Evaluating Alternative Operations Strategies to Improve Travel Time ...

SHRP 2 L11: Final Report
• All new vehicles have stability control and air bag systems.
• Vehicle manufacturers have teamed up with the USDOT and State DOTs to develop
Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII), an initiative to provide vehicle-to-vehicle
communications and to improve safety and mobility. Vehicle Infrastructure Integration
(VII) is currently being tested in California and Michigan.
Travelers
• Increased use is being made of traveler information through cell phone and Internet
services.
• Onboard distractions from phones, TV, and games contribute to reduced reliability.
• Travelers are purchasing vehicles with higher safety ratings and/or in-vehicle
information systems.
• Telecommuting is increasingly common but still only accounts for a tiny fraction of the
urban travel market.
FUTURE SCENARIOS OVERVIEW – A CON OPS PERSPECTIVE
The key characteristics that describe future conditions are described below. For the future baseline,
optimistic, mediocre, and pessimistic conditions, technologies, organizational activities, and key
responsibilities are described.
Overview of Future Baseline Conditions
A realistic, yet beneficial situation can be achieved with today's technology if agencies are
committed to implementing performance-driven strategies. The technologies for the future
baseline condition involve widespread deployment of all current traffic-management strategies
such as ramp metering, variable speed limits, hard shoulder running, congestion pricing, truck
lanes, and adaptive signal control across all major urban areas as compared with the patchy
deployment of today. The key factor to achieve this is an increased level of technical integration
and interagency coordination. All of these technologies can be operated as an active traffic
management system.
The deployment of currently available traveler information systems such as DMS, HAR, 511,
traffic websites, radio traffic reports, and Twitter, will be common among transportation system
operators. Both real-time and historical information will be disseminated. Congestion information
will be available for both freeways and major arterial roadways and will be coordinated across
jurisdictions so that customers can use one portal to access all of the information.
Weather and road condition information will be factored into traffic management decisions in
addition to being used for winter road maintenance. Comprehensive real-time and predictive
weather and road condition information will be provided to the public. All roadways will have
incident response coverage, which is coordinated among jurisdictions. All safe and legal
commercial vehicles will bypass inspection and weigh stations at freeway speeds. Agencies will
have some type of performance data for all of their roadways and will provide limited reporting of
performance. These data will be provided in an archive that can be easily accessed in a usable
format. Work zone management will be widespread and information of traffic delays related to
work zones will be available to the public.
A CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS Page 104