Tag Archives: Digital cities

by James A. Bacon

The automobile industry is undergoing the greatest technological revolution since… well, probably since the invention of the automobile. Cars are getting “smarter,” as in embedded with more powerful sensors and artificial intelligence, and they are getting more connected — with other cars and with roads, which are getting smarter as well. The way people drive 10 years from now will be radically different from the way they drive today, especially if driverless cars become the norm.

Will Virginia be ready? That’s the question I frequently ask on this blog. I don’t know the answer, but I will say this: If Virginia is prepared a decade from now, it will owe a lot to the Connected Vehicle/Infrastructure University Transportation Center, a research consortium supported by Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, the Virginia Department of Transportation and Morgan State University.

Last week the Center strutted its stuff in Northern Virginia, putting on a demonstration of emerging connectivity technologies. Dave Forster has the story for the Virginian-Pilot:

To “connect” the car and the motorcycle, they equipped each with a small antenna and a black boxlike device. That allowed them to talk using what’s known as Dedicated Short Range Communications.

“Think of it as robust roadside Wi-Fi,” said Andrew Petersen, the director of technology development at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. …

Another device …looked like a large Wi-Fi router. …  That was the roadside part of the equation. It sent alerts to the vehicles as they passed, including one for a work zone and another for a stopped vehicle.

VDOT has installed 43 of those devices on a stretch of Interstate 66 and nearby roads close to the Capital Beltway. For researchers, it’s a real-world lab to test and collect data with a fleet of 12 connected vehicles, including four motorcycles, a semitruck and two SUVs.

Technology connecting cars and smart roads will be widely available to the public within five to ten years, researchers predict. The potential exists to make roads a lot safer, and perhaps to squeeze more capacity out of the existing road network.

Right now, the commonwealth is ramping up to spend billions of dollars to address Virginia’s transportation needs based on the assumption that future roads will be as stupid as today’s roads, that the revolution in automobile/infrastructure technology won’t change much of anything. Why? Because transportation funding is driven by a bureaucratic process in which projects inch through endless review and funding hurdles. Once a project enters this pipeline, rarely is it dropped. Projects conceived today, based upon today’s technology and land-use realities, will be extruded through this process a decade or two from now, when the transportation environment will be totally different. It’s depressing to think how many billions of dollars will be mal-invested.

A critical transportation challenge at this juncture is to figure out how to make that approval process more flexible, allowing future administrations to yank projects that no longer make sense and to accelerate projects that do.

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has issued a $34 million contract to Pennsylvania-based TransCore to design and build an active traffic management system for Interstate 66. The contract will cover 34 miles of highway from Washington, D.C., to Gainesville, at the intersection of U.S. 29. Reports ITS International:

The active traffic management system will continuously monitor traffic and roadway conditions around the clock, collecting data using roadway monitoring equipment such as vehicle detection sensors and closed-circuit television cameras. The system will use such techniques as lane control signal systems, adaptive ramp metering, enhanced detection and camera systems, lane management systems, and queue warning systems. Active traffic management systems have been used throughout Europe for the last decade, but Transcore says this is a relatively new concept in the United States.

Benefits of the I-66 ATM system for motorists include: dynamic message and lane control signing advising motorists of incidents and delays by providing direction on lanes that are usable, and guidance on merging traffic; expanded use of shoulder lanes regardless of time of day in response to incidents and to manage traffic; improved monitoring of the roadway to provide quicker response by transportation, safety and law enforcement personnel.

Kudos to VDOT for aggressively exploring active transportation management as an alternative to laying more concrete and asphalt. As always, it would be useful for citizens to see a Return on Investment  justification for the investment. My hunch is that commuters will see a lot more benefit from this investment than from extending a single lane for a mile or two. But that hunch needs to be proven. If VDOT can nail down the ROI for smart roads, it will be able to justify more in the future.

— JAB

Smart traffic lights are no cure-all for Virginia’s congested road network but VDOT increasingly regards them as part of the solution.

by James A. Bacon

Northern Virginia traffic was quieter than usual in the early morning of January 17. The weather forecast was calling for snow later in the day, and the Federal Office of Personnel Management had issued an alert recommending that government workers telecommute or take unscheduled leave. Other commuters were staying home, too, especially workers who worried about getting back to day care in time to pick up their kids.

Despite lighter-than-usual conditions, two traffic accidents tied up traffic along Interstate 66, and the Virginia Department of Transportation had to close off some eastbound lanes. To avoid the congestion, many motorists diverted their routes to Nutley Road and the Lee Highway. Back at the Northern Virginia operations center, VDOT employees used video cameras to keep a close eye on the changing traffic patterns.

Had the alternate routes gotten overloaded, VDOT had the option of altering the traffic-light timing: lengthening the green lights for eastbound traffic. But it wasn’t a decision to be made lightly, for it would have thrown off the careful sequencing designed to accommodate the every-day traffic. In the end, the traffic engineers decided not to to tinker with the lights. Emergency response teams cleared the accidents and driving conditions on I-66 eventually returned to normal.

Xiaoling “Ling” Li

Although it went unused that day, the ability to adjust traffic lights real time in response to traffic accidents or disruptive events like the presidential inauguration is a powerful tool in VDOT’s ongoing effort to keep the traffic moving in Northern Virginia. Of the 1,300 traffic lights under its jurisdiction in the region — everywhere but Arlington County, Alexandria and a handful of smaller cities — VDOT actively manages about 900, says Xiaoling Li, Northern Virginia operations engineering manager.

However, while better coordination of traffic signals can reduce congestion, it is no miracle cure for Northern Virginia gridlock, says Garrett W. Moore, former district administrator for the Northern Virginia district who was recently elevated to statewide chief engineer. In numerous Bacon’s Rebellion commentaries, I had urged Virginia transportation policy makers to consider investing more money in “smart road” technologies like traffic light synchronization as an alternative to expensive concrete, steel and asphalt. Moore invited me to observe Virginia’s state-of-the-art traffic management facility and see what traffic-light synchronization can and cannot do.

The VDOT operations center sits in a large complex of state and Fairfax County buildings just off I-66. From the outside, it’s just another boxy government building. But inside it’s a bee-hive of activity. Entombed within the $125 million facility, a vast, high-ceilinged room houses clusters of cubicles manned by dispatchers with VDOT, the state police, Fairfax fire and rescue, and the Fairfax police. These dispatchers field roughly one million calls yearly.

The response to traffic accidents calls for close collaboration in the field. VDOT dispatches a crew to lay out traffic cones and manage traffic. When there are injuries, Fairfax fire and rescue takes control over the rescue phase. Then state troopers move in to investigate who’s at fault. Finally, when everyone else is finished, VDOT cleans up the mess.

Grouping inter-governmental personnel in the same facility makes it easier to coordinate traffic-response teams and to brainstrom measures to boost productivity, says Hari K. Sripathi, VDOT regional operations director.

One recent initiative reduced the crash-investigation time so roads could be cleared more quickly, says Sripathi. The operations center procured a laser scanner that enabled police to measure precise distances of the vehicles, lanes, topography and other relevant details with a quick electronic sweep — much quicker than measuring everything by hand. As a bonus, the police get a 3-D model of the crash site that is far more detailed than anything they could produce before.

VDOT oversees the traffic lights from a side room. When I visited, two employees were keeping tabs on traffic via a large overhead video screen as well as their own PCs. They had a wealth of data at their fingertips. Besides getting a visual fix on traffic flow, they tracked numbers on major corridors and compared them to historical averages, which can vary by time of day, day of the week, and season of the year. Read more.

The future of urban automobility. Graphic Credit: “Reinventing the Automobile.”

by James A. Bacon

Et tu, Hugo?

Del. Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, has proposed eliminating Virginia’s motor fuels tax and replacing it with a 0.9% increase in the state sales tax, the Times-Dispatch reports today. That measure, combined with the allocation of an additional 0.5% of the sales tax to the Commonwealth Transportation Fund, would raise a half billion dollar more for transportation in Virginia per year.

Hugo’s proposal follows a measure submitted by Governor Bob McDonnell to transfer a sliver of revenue from the sales tax to transportation, a bill sponsored by Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, to hold a Hampton Roads referendum for a regional sales tax increase, and a bill sponsored by Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, to increase the wholesale tax on motor fuels.

Under political pressure from local governments and business lobbies to “do something,” the General Assembly is more inundated than Superstorm Sandy with ideas for hiking transportation taxes. But it’s drier than the Sahara when it comes to ideas for ensuring that the money is spent effectively, much less to advance a transportation system for the 21st century. The only figure who halfway makes sense is House Speaker William Howell, who says he might put the brakes on any tax increase because the legislature does not have time during its 45-day session to craft major legislation.

I have little confidence that Virginia’s political class will come to its senses in a year’s time, but we can always pray that the wildebeest-like stampede to higher taxes might relent long enough for reason to take hold ever so briefly.

What would a reasoned approach to transportation reform look like? For starters, it would recognize that the United States (and indeed the world) is on the brink of the greatest revolution in mobility since the invention of the automobile more than a century ago. We can either squander money on 20th-century transportation strategies, which are increasingly obsolete, or we can invest money in projects that will help us pioneer the future in a way that will make Virginia more livable, sustainable and economically competitive.

Every elected official in Virginia, every lobbyist and every civic leader needs to read “Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century.” This slender, amply illustrated volume describes how the Information Technology revolution is transforming the automobile into something that no one imagined even five years ago.

As the co-authors observe, today’s automobiles are way over-engineered. “Today a typical automobile weighs 20 times as much as its driver, can travel over 300 miles without refueling, is able to attain speeds of more than 100 miles per hour, requires more than 100 square feet for parking, and is parked 90 percent of the time.” By designing cars to specifications that match the requirements of personal urban mobility, it soon will be possible to mass produce vehicles that reduce mass, save energy, ameliorate congestion and diminish the space consumed by parking — all while dramatically cutting the cost of automobile ownership and supporting infrastructure.

“Reinventing the Automobile” describes four inter-locking developments. The first is the emergence of a new “automotive DNA” allowing for Ultra Small Vehicles (USVs). These electric vehicles designed for urban use, prototypes of which have already been built, weigh less than 1,000 pounds, have top speeds of 25-35 miles per hour, have a travel range of 40 miles or so and take up one-third the space of conventional automobiles.

The second trend is the rise of the “Mobility Internet,” in which USVs equipped with sensors and wireless are able to communicate with one one another, allowing them to travel safely at closer distances, effectively increasing the capacity of urban roads. Eventually these cars will be capable of driving on auto-pilot, which will make them safer.

A third development is the integration of electric USVs with the smart grid, in which electric power companies use time-of-day pricing to balance load demand and offset the cost of green but intermittent power sources like solar and wind power. Eventually, hydrogen fuel cells will replace conventional batteries to extend the range of electric vehicles.

Fourthly, advances in IT and sensor technology will make it possible to develop electronically managed, dynamically priced markets for electricity, scarce roadway capacity, parking and even shared-ownership vehicles. “These markets … will depend on ubiquitous metering and sensing, make use of powerful computational back-ends, provide price signals and incentives that regulate supply and demand, and motivate sustainable activity patterns within cities.”

This is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. Many pieces of the system are coming into the market already, and the technology for the rest is under development. The impact on urban development will be mind-boggling. Imagine how human settlement patterns will change if the new technology makes it possible to boost the capacity of existing streets and thoroughfares while narrowing lanes and slashing the footprint devoted to parking spaces. Just think of how much more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly we can make our communities. Imagine how much more livable densely populated urban areas will become. Write the authors:

Over time, as this process gathers momentum, we will see the increasing emergence of cities that provide high levels of personal mobility but are safer, quieter, cleaner, more livable, more energy efficient, and more sustainable that those of today. Cities that don’t adapt fast enough will find themselves at an increase competitive disadvantage with those that do.

Here’s what really gets me. You’d think Northern Virginia’s super tech-savvy businesses would get it. IT is their business. The integration of complex systems is their business. But where are they in this debate? Are they taking the lead? No, they’re backing business-as-usual thinking articulated by the region’s real estate interests. How very, very sad. An extraordinary opportunity is slipping away. Sometimes, I just want to cry.

Mapping analysis of San Fransisco-area freeways. Source: UC Berkeley News Center.

by James A. Bacon

The spread of smart phones and car navigators equipped with GPS technology is making it easier than ever to measure automobile traffic, and some transportation planners are putting the data to good use. In northern Spain, for instance, the Basque Traffic Control Centre is using GPS data from TomTom navigation systems to inform decision making.

TomTom has compiled the world’s largest car-centric database, containing more than six trillion individual points of data and adding five to six billion new measurements from customers daily. The Basques use the data to get real-time feedback on the effectiveness of traffic-calming measures such as traffic lights, speed bumps and roundabouts.

“The detail contained within the TomTom database has given us a much better insight into how our traffic schemes are working,” Ignacio Eguiara, head of Basque traffic investigation told ITS International. “We have been able to learn lessons that mean we are now able to plan new schemes far better and often more cost-effectively than before.”

Using GPS data from cell phones, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California-Berkeley have found that drivers do not contribute equally to traffic congestion. According to the UC Berkeley News Center, canceling or delaying the trips of one percent of all drivers across a road network would reduce delays caused by congestion by about three percent. But canceling the trips of one percent of drivers from carefully selected neighborhoods would reduce the extra travel time for all other drivers in a metropolitan area by as much as 18 percent.

Said Alexandre Bayen, a Berkely engineering and computer science professor: “Reaching out to everybody to change their time or mode of commute is thus not necessarily as efficient as reaching out to those in a particular geographic area who contribute most to bottlenecks.”

Bacon’s bottom line: It remains to be seen whether this particular MIT-Berkely study will translate into changes in transportation policy, but it demonstrates the unprecedented level of analysis that GPS technology and massive data-crunching capabilities make possible. The information technology revolution is changing the rules of transportation planning.

The IT revolution is penetrating even the dark corner of Virginia, which under Governor Jim Gilmore had fancied itself the “digital dominion,” but, since then, seems to have abandoned any pretext of digital leadership. The newly opened 495 Express Lanes uses state-of-the-art traffic-monitoring technology to adjust its variable tolls. Of course, 495 Express Lanes is a private-sector venture. (I will profile the 495 Express Lanes control center very shortly and hope to visit the VDOT control center in Northern Virginia next month to get a better feel of how far IT has infiltrated the Virginia’s transportation sector.)

Meanwhile, Virginia’s political conversation about the need for new sources of transportation revenue — the only question asked is where to get the money, not how to invest it more wisely — seems oblivious to the technology tsunami rolling across the globe.

While the Basques race ahead, Virginians prattle about building a “transportation system for the 21st century” while investing billions in a transportation system that seems awfully reminiscent of the 20th. Our imaginations seem terribly stunted. Truly, the idea of building smarter roads rather than more roads should not be so hard to gasp.