The extent and severity of traffic and environment impacts of commercial vehicles is currently not well understood due to the lack of an advanced surveillance system that provides necessary information about the nature and variation of their travel behavior. This is particularly important in considering the impacts of major investments in trade national corridor improvements, including access and egress for the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. This research study will develop a new commercial vehicle vector classification system based on a prototype implementation of a new high-fidelity inductive loop sensor that is relatively easy to install and has the potential to yield highly detailed vehicle inductive signatures. This new classification system will provide an unprecedented level of detail on commercial vehicles. The initial results show the potential of using such an inductive sensor to provide a more comprehensive commercial vehicle data profile based on its ability to extract both axle configuration information as well as high fidelity undercarriage profiles within a single sensor technology.

This multi-year project focuses on integrating Caltrans primary signal management system, CTNET, with a major product from the Caltrans ATMS Testbed: the Coordinated Adaptive Real-Time Expert System for Incident management in Urban Systems, or more simply, CARTESIUS . The research will focus on delivering numerous software products for integrating CTNET with field devices, simulation software, with other traffic management systems in general, and with a streamlined re-implementation of the CARTESIUS incident management system. The system will require various software components necessary for external systems with CTNET using both the AB3418e protocol and CTNET’s own custom socket-based communications protocol for communications between CTNET clients and the CTNET CommServer. The use of these software components will link CTNET to various systems including a non-standard field infrastructure, the Paramics microsimulation, and the CARTESIUS incident management system. The resulting system will be used to evaluate a more deployable re-implementation of CARTESIUS connected to the simulation via CTNET.