Advances in wireless communications have significantly impacted the everyday life of individuals. This has
already had an impact in transportation – simply consider, for example, the proliferation of navigation systems,
and the problem of driver inattention due to the use of wireless devices (as addressed by the new California law
banning the use of cellular phone handsets while driving). A significant challenge to the transportation
engineering community is to harness the capabilities provided by wireless communications to move beyond
traveler “convenience” applications, to create better system operations tools to provide improved mobility. At
a fundamental level, wireless communications provides transportation engineers two critical capabilities that
offer high potential.
1. The ability to collect system status data over links as opposed to points.
2. The ability to exchange data with targeted, mobile vehicles.
This seminar will detail research and findings in three emerging transportation areas supported by wireless
communications: probe-based traffic monitoring, managed lanes, and vehicle infrastructure integration (VII).
