Browsing by Subject "High occupancy vehicle lanes"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Bus Rapid Transit Technologies: A Virtual Mirror for Eliminating Vehicle Blind Zones: Volume 2
    (Center for Transportation Studies, 2005-01) Sergi, Michael Knoll; Donath, Max
    The FTA has identified the concept of Bus Rapid Transit as a means to increase the efficiency of transit operations while maintaining transit’s proven safety record. According to the FTA website www.fta.dot.gov, “BRT combines the quality of rail transit and the flexibility of buses. It can operate on exclusive transitways, HOV lanes, expressways, or ordinary streets. A BRT system combines intelligent transportation systems technology, priority for transit, cleaner and quieter vehicles, rapid and convenient fare collection, and integration with land use policy.” Because of the limited right-of -way available to build new the FTA has identified lane assist as an emerging technology, which the premise behind lane assist technology is to unique environments, such as narrow lanes. Lane assist technology will allow desired higher operating speeds while maintaining the safety of the passengers, BRT public. Vehicle and the motoring BRT vehicles to operate at the increase the safety of BRT vehicles as they operate in the more will enable deployment of BRT systems. (and possibly dedicated) lanes for BRT operations. The third objective will be to develop long term relationships with Metro Transit, the Federal Transit Administration, bus manufacturers, and technology providers to develop and implement strategies to improve transit operations. For instance, improving the ability of a bus driver to merge into and out of traffic is a high priority. Improved bus guidance technology will make bus only shoulders a viable alternative throughout the country. Progress towards meeting this objective has been made, but considerable effort will have to be expended to make lane assist technology ubiquitous throughout the transit industry.
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    Evaluation of the Effect of MnPASS Lane Design on Mobility and Safety
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2014-06) Stanitsas, Panagiotis; Hourdos, John; Zitzow, Stephen
    Dynamically priced High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes have been recently added to the traffic operations arsenal in an attempt to preserve infrastructure investment in the future by maintaining a control on demand. This study focuses on the operational and design features of HOT lanes. HOT lanes’ mobility and safety are contingent on the design of zones (“gates”) that drivers use to merge in or out of the facility. Existing methodologies for the design of access zones are limited to engineering judgment or studies that take into consideration undersized amount of observations. Case in point is the fact that the design philosophes between the two HOT facilities in Minnesota are diametrically opposed. Specifically, the I-394 freeway, the first dynamically priced HOT lane, was designed with a closed access philosophy, meaning that for the greater length of the roadway access to the HOT lane is restricted with only specific short-length sections where access is allowed. In contrast I-35W, the second HOT corridor, was designed with an open access philosophy where lane changes between the HOT and the GPLs are allowed everywhere except for a few specific locations. This contradiction generated questions as to effect each case has on safety and mobility. This study presents an assessment of safety and mobility on the two facilities as they operate today and highlights the issues present on either design. In addition, two design tools were developed, the first assisting in the optimal design of access zones based on traffic measurements, and the second allowing the assessment of the influence congested General Purpose Lanes can have on the mobility and safety of the HOT under different traffic conditions and utilization due to changes in pricing strategy.
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    I-394 Phase II Planning Study
    (Center for Transportation Studies, 2010-07) Munnich, Lee W. Jr.; Buckeye, Kenneth
    The I-394 MnPASS Phase II Planning Study was a multi-agency collaboration that evaluated four major study elements and their relationships in a congestion priced urban corridor. These included transit, land use, infrastructure and telecommuting. A foundation for this work was the understanding that high-cost capacity expansions were not likely to occur in the corridor for 25 to 30 years despite forecasts of increasing congestion that may threaten efficiency gains achieved with conversion of the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to high- occupancy toll (HOT) lane operation. Recommendations identified in this study are being used to guide investments in corridor facilities and services by transportation authorities and will also be used by communities adjacent to the corridor. Transit supportive land use recommendations, if implemented, can help ensure that a high level of service is maintained in the corridor for all users. While specific funding for implementation of these recommendations was not identified prior to the planning process, several compelling transit, land use and telecommuting recommendations are currently being advanced for programming. This project is a valuable case study and potential model for linking land use, transit, telecommuting and congestion pricing in a high-demand urban corridor.
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    Monitoring the Use of HOV and HOT Lanes
    (Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2013-01) Holec, Eric; Somasundaram, Guruprasad; Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos; Morellas, Vassilios
    This report presents the formulation and implementation of an automated computer vision and machine learning based system for estimation of the occupancy of passenger vehicles in high-occupancy vehicles and highoccupancy toll (HOV/HOT) lanes. We employ a multi-modal approach involving near-infrared images and highresolution color video images in conjunction with strong maximum margin based classifiers such as support vector machines. We attempt to maximize the information that can be extracted from these two types of images by computing different features. Then, we build classifiers for each type of feature which are compared to determine the best feature for each imaging method. Based on the performance of the classifiers we critique the efficacy of the individual approaches as the costs involved are significantly different.
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    Sensing for HOV/HOT Lanes Enforcement
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2017-02) Morris, Ted; Morellas, Vassilios; Canelon-Suarez, Dario; Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos
    The use and creation of combined high-occupancy vehicle/high-occupancy toll (HOV/HOT Lanes) have become more common in urban areas since all types of road users can take advantage of the lane either as a high- occupancy vehicle or opting in to pay a congestion adjusted free. However, to maintain working integrity of the lanes for all users, stepped enforcement to discourage cheating has been needed as more lanes are added. This study evaluated the capability of a novel image sensor device to automate detection of in-vehicle occupants to flag law enforcement of HOV/HOT lane violators. The sensor device synchronously captures three co-registered images, one in the visible spectrum and two others in the infrared bands. The key idea is that the infrared bands can enhance correct occupancy detection through known phenomenological spectral properties of objects and humans residing inside the vehicle. Several experiments were conducted to determine this capability across varied conditions and scenarios to assess detection segmentation algorithms of vehicle passengers and drivers. Although occupancy detection through vehicle glass could be achieved in many cases, improvements must be made to such a detection system to increase robustness and reliability as a law enforcement tool. These improvements were guided by the experimental results, as well as suggested methods for deployment if this or similar technologies were to be deployed in the future.
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    A Tool for Designing MnPASS Access Spacing
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2018-03) Zitzow, Stephen; Parikh, Gordon; Hourdos, John
    Dynamically priced High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes have been recently added to the traffic operations arsenal in an attempt to preserve infrastructure investment in the future by maintaining a control on demand. This study focuses on the operational and design features of HOT lanes. HOT lanes’ mobility and safety are contingent on the design of zones (“gates”) that drivers use to merge in or out of the facility. Existing methodologies for the design of access zones are limited to engineering judgment or studies that take into consideration undersized amount of observations. This project capitalized on the results of an earlier project that performed an assessment of safety and mobility on the HOT facilities in Minnesota highlighted the issues involved in either designs. The product of this project, the MnPASS Access Design application, provides a tool for traffic managers and planners to examine the conditions within an existing or prospective corridor and the distribution of shockwave lengths which are expected. From the distribution of shockwave lengths, decisions can be made regarding access restriction on the HOT lane to ensure that drivers do not attempt to make lane changes at locations prone to dangerous conditions. This tool provides support for the managers and planners by aggregating the entire behavior of the HOT lane within the corridor into a framework for simplified consideration.