California

Full Details

Research/Project Description

VII California Testbed on US-101 and State Route 82 near Palo Alto: Phase 1 VII Test Bed The first phase involved installing VII equipment in a few roadside installations, implementing a few select VII applications and then providing a successful demonstration at the ITS World Congress in November 2005. Four roadside units were installed that successfully communicated with five different vehicles.

Demonstrations included:

• a traveler information application that presented live 511 travel times and incidents in the vehicle
• a mapping application that showed the status of VII-equipped vehicles in real time including vehicle speed, heading, wiper status, and headlight status

Sponsoring Organizations/Researchers

• Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC)
• Caltrans/PATH

Contact

• Greg Larson, Chief, Office of Traffic Operations Research, Division of Research and Innovation, California Department of Transportation, 916-657-4369
• Melanie Crotty, Director, Traveler Coordination and Information, MTC, 510-817-5880
• Jim Misener, Transportation Safety Research Program Lead, 510-665-3612
  http://www.viicalifornia.org/

Time Frame

Yes, Completed 2005

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Research/Project Description

VII California Testbed on US-101 and State Route 82 near Palo Alto:
Proposed Phase 2 VII Test Bed
The goal of the next phase of the VII test bed will be to increase the number of roadside installations and the number of VII-equipped vehicles to enable a realistic evaluation of the viability of VII as a tool for system management and improved traffic safety. The proposed contract amendment would support up to 40 roadside installations over the next year along the project corridor and test the following VII applications:

• Traveler Information, which processes data collected from the VII-equipped vehicles and sends 511 information directly into the vehicles
• Signal Violation Warning, which warns vehicles if they are driving too fast as they approach a traffic signal that is about to turn red
• Curve Overspeed Warning, which warns vehicles if they are driving too fast as they approach a sharp curve
• Toll Collection, which electronically collects tolls from vehicles as they pass roadside installations
• Adaptive Ramp Metering, which uses traffic flow data collected from VII-equipped vehicles to automatically adjust metering rates at freeway on ramps

Sponsoring Organizations/Researchers

• California Department of Transportation
• Metropolitan Transportation Commission of the San Francisco Bay
  

Contacts

• Greg Larson, Chief, Office of Traffic Operations Research, Division of Research and Innovation, California Department of Transportation, 916-657-4369
• Melanie Crotty, Director, Traveler Coordination and Information, MTC, (510) 817-5880
• Jim Misener, Transportation Safety Research Program Lead, 510-665-3612
• Brian Smith, Associate Professor, UVA, (434) 243-8585, http://www.viicalifornia.org/

Time Frame

11/2005 - 7/2008

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Research/Project Description

GPS (Global Positioning System) Mobile Probes: A Field Experiment:

• The experiment will test a novel traffic monitoring system designed to collect velocity and position data from GPS-enabled Nokia N95 cellular phones
• Provides proof of concept for traffic-flow reconstruction from probe vehicle measurements
• 100 vehicles carrying the GPS-equipped Nokia N95 will drive along a 10-mile stretch of I-880 between Hayward and Fremone, CA

Sponsoring Organizations/Researchers

• California Center for Innovative Transportation
• Caltrans
• Nokia
• University of California at Berkeley

Contacts

• Alexandre Bayen, Department of Civil and Environment Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, 510-642-2468
• Quinn Jacobson, Technology Incubation Group, Nokia, 650-521-3243
• JD Margulici, California Center for Innovative Transportation, 510-642-5929

Time Frame

Current

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Research/Project Description

Development and Evaluation of Selected Mobility Applications for VII:

• Design, test and evaluate three innovative ways of using wireless communications capability for VII to improve mobility:
• Collect probe vehicle data to characterize local freeway traffic speed and density, then use that information to generate reference speed advisories to individual drivers to help dissipate shock waves and improve throughput
• Use the same type of probe vehicle data to generate reference speed and gap adjustment commands to cooperative adaptive cruise control systems, to enable them to also dissipate shock waves and increase throughput, while improving driver acceptance
• Use vehicle-vehicle communication between heavy trucks to enable them to operate in close-formation automated platoons, increasing lane capacity and reducing aerodynamic drag
• Microscopic simulation and track testing (Crows Landing, CA)

Sponsoring Organizations/Researchers

• US DOT-FHWA
• California PATH Cooperative Agreement

Contacts

• Bob Ferlis, Technical Director for Operations R&D, TFHRC, 202-493-3268
• Steven Shladover, Research Engineer, PATH, 510-665-3514 / 510-499-8155m

Time Frame

10/2007 thru 10/2010