Project Summary
To fully exploit the benefits of the new generation of Intelligent Transportation Systems now widely under development, including applications for performance measurement and homeland security, more accurate and appropriate real-time traffic data need to be collected from the urban highway transportation network and communicated to traffic management centers, traffic operations personnel, travelers, and other agencies. This research proposes to deploy and investigate at a corridor level anonymous vehicle tracking techniques that have been pioneered by the authors in previous PATH research. The objective of the research is to investigate and demonstrate real-time freeway and arterial performance measurement in a major real-world setting. This project represents a planned continuation of current PATH Task Order (TO) 4159 on Anonymous Vehicle Tracking for Real-Time Freeway and Arterial Street Performance Measurement. TO 4159 emphasized microscopic simulation in conjunction with individual intersection and freeway segment field implementations to develop and assess methods for tracking vehicles across multiple detector stations in a traffic network, based on real-time acquisition of vehicle inductive signatures, in order to provide improved freeway and arterial (and transit) performance measures to the Caltrans PeMS. Ultimately, however, the utility and effectiveness of such new network-based methods can only be judged through large-scale field implementation, as proposed here.
