Building (PCB) Program. In a presentation titled "Reinventing Workforce Capacity Building Strategies in ITS—Creating a New Dynamic for Continuous Learning," co-authors Mr. Ron Giguere, ITS PCB Program Coordinator, and Ms. Suzanne Sloan of the Volpe Center's Service and Operations Assessment Division summarized how the ITS PCB Program will address the ITS-related learning requirements of transportation practitioners over the next five years. The program recognizes that each practitioner has different needs at different times, and that they all need better access to learning opportunities that enable them to build the necessary knowledge and skills. The ITS PCB Program intends to meet this challenge by further expanding delivery methods beyond the conventional classroom-training model. Training content must also be repackaged into directly accessible learning tools, and integrated with technical assistance resources so that ITS practitioners can find the right combination of resources where and when they need them.

• Metropolitan Transit ITS Adoption in the United States. Ms. Sari Radin of the Economic and Industry Analysis Division presented "Metropolitan Transit ITS Adoption in the United States," describing a survey of urban transit agencies designed to determine what Advanced Public Transport Systems or ITS technologies these agencies have deployed or plan to deploy. This summary is designed to be useful to both government agencies and the private sector. It provides an overview of the current deployment and reflects possible interest in additional purchase of technology systems. Data that was collected during the summer and fall of 2004 through an Internet survey is compared to that collected in similar surveys in previous years.

• International Workshops. Ms. Jane Lappin of the Economic and Industry Analysis Division, in her role as chairman of the ITS International Benefits, Evaluation, and Costs (IBEC) Working Group, produced a one-day workshop titled "An International Tour of ITS Costs, Evaluations, and Benefits," as part of the ITS America conference. IBEC is an international working group for the ITS community that facilitates the exchange of information and techniques used to evaluate the costs and benefits of ITS throughout the world. This workshop provided ITS program managers and evaluators from the United States, Scotland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom with an opportunity to present lessons learned, discussing their successes, failures, and future plans for achieving their program goals. As part of that workshop, Ms. Lappin chaired sessions on vehicle-infrastructure integration and traveler information services, and Ms. Leisa Moniz, of the Infrastructure Protection and Operations Division, organized a panel of international experts addressing electronic fee payment. Further, Ms. Lappin chaired a special session on the issues related to the introduction of ITS in developing countries and economies in transition. Ms. Lappin also participated in an international workshop on the future of urban transport organized by Transport for London.

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