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Volpe Journal 30th Anniversary - A Special Edition
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Mobility refers to the movement of people and goods, and the extent to which that movement takes place expeditiously and efficiently. Mobility affects each one of us, our families and neighbors, and our work. If we wait too long on the runway for a flight to take off after boarding, or if we waste coveted weekend time in stop-and-go traffic, we are acutely aware of the effects of capacity on mobility. If our sight-impaired parent misses schedule change information on a bus trip because it's offered only through visual information displays, or if our handicapped friend can't step up onto a tram, the importance of accessibility to mobility becomes obvious. If the goods we need for our business are tied up on vessels because of inadequate access to unloading facilities, or if our containers sit idle because there is no double-stack rail link to a dock area, or if prices for our supplies go up because trucks consume valuable hours to reach a poorly located inner city intermodal freight center, then we realize that we must focus on how the management and technology of freight infrastructure affect economic mobility. |
If our neighbor is unable to accept an employment offer because she has no car and there is no available public transportation to the workplace, we recognize the extent to which removing barriers to mobility can expand personal opportunities.
When we wait longer to transfer between bus routes than the time we actually spend in a bus, when the line at the train ticket counter adds 10 minutes to the daily commute, or when traffic lights are improperly timed, we see how using service improvements to speed up traffic flow can improve the quality of our lives and our economic productivity.
Mobility problems like these often emerge over long periods of time. They appear first on the distant horizon as minor, scattered, and tolerable irritations. Suburban and rural congestion, lack of access for disabled and disadvantaged populations, freight delays due to terminal access problems, and air traffic congestion are examples of this type of issue. By contrast, some other transportation issues arise in response to specific events in a short time period, such as those that might give rise to an automobile recall.
If a localized mobility issue is not addressed, it can gradually mature to become acute and pervasive, affecting large numbers of people and businesses. Often, vocal and organized constituencies asking for solutions emerge. By then minor problems have frequently become major ones that require ongoing programs and significant funding to study and remedy.
The Volpe Center's Mobility Initiatives
The Volpe Center has an established 30-year tradition of developing and testing a range of mobility solutions, especially in three linked areas: new technology, service innovations, and the comprehensive evaluation of new ideas and concepts. Addressing the complex and far-reaching issues of mobility affecting people and goods is a key part of the Volpe Center's support of national transportation-related initiatives. This work helps the Center serve as a federal bridge for transportation expertise between industry, academia, and other government agencies.
New Technology:
Enhancing Transportation Systems
Volpe has contributed to many mobility initiatives that develop and refine new technologies, such as vehicle/guideway methods, computerized information systems to enhance the performance of existing technologies, and intelligent highways. These initiatives improve operating efficiency and reduce costs, and enhance the quality of travel and shipping for users through better on-time performance, improved safety, and shorter travel times.
Service Innovations:
Improving Transportation Mobility in Our Cities and Towns
Service innovations are the transportation solutions most visible to the general public. These innovations include new services and new applications of existing services and technologies to respond to emerging or newly recognized needs in transportation. For example, the Volpe Center has played a key role in developing and implementing such initiatives as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems, paratransit and ridesharing services, downtown people-mover systems, and dial-a-ride services.
Comprehensive Analysis and Evaluation:
New Transportation Ideas and Concepts
During the development and adoption of mobility initiatives, the Volpe Center applies comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis to assess financial and operational feasibility, comparative effectiveness, and success in implementation. These analyses include a range of economic and environmental analyses to test customer response to new services and technology applications, and their effects on costs and "quality of life" indicators. Risk analysis, forecasting, human factors analysis, and simulation and modeling are techniques that are routinely refined and applied to evaluate mobility.
The Volpe Center's client-oriented work in these three broad areas can be illustrated by examples in four linked areas of current importance: access to transportation for all Americans; enhancing air travel and transport capacity; improving the technology of freight transport; and high-tech innovations for ground transport.
The following pages give some more detailed examples of the Center's work in the mobility arena.
No matter how technologically advanced, transit systems do not fulfill their roles if they are not readily accessible.
Access to Transportation for All Americans
No matter how technologically advanced, transit systems do not fulfill their roles if they are not readily accessible. Our population is increasing; buses, trains, subways, and trolleys together carry millions of passengers. But many locales are struggling both with increased congestion and with ensuring access to transit for their whole population.
Bus Rapid Transit
The Volpe Center supports the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) in projects to develop a system that combines the best of buses and trains. These include sleek, energy-efficient buses that use dedicated lanes in existing roadways and incorporate many innovations to increase accessibility. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems use low-floor buses that permit easy entrance and exit; employ barrier-free fare collection systems; and provide real-time passenger information such as arrival times. A number of cities, such as Los Angeles, Detroit, and Las Vegas have pilot programs to test BRT.
 Seattle's downtown bus tunnel is one segment of a regional BRT system that also includes an extensive network of exclusive transitways and High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes. |
 The new Metro BRT system along Ventura, Wilshire, and Whittier Boulevards in Los Angeles uses roadside sensors to determine the location and speed of BRT vehicles. |
Dial-a-Ride Systems
Accessibility is important to every user of a transit system, but it becomes a critical issue to special populations such as the elderly, people moving from welfare to the workplace, and people with handicaps. The Volpe Center has participated in several projects to improve accessibility for those with physical and financial difficulties. For example, the design for an Autonomous Dial-a-Ride Transit (ADART) system, developed by the Volpe Center, is aimed at assisting customers such as the elderly or disabled who are not adequately served by conventional transit. Dial-a-ride transit is an on-demand service, often in a bus or van, for customers who telephone in their trip requests. The technology consolidates scheduling, fare collection, credit verification, and vehicle routing into a single automated system. The Volpe Center's ADART design does not require a dispatcher and combines off-the-shelf computer and communications components into a system that is highly efficient at a reduced cost. The ADART prototype has been successfully tested in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Welfare to Work:
Helping People Get to Jobs
Special attention to accessibility is needed to move welfare recipients into the paid workforce. Without affordable and accessible public transit, many welfare recipients are unable to find jobs. The Volpe Center has been supporting the DOT in finding ways to increase transit accessibility for those without cars who are seeking work.
For example, a computer-based Geographic Information System (GIS) is at the heart of a Volpe project to pinpoint specific neighborhoods in Boston where additional transportation services (e.g., shuttle vans, extended bus lines) are needed to allow welfare recipients access to employers. The study demonstrated that much recent employment growth is occurring in suburbs, which tend to be underserved by public transport. GIS can be used by area transportation planning organizations to design more efficient bus and van routes.
Air Transport Capacity
When approved in 1978, airline deregulation was designed to produce consumer benefits, but there have been some serious repercussions. One result of deregulation was the shift by major carriers to hub-and-spoke operations. By consolidating passenger traffic and flights from many "spoke" cities into hub airports, major airlines were quickly able to gain footholds in additional markets. However, this model means that delays at one major airport can quickly spread throughout the entire aviation system. By July 2001, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported that more than 25 percent of airplane flights were delayed at America's airports. In response to this growing problem, the Volpe Center, in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is working to minimize airport delays without compromising safety. Delays come from many sources, including reduced visibility due to weather, construction on runways, too many aircraft, and the need to sequence landings and departures to avoid accidents.
Air Traffic Management System
The Volpe Center is the operating center for the FAA's Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS). This system, designed and implemented by the Volpe Center, graphically displays current aircraft positions. It also projects traffic demands for all U.S. airports, and generates an alert when projected demand exceeds a threshold. The Center also helped develop an enhancement that provides Runway Visual Range data on weather conditions at 45 high-traffic airports. As part of its traffic management program, Volpe operates the Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) program website, the FAA's high-priority system for sharing information among the airlines and the FAA's air traffic organization.
The Federal Aviation Administration is working to minimize airport delays without compromising safety.
 An ETMS Traffic Situation Display screen, showing air traffic, weather, alerts, and statistical information. |
The Volpe Center also supports the FAA's Safe Flight Program, a joint initiative of government and industry. It is meant to speed up the adoption of Free Flight, a model proposed in the 1960s, in which pilots could fly routes of their own choosing through defined airspace. Free Flight would help alleviate air traffic delays by allowing pilots more flexibility, but it depends heavily on flight crews having highly developed situational awareness--the combination of experience and perception of the environment that pilots and crew use in flight situations. Information derived from evolving communications, navigation, and surveillance technologies can contribute to improved situational awareness, but pilots and crew need to know how to use the data gained from systems such as global positioning. Safe Flight 21 is designed to increase crew awareness of new flight technologies.
Managing Planes on the Ground:
Preventing Runway Incursions
Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board have made preventing runway incursions (situations that could lead to accidents involving aircraft moving on the ground or in the process of takeoff or landing) one of their highest priorities. As part of its Runway Incursion Reduction Program, the FAA called on the Volpe Center to help develop improved, cost-effective Airport Surface Detection Equipment. This provides all-weather aircraft and vehicle detection and tracking capability and also provides warnings, alerts, and status information to air traffic controllers. The new system comprises a radar that scans an airport surface to locate aircraft and ground vehicles; a surveillance system that tracks transponder-equipped aircraft on the surface and on approach routes; and a system that blends this information to provide a unified surveillance "picture" of airport ground traffic.
Technology and People
 ITS innovations include dynamic message signs that will help alleviate congestion. |
With congestion on highways increasing as a result of population growth, economic expansion, and changes in demographic patterns, pressure to find ways to relieve overcrowded roadways is growing. Technological advances offer a variety of solutions that can alleviate congestion and make other forms of transportation more appealing. Information technologies used include the latest in computers, electronics, communications, and safety systems. Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies can be applied to highways, streets, and bridges, as well as to cars, buses, trucks, and trains. The Volpe Center has undertaken a variety of ITS projects working with both the FTA and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as well as state and local governments.
Smart Cards: No Need for Cash?
The Center has collaborated in developing "smart cards." Wallet-sized cards can store information and communicate with external devices. They can store monetary value and can also be used to control access to restricted facilities. They are ideal for everyday transactions such as paying for transit fares, tolls, parking fees, and gas, and are also useful for controlling access to parking lots or buildings. Because they eliminate many of the steps involved in collecting fees and tolls, they are an important part of ITS programs to increase mobility and reduce congestion.
For example, the Center is working with the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to broaden a program using smart cards that can be read without swiping through a reader. The plan is to provide a single card that will give access to buildings, computers, parking, and other facilities and services.
High-Speed Ground Transportation: On Track for Faster Trains
One means of reducing congestion on the roads is to increase the attractiveness of other forms of ground transportation. The United States is starting to keep pace with Europe and Japan in the realm of high-speed trains. The Volpe Center has been a major participant in the research and development needed to take high-speed ground transport from concept to deployment. For example, the Center performed studies to assess the feasibility and safety of systems like France's Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) for American rail corridors. The Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) Next Generation High-Speed Rail Technology program has fostered new interest in super-fast trains. The Volpe Center is at the hub of this research, looking into economic factors such as ridership, fare structure, and capital costs, as well as studying all aspects of safety, such as track geometry, vehicle safety, guideway integrity, and communications.
Speeds Up to 240 MPH
Maglev, or magnetic levitation, is a very advanced transportation technology in which magnetic forces lift, propel, and guide a vehicle over a specially equipped guideway. When Congress passed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, maglev was given its own deployment program to demonstrate the feasibility of maglev for speeds up to 240 mph. The hope for maglev is that it will prove to be a low-maintenance, low-cost, high-speed technology; the Volpe Center is in the forefront of its development by providing environmental, system-safety, and planning support to the FRA's maglev deployment research. The Center has sent teams to Europe and Japan to learn from those countries' maglev research programs as well.
 The Transrapid 08 prototype maglev train in Hamburg, Germany, installed on an improved guideway. |
Technology and Freight
Over the past 30 years, there has been a steady increase in the number of vessels carrying freight through international shipping lanes and inland waterways to domestic and foreign ports. Because of this increase many transportation agencies have begun to rely on innovative technologies to insure that goods and freight reach their final destination efficiently and safely. The Volpe Center has been in the vanguard of research to design and implement cost-effective state-of-the-art navigation technologies. The Center is responsible for several technological advances in marine navigation, and has provided support to many transportation agencies in the United States and abroad. Using advances in satellite technology and communications, the Volpe Center has developed navigation systems that are accurate and easy to use.
Navigating the St. Lawrence Seaway: From Sextants to Satellites
In 1979, the Volpe Center developed a precise all-weather navigation system for the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation using Loran-C and Raydist-T electronic monitoring devices. Today, the Volpe Center is upgrading that navigation system with one that is more accurate. Volpe's Center for Navigation has implemented an Automatic Identification System (AIS) for vessels, using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to track ships traveling in the Seaway. A vessel equipped with an AIS transponder transmits its exact location to the Seaway Traffic Control Center. The exact location of a particular vessel is plotted on a computer display and its speed and course are indicated. The Seaway Traffic Management System adds pertinent information such as wind speed and direction, ice conditions, availability of the next lock, and safety-related messages. The benefits of this system include: reductions in transit time and fuel consumption; safer operation through transmission of precise weather conditions; 24-hour navigation for vessels; and improved safety through real-time ship-to-ship communications. This new navigation and communications system has created considerable potential savings for vessels.
Navigation in Central America: Panama, Honduras, and Nicaragua
 Aerial view of Gatun Locks in the Panama Canal. |
The Panama Canal is a challenging and treacherous navigation waterway. Nearly 13,000 oceangoing vessels traverse the canal each year. The pilots of these vessels must navigate in adverse weather conditions past landslides, around corners, over submerged rocks, and around huge dredging operations. In 1995, the Panama Canal Commission asked the Volpe Center to develop a system that would track the location of transiting vessels, tugboats, and dredges. The scale of the Panama Canal project is considerably larger than that of the St. Lawrence program. It includes 120 mobile GPS units that communicate with a system of 24 orbiting satellites, resulting in precise vessel location data accurate to one meter using differential GPS. The Communications, Traffic Management, Navigation (CTAN) system helps pilots to navigate this difficult canal.
To keep costs down, the Volpe Center designed the system to use "off-the-shelf" components. The mobile units consist of a GPS receiver and antenna, a laptop computer, and a separate radio antenna for communications with the control center. Approximately half of the mobile units are permanently installed in canal resources such as tugboats and dredges; canal pilots carry the remaining units aboard transiting vessels.
Volpe has also participated in other marine navigation projects in Central America. In the wake of damage caused in Central America by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the U.S. Agency for International Development asked the Volpe Center to develop a system to replace navigation aids such as buoys that were lost in Honduran and Nicaraguan ports.