Taking The High-Tech Road

For nearly two years, traffic managers in Kentucky eavesdropped. Their target: a Louisville intersection that had become the scene of an inordinate number of accidents. They set up two sound-sensitive cameras to record traffic continuously. When the cameras recorded the common sounds of an accident--the squeal of tires, the smack of metal hitting metal--the system stored the film clips from four seconds before and four seconds after the incident.

By studying the aural and visual evidence, the managers were able to design several collision-reducing improvements for the intersection-- extra signs, new lane stripings, an extension to a traffic island. When project manager Jeff Crossfield compares the $50,000 investment in the portable cameras with the $5,000 to $10,000 a month and several months it takes to study an intersection using more traditional means, he says, "It doesn't take much to make this worth the investment."

Throughout the past decade, states, cities and regional transportation agencies have been experimenting with intelligent transportation toys to ease the flow of traffic and improve safety. In the past few years, that experimentation has accelerated. With both road and transit capacity strained and money for new construction scarce, high-tech solutions are becoming the premier way to squeeze more space out of existing highways and make bus and subway systems more rider-friendly. The listening cameras are just one type of approach. Various forms of intelligent transportation systems, many of which now have a track record to prove their reliability, are being tapped to do a range of things, from boosting the pace of in-city traffic to keeping a close check on truck drivers and their cargos.

TIMING THE REDS

Poorly timed traffic lights create commuter havoc: The stop, stop and stop again of city driving is frustrating. It's also unhealthy, leaving cars to spew fumes at traffic lights.

To keep traffic flowing, city traffic managers have been experimenting with sophisticated and real-time signal synchronization. In California, several cities and their agencies are taking such timing to the next level by joining forces to synchronize traffic lights across an area-wide commute. "Traffic is a regional problem, so the solution has to be regional, too," says Cyrus Minoofar, a senior transportation engineer for the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency.

Minoofar heads up the agency's SMART Corridors project, which oversees several efforts designed to improve the traveling efficiency of the East Bay Area's arterial, freeway and transit routes. Central to the project is a re-engineering of the traffic signals on the arterial roads that flow through two of the area's most congested corridors.

To start, 40 of the busiest intersections will receive four traffic- watching cameras each; as the cameras reveal pockets of congestion, the signals will be re-timed to move the traffic more efficiently. Supporting the cameras will be 40 radar stations installed between intersections to monitor the vehicle count and speed. "Cameras alone don't reduce congestion," Minoofar says. "You need to use the cameras as a tool to verify something, to revise your signal timing." The $15 million project, which should be completed by the end of the year, also includes streaming video from the cameras for commuters to monitor traffic on their own, and the installation of 100 pre-emption devices, which keep traffic lights green for buses entering the intersections.

Collaborating on the project are 25 agencies, including the Federal Highway Administration, federal and regional transit agencies, cities such as Berkeley and Oakland, and Alameda and Contra Costa counties. It is being funded through state tax dollars set aside to address regional congestion.

Oakland County, Michigan, is attacking county-wide traffic congestion with a variation on Alameda's approach. For its scheme, the fast- growing county turned its eyes down under. Ten years ago, it found a system in Sydney, Australia, that relies on a combination of traffic cameras and computer software to monitor congestion and ease it by re- synchronizing traffic lights. Using $50 million in federal grants, the county bought Sydney's software and started installing the system at its own intersections. Surveillance cameras are mounted on poles on the side of the road. To date, the county has installed the cameras at about 550 intersections; between 30 and 50 additional sites are added each year as intersections are widened or redesigned. Each installation costs the county about $110,000.

The cameras initially became a source of concern as residents raised privacy issues. The county's road commission was able to allay concerns on that score: Early on it decided that the data wouldn't be used to nab traffic scofflaws. In fact, the cameras don't have tapes in them; the picture is converted to data and processed through the computer software to change signal timing. "We are not a law enforcement agency," says Craig Bryson, public information officer for the county's Road Commission. "We just want to make the intersections function more efficiently and safely."

With a 10-year track record, Oakland is in a position to measure whether the cameras have helped improve safety and relieved congestion. The findings so far: The county recorded a 50 percent drop in serious injury accidents at the intersection where the system was first installed, and overall, non-peak traffic times have dropped by about a third. Peak travel times are down 9 percent.

At the same time, population has continued to grow steadily, and although he can't put a number on it, Bryson believes one of the system's greatest accomplishments is that congestion would have been much worse without the timing system. There are still points in every rush hour where the road capacity is exceeded. It appears, though, that Oakland County has been able to use its combination of cameras and computers to shorten the length of time a rush-hour overload exists. "The worst of the crunch starts later and ends earlier," Bryson says.

GETTING THE WORD OUT

Drivers and strap-hangers alike know that the flawless commutes--the ones without train delays, fender-benders or buses caught in traffic-- are few and far between. But transportation officials think they've found a key to easing the commuter's lot, even during less-than- perfect travel between home and work. They're tapping into the Internet and the growing popularity of cellular phones and personal digital assistants to let travelers monitor their routes. With the knowledge that a train is running behind schedule, commuters can alert the babysitter, finish up a last piece of work or pass the time in a nearby bookstore rather than wait on a crowded platform.

While such programs have made the most headway in California, they've moved east as well. In February, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority launched its e-alert program. Subway commuters can sign up to receive alerts about delays on their desktop computer, Internet-enabled cellular phone or PDA. "People crave real-time information," says Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for WMATA. "They don't want to read in the newspaper that yesterday there was a delay. They know it. They want to avoid it."

Subscribers choose the subway lines about which they want to receive information, as well as which times of the day they want the messages, such as morning rush hour and evening rush hour. The e-mail alerts include the affected subway line, time the delay occurred, what it was caused by and how far behind trains are. The system also sends a follow-up e-mail when the delay clears.

It didn't cost WMATA extra money to launch the program. The technology to e-mail people already existed, and subscribers sign up via a link from the transit authority's Web page. The next step will be to provide similar alerts for elevator and escalator outages.

A BETTER BUS RIDE

Bus riders are also benefiting from new technologies. More than a dozen transit agencies throughout the country--with fleets ranging from 10 to more than 1,000 vehicles--have installed systems that rely on wireless technology and geographic positioning inside buses and light-rail cars to provide real-time tracking. More important to riders, they provide real-time information about arrivals and delays.

One of the more recent applications has been in Arlington County, Virginia. Since September 2001, it has been experimenting with real- time bus tracking on a popular route that runs through heavily congested downtown Washington, D.C., and over the Potomac River into Northern Virginia. Arlington County put up the $100,000 for the pilot, which covered the cost of installing GPS on the eight buses that drive the route.

Using communication between the GPS and antennas, buses' positions are tracked closely and reported in seconds to a Web site. A map on the Web site shows the location of each bus currently on the route and the location and expected time of its next stop. The same information can be accessed using Web-enabled phones and PDAs. Riders already at the bus stop, but without a hand-held electronic gadget, aren't out of luck: several major stops along the route are equipped with LED signs that give the arrival time of the next three buses.

Passengers appear to appreciate the real-time information, says James Hamre, transit program coordinator for Arlington County. But the county itself hasn't fully analyzed the costs of the program, some of which have been a little more extensive than expected. Bus drivers, for instance, had to be trained to log in to the system at the start of their route. "It's not just flipping a switch," Hamre says. "You have to check that the equipment is functioning and that the Web site is up. If you leave erroneous information out there, people learn not to believe it and you've lost your credibility." The county also found itself footing a bill for $20,000 to run electricity to the LED signs.

Arlington installed a vendor package from NextBus, which runs real- time tracking projects for more than 10 other agencies. Some transit departments, however, are using custom-made products. In the Seattle area, King County Metro is in the process of taking ownership of MyBus on the Internet, a tracking system developed a decade ago at the University of Washington (the University and the county have run the program together for the past year). MyBus keeps tabs on the location of about 1,200 buses over the 1,500-square-mile county.

Originally, MyBus used geographic positioning information and data that recorded how many times a bus's wheels had turned to pinpoint location; students on campus comprised most of the system's users. Posting the data on the Internet broadened the system's popularity: MyBus on the Internet receives about 2 million hits a month, a number that's expected to rise even higher when it moves to King County's server in the next few months.

TRACKING TRUCKS

Technology to keep trucks moving safely along interstate highways and quickly through or by weigh stations has been 20 years in the making. It started when several Southern and Western states piloted a project to weigh trucks as they moved along the highway--weigh-in-motion-- rather than on a static scale at a weigh station. Sensors embedded in the highway pavement about a mile before a weigh station were used to calculate a truck's weight based on the force of the tires on the sensors. Vehicles that passed this weigh-in could then be given pre- clearance to avoid a stop at the weigh station. "The idea was to get the good guys out of the queue and let agents focus on those that need the most attention," says Richard Landis, president and CEO of Heavy Equipment License Plate Inc, a nonprofit group that runs a popular pre-clearance program today.

Weigh-in-motion couldn't be used to pre-clear, however, without a way to identify the trucks as they pass over the sensors and give weigh- station operators the means to communicate with the drivers to let them know whether to stop or keep going. The solution to that problem came with wireless technology. A transponder could be affixed to the truck's windshield to send a wireless signal identifying the truck to the weigh station. In turn, computers could process the weigh-in- motion data and send the truck a stop or go signal via a red or green light on the transponder.

CREDENTIALS CHECK

But there was still a major gap: checking a truck's credentials, such as safety records and other state-specific criteria. A more recent breakthrough came when engineers found a way to use the automatic identification system in combination with computerized credential data to check trucks' credentials remotely. That piece of the technological puzzle meant officials could send red lights to trucks at the correct weight but with credential problems, and it rounded out the components of a successful pre-clearance system.

When the end-to-end system pilot was completed in the early 1990s, most of the states that had participated signed on to continue. A public-private partnership--Landis' HELP Inc.--was set up with a board of directors composed of state transportation and trucking industry officials. HELP facilitates decision making and oversees the distribution of funds. It officially launched PrePass in California in 1995. Today, 24 states are members of the partnership. Within those states, 232 weigh stations have been equipped with weigh-in-motion and automatic vehicle identification. More than 22,000 carriers--which include 225,000 trucks nationwide--are enrolled in the system.

But the program doesn't entitle trucking companies, even those with stellar weight and safety records, to a future without weigh station stops. Trucks randomly receive red lights as part of PrePass's quality control. During periods of heightened security risk, the system can be programmed to stop additional trucks according to states' specifications. For example, some states have increased their inspections of trucks hauling hazardous materials; those trucks no longer qualify for weigh station bypasses.

Despite these stops, PrePass proponents say the program leads to savings for both states and trucking companies. States pay for the below-ground technology components of the weigh-in-motion system but recoup the costs through lower costs at the weigh stations: They have fewer trucks to inspect manually. The additional wireless technology, computer systems and antennas are paid for by trucking companies, which are assessed a fee of 99 cents per bypass of a weigh station. Trucks are not charged if they have to stop. Trucking industry officials estimate that each bypass saves a truck driver five minutes; at a cost of more than $1 per minute to operate a truck, that results in a net savings of more than $4 per weigh station bypassed. Last year, PrePass recorded its 75 millionth bypass.

PrePass is one of several pre-clearance systems for trucks. Oregon set up its own system, using $20 million in federal grants and $5 million in state matching funds. The state operates its Green Light program with the same goal as PrePass--to move truck traffic more efficiently. One of its busiest weigh stations, south of Portland on I-5, was designed to handle about 2,300 trucks daily; more than 6,000 pass it every day. Its technology is similar to PrePass, although the mechanism for weighing trucks on the highway is different: Green Light uses sets of sensors to weigh each axle of a truck and then adds the figures together, while PrePass relies on plates that estimate weight based on how much they bend under the pressure of the truck. Trucks enrolled in Green Light don't pay a bypass fee.

GETTING PERSONAL

Where they may pay, though, is through audits. Green Light and PrePass diverge on the issue of using the systems for law enforcement. In addition to using its system to check truck weight and safety credentials, Oregon uses the weigh-in-motion data to create a time and date stamp for each truck. That data can then be compared to a trucker's log during log-book audits, or used for tax collection purposes. PrePass doesn't pass along similar information to the states enrolled in its program. "It's not a surveillance tool," Landis says.

Oregon has found additional ways to use Green Light in combination with other ITS applications, mainly prompted by safety concerns. More than 40 trucks crashed on a particularly dangerous portion of I-84 in the state's northeast corner between 1999 and 2002. Over the six-mile stretch known as Cabbage Hill, the elevation of the road drops 2,000 feet. Despite cautionary signs in the area, inexperienced truck drivers often encounter problems on the hill.

Last December, the state Department of Transportation started getting personal with its warnings. As a truck driver passes over the weigh- in-motion scales at the start of the decline, computers calculate and then flash the truck's safe speed on a message sign. The personalized message catches the driver's attention by including the name of the trucking company along with the fastest safe speed, between 18 and 37 miles per hour, for descending Cabbage Hill.

MOTION PICTURES

Tens of thousands of spectators descended on Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. With some events scattered as far as 45 miles from downtown, the city needed to ensure that attendees knew the best, and least congested, ways of getting around the area.

Fortunately, the Utah Department of Transportation had started planning ways to ease traffic congestion around Salt Lake City years before the city was picked to host the games. "If we hadn't already had the charge before us, we probably wouldn't have had enough time to put it together before the Olympics," says Martin Knopp, UDOT's director of intelligent transportation systems.

Under the umbrella title of CommuterLink, UDOT constructed a high- tech regional traffic operations center, set up a traffic signal re- timing system throughout the area and launched 511--an interactive traffic information hotline--and a Web site with real-time data.

Knopp brought lessons to Utah from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where he managed ITS projects. Among them was the need to realize time is limited, especially when it comes to implementing complex IT projects. Accordingly, Knopp urged planners to opt for technology that had already proven useful. "It's not a time for research, it's a time to be seen managing traffic well," he told his co-workers. "Don't try to reinvent the wheel to be the biggest and the baddest." So the state retrofitted a $7 million software system developed by Georgia's Department of Transportation, which Knopp cites as a key to its success in implementing the new signal-timing system.

The CommuterLink Web site (www.commuterlink.utah.gov) offers nearly real-time information on accidents, construction and inclement weather. Olympic visitors then and Salt Lake residents today can view pictures from dozens of traffic cameras scattered about the area. The site registered more than 75 million hits during the February games, and has maintained its popularity. As expected, volume dropped after the Olympics but hasn't fallen below 14 million a month and averages more than 20 million. Travelers and residents can also subscribe to an e-alert program and receive detailed e-mails about traffic problems.

Between 1996 and 2001, CommuterLink cost about $121 million, about 75 percent of which Utah funded on its own. While the Olympics may have speeded up the development of the ITS projects, more than a year after the games Knopp says the state continues to show a strong return on its investment: CommuterLink research shows the programs save users more than $100 million worth of fuel and time annually.