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Session 7A: Safety Data Collection (Room 106) Moderator: Robert Pollack, Federal Highway Administration
Moderator: Jim Hunt, Federal Highway Administration
Integrated corridor management is the coordination of individual network operations between adjacent facilities in order to produce an interconnected system capable of cross-network multimodal travel management. The current state of the practice is highly disaggregated. Freeway and arterial networks are often subject to unrestrained demands significantly greater than available capacity. Capacity is often reduced at bottleneck locations, such as major interchanges and bridges. However, the ability to shift travel demands between networks and modes during traffic incidents, roadway work zone activity, adverse weather, or simply unusually large traffic demands is severely hampered by lack of information about current conditions (particularly on the arterial networks), and lack of standardized technical means for sharing that information. There is also a lack of institutional collaboration and coordination, and a lack of integrated operational strategies and procedures that focus on maximizing the effectiveness of the entire corridor.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently completed a traffic signal enhancement project known as SR 0051, Section A56. The project, in PennDOT District II (Southwestern Pennsylvania) on State Route 51 in Allegheny County, included twenty-two intersections along S.R. 0051 from Peter's Creek Road in Jefferson Hills Borough to Greenlee Avenue in Brentwood Borough. The systems went through six municipalities and included three existing closed-loop systems and one existing time base system. The time base system was replaced with a closed-loop spread spectrum system, while other communication improvements were made to the fiber optic systems. The primary purpose of the project was to decrease travel time and to also increase the visibility of the signals by installing light-emitting diode (LED) signal indications. To the municipalities paying the electric bill, the main benefit of this project was the LED signals' low wattage and five-year warranty. All objectives were achieved.
Moderator: Glenn C. Rowe, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Tom Haist, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation This panel discussion on large-scale retail development will emphasize traffic-engineering legal concerns, PennDOT's highway-occupancy-permit legal concerns/regulatory program, access-management vehicle ordinances, infrastructure funding, and land use planning coordination and approvals. Leslie A. Peters, Buchanan Ingersull and Rooney, P.C. Paul Cornell, Swatara Township Danny Whittle, Lancaster County Planning Commission This session will provide comments on a regional approach to development and how progress is intertwined with sprawl—the Lancaster County example. Lancaster County, specifically Manor Township, is home of the longest-running standoff with Wal-Mart. In high-growth, high-employment locations like Lancaster County, big-box retailers are viewed as a consequence of progress rather than progress itself. In Lancaster County the municipalities have established growth boundaries. They want to accommodate growth in smaller areas by increased residential density and increased commercial intensity. Local big box zoning is not viewed as exclusionary. Instead, it sets boundaries and establishes standards for density and intensity of development for residential and nonresidential development. William Lester, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Session 7D: Special Event Planning (Room 105)Moderator: Jennifer K. Walsh, McMahon Associates, Inc.
Over the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, Florida's evacuation plans were put to the test. The plans worked and have been refined to ensure that issues are addressed for future evacuations. This presentation will cover the basics of evacuation and include the do's and don'ts of evacuations, and statewide improvements for future evacuations and recovery in the state of Florida. Session 8A: Safety Data Analysis (Room 105)
There is a need for better methods to estimate crash modification factors or alternative measures of safety effectiveness. Funding for transportation safety improvement projects is often limited, so it is important to estimate the relative safety effectiveness of each proposed improvement and select those that are likely to produce the greatest benefit. Estimating the change in expected crashes due to a particular improvement (i.e., the crash modification factor, or CMF) is one method for evaluating safety quantitatively. Alternatively, safety effectiveness may be estimated as the relative probability of a crash. The case-control method, derived from epidemiological studies, is proposed and evaluated to estimate the relative probability of a crash for specific lane and shoulder widths. Epidemiology often seeks to relate risk factors in a population to a particular outcome or disease. In the highway safety context, the "outcome" is a crash, and the "risk factor" is a particular geometric feature or countermeasure in a specific population of roadway segments. The estimated safety effectiveness is compared with CMFs developed in the Highway Safety Manual to test the validity of the method. Five years of geometric, traffic, and crash data were obtained for rural, two-lane highway segments in Pennsylvania. Models were developed with adjustment for average-daily-traffic (ADT), speed, and segment length; the results were consistent with the Highway Safety Manual, indicating a general decrease in crash risk as lane and shoulder width increase. Based on the consistency of the results with the CMFs in the Highway Safety Manual, the case-control method appears well suited for estimating safety effectiveness for geometric elements. Session 8B: Innovative Incident Management Operations and Real-Time Information (Room 206)
The purpose of the task forces is to foster communication and cooperation between organizations that are involved in responding to traffic incidents in these complex and congested interchange areas, to identify incident management needs of those organizations and to address those needs through funding, training, or other programs. The task forces are composed of local police, fire and EMS groups, state police, Department of Transportation personnel, and other appropriate emergency responders, as well as applicable regional agencies. As the facilitator of these groups, the DVRPC provides meeting coordination and support services. This presentation will highlight some of the major accomplishments of the task forces and provide lessons learned. Session 8C: Traffic Signal Technologies (Room 106)
Recently the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) adopted new specifications specifically relating to the minimum performance characteristics of LED traffic signal products. Three separate specifications relating to LED performance now exist, and the industry is encouraged to use and specify these requirements in their current and future purchases of LED traffic signal modules. These specifications individually address LED traffic balls, arrows, and pedestrian signals. Many changes have been made over the past eight years in LED technology. The session will focus on the key features and performance characteristics that LED traffic balls, arrows, and pedestrian signals must now meet in order to fully comply with these new ITE specifications. Key differences in the new specifications regarding product performance, features, and benefits to the public will be addressed and discussed and then compared with the ITE 1998 documents and requirements. Attendees will gain valuable information at this session. The information can be used immediately and will help ensure that immediate and future LED traffic signal purchases will be made using the most up-to-date Institute of Transportation Engineers specifications.
Recently the Department of General Services adopted new purchasing specifications relating to LED traffic signal products. The session will focus on the new possibilities for purchasing and contracting LED and signal products and provide an in-depth understanding of the Co-Stars Program, how it works, and how to make it work for you. Session 8D: Travel Demand Modeling and Forecasting (Room 208)
McCormick Taylor was tasked by the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) to complete the traffic modeling analysis tasks associated with this study of New Jersey's smart growth strategies in the NJ Route 31 corridor near the Borough of Flemington. Previous studies had recommended the construction of a limited-access bypass. However, state budget limitations and public concern prompted an investigation of "smart growth" solutions. The resulting "Framework Plan" was an interconnected roadway networking plan that, in principle, would disperse traffic over multiple paths and provide opportunities for community development. McCormick Taylor's analysis tested the effectiveness of using the Framework Plan instead of the bypass alternative to achieve both local and regional transportation goals. Future efforts are designed to examine alternative land use scenarios and test the progressive implementation of the Framework Plan. This project is ongoing and is presently entering the NEPA process.
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an outreach program of the College of Engineering and the Mid-Atlantic Universities Transportation Center | |||
