Ahead of the curve
Every day, 650,000 vehicles navigate the 148-mile New Jersey Turnpike into New York City. The turnpike’s 29 interchanges, periodic construction, occasional accidents and a myriad of weather conditions all can slow traffic. But new technology and human cooperation help keep everybody moving.
To update drivers about traffic conditions, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority maintains a Web site with weather information and video from eight traffic cameras focused on major interchanges. The site also links to three highway advisory AM radio stations, which broadcast travel times and traffic alerts. Drivers can listen to the AM radio stations while on the turnpike as well as view traffic alerts on several variable message signs along the road.
All of that information is made possible through Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) that are designed to use wireless and wire-line communications technologies to help manage traffic flow, reduce congestion and give travelers alternate routes. The technology is making its way throughout the country as communities seek ways to ease commutes in crowded urban areas.
The traffic stops here
In New Jersey, the information drivers receive on the turnpike depends on traffic conditions throughout a maze of arterial roads, expressways, toll ways, interchanges, tunnels and double-decker bridges in New York and Connecticut. Keeping traffic moving through the three states requires communication between 16 different traffic management agencies, representing local police departments, state police, bridge and tunnel authorities, mass transit authorities, port authorities, departments of transportation and one Thruway Authority.
In the mid-1980s, the Transportation Operations Coordinating Committee (TRANSCOM) was created to manage construction projects and minimize delays in the tri-state region. The group soon evolved into a local area network that communicates information and coordinates traffic notifications through shared and linked Web sites, e-mail, phone and fax. Funding for many of the group’s projects comes from the Federal Highway Administration, but TRANSCOM also operates with a $4 million budget supplied by fees paid by the member agencies. “Our first job is to let any agency affected by a backup know about it,” says Matt Edelman, TRANSCOM executive director.
When an agency reports traffic delays to TRANSCOM, the coalition immediately relays the information to all participating agencies. “Our biggest benefit in belonging to TRANSCOM is that it allows us to operate with a regional perspective,” says Sean Hill, director of operations for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. “Now we know about the problem that’s going to impact us, and we can take action before it affects us.”
Sept. 11, 2001, emphasized how essential the region’s communication network had become. The antennas on top of the World Trade Center towers transmitted information for all of the agencies, but because TRANSCOM also maintained communications by fax, it kept the member agencies in touch, according to Solomon Cariness, traffic engineer for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. That avoided further disaster when bridges exiting Manhattan were closed.
Besides collecting information supplied by the participating agencies, TRANSCOM also uses technology to obtain traffic information. TRANSCOM’s System for Managing Incidents and Traffic (TRANSMIT) uses electronic toll-collection tags, known as EZ-Passes, to gather travel data. Transponder readers along the roads detect EZ-Pass tags on cars. As tags pass the readers, the TRANSMIT system compiles vehicle speeds, travel times and other information.
The technology also can detect traffic slowdowns and alert member agencies to respond by providing motorists with revised traffic times or dispatching emergency crews. Also, TRANSCOM is building an Interagency Remote Video Network to connect 13 member agencies’ traffic operations centers, allowing them to share 270 video feeds.
Using the TRANSMIT information, TRANSCOM provides driving and public transit information at www.trips123.com. The TRANSCOM Web site links with the Connecticut Department of Transportation, which sends e-traffic and rail alerts to those who register for them online. Eventually, real-time traffic and transit information will be available at interactive computer kiosks throughout the tri-state region as part of TRANSCOM’s Service Area Travelers Interactive Network. “It’s important to provide a message about the specific reason for the impedance, but what’s at the bottom line is time,” Edelman says. “When you give people travel times, they will make logical decisions.”
Gridlock leader
Located northwest of Detroit, Oakland County, Mich., is the fourth wealthiest among the nation’s counties with populations of more than 1 million residents, based on per capita income. With Ford, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors as major employers, cars are the residents’ preferred mode of travel. Consequently, Oakland County accounts for 42 percent of all gridlock in southeast Michigan, according to the county road commission.
In response, the state has dedicated resources to the problem. With 2,700 miles of county roads, Michigan is the only state with county road commissions that are funded by the state, according to Brent Bair, managing director for the Oakland County Road Commission and a former president and CEO for the Washington-based Intelligent Traffic Systems Society of America (ITS America).
In the last 14 years, the Oakland County Road Commission has invested more than $100 million in intelligent traffic systems technology, including the largest adaptive traffic signal system in the United States and the largest video vehicle detection system in the world, Bair says. Oakland County’s 625 intersections are outfitted with the Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS), which adjusts traffic flow based on information gathered by more than 2,000 “auto scope” cameras mounted on poles to record the numbers and timing of vehicles approaching intersections.
Morning and evening rush hours, as well as sporting events and festivals, prompt the most radical timing adjustments. “At the arterial level, in my county, keeping traffic moving really has to do with [managing] intersections,” Bair says. “The better you can get the intersections running, the better everything moves.”
On one major road in the county, the SCATS system has cut the duration of morning rush hour by 20 percent and evening rush hour by 7 percent, according to road commission records and a Michigan State University study. The comparison was achieved by recording traffic flow with the conventional fixed timers set on optimum settings to the newly installed adaptive signals. Additionally, a three-year Michigan State University study completed in 1995 found that incapacitating injuries from accidents in Troy, Mich., were reduced by more than 50 percent (from 9 percent of all traffic injuries to 4 percent of traffic injuries) after the installation of adaptive signals at 100 intersections.
SCATS also offers labor-saving advantages. The pole-mounted cameras are not harmed as easily by snow and ice as the vehicle-counter loops that were once embedded in the pavement. Repairing one of the old loops would have required shutting down an entire lane of road, Bair says, but the cameras can be repaired without disrupting traffic. Also, the traffic lights automatically reset themselves after a power outage, unlike the old lights, which had to be reset manually.
Controlling icy roads
Southeast Michigan is known for its paralyzing snow storms. Because roads are notorious for icing up immediately, some of the state’s largest traffic management agencies have combined forces to develop the Southeast Michigan Snow and Ice Management (SEMSIM) program, which incorporates several ITS technologies. Led by the Road Commission for Oakland County, the group includes Detroit, the Wayne County Department of Public Services, the Road Commission of Macolmb County and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART). SEMSIM is funded by $10 million in federal dollars and approximately $2 million in state funds. By the start of winter 2006, it will be operating full force with 500 salt and plow trucks.
Salt trucks are armed with infrared devices attached to driver’s side mirrors that read pavement and ambient air temperatures so operators know when to apply salt. With the help of an advanced radio system operated by SMART, each trucks’ global positioning system, as well as sensors on its plows and salt spreaders, tell program administrators where the truck is operating and exactly what it is doing so resources can be conserved, Bair says.
Talking with cars
The next step in ITS technology will allow traffic agencies to communicate with cars’ routing systems. Cars may decide — or at least suggest to motorists — the best routes to take, according to Neil Schuster, president and CEO of ITS America. “Almost every major city has a transportation management center, which is gathering information, finding out where there are bottlenecks,” Schuster says. “[Getting this information into cars] isn’t as far off as you think.”
The key is not necessarily transmitting information to vehicles, but developing cars that can accept the data and use it, Schuster says. Manufacturers like DaimlerChrysler and Ford already have demonstrated technology that accepts information from local outside sources, Schuster says.
Vehicle Infrastructure Integration includes programming prototypes to communicate with other vehicles so that cars will inform other cars of when not to turn and when to brake to avoid collisions, Bair says. “The goal is to one day reduce traffic-related deaths from 42,000 annually to zero.”
Some people are concerned that all of the ITS technology will defeat its own purpose by posing too many distractions for drivers. Transportation officials, however, disagree. “In 1919, it was suggested that windshield wipers shouldn’t be included on vehicles because they were a distraction to the driver,” says David Zavattero, intelligent systems manager for the Illinois Department of Transportation. “[Advanced traffic control] technology is coming. It’s just a matter of when.”
Susan DeGrane is a Chicago-based freelance writer.