John Davis, Manager, Traffic Engineering Services; Ayres Associates served as Moderator. Presenters were Thomas Bauer, PE, PTOE; Raid Tirhi, PE; and Dick Adams, PE, PTOE, VDOT/Serco.
Thomas Bauer’s presentation, “ Local Adaptive Signal Control to Mitigate LRT Preemption Impacts focused on the Canadian city of Edmonton and the Edmonton Transportation Master Plan, which focused on mode shift to modes other than auto. Bauer reported that the city’s South LRT Line features center-running tracks with gated crossings. Intersection delays for crossing traffic were up to 40 minutes on opening day but traffic diversion has shortened the delays up to 15 minutes. When attempting to solve this and other traffic issues, Bauer worked with the Program for Adaptive Timing Optimization, known as PLATO, which he said proved very beneficial to the city in terms of cost, the ability to keep track of traffic flow and its ability to predict live queue (between stop line and advanced detector) for each phase.
Raid Tirhi’s presentation, “Bellevue’s Experience with SCATS,” the Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System. In Bellevue, Tirhi said that signal coordination was the primary goal, so that traffic could move efficiently and safely. The objectives were to minimize delay for vehicles and pedestrians, minimize the number of stops and rear-end collisions, manage traffic queues and maximize the green bandwidth yet utilize the optimum cycle length. With Bellevue’s use of SCATs, the city was able to develop better traffic signal optimization, meaning the optimum cycle led to more efficiency, which led to less driver frustration, which in turn led to fewer collisions.
Dick Adams’s presentation, “Dynamic Real Time Intelligent Maintenance Management System with ITS Devices” explored VDOTs ITS goals including having all ITS services under one contract, 24/7 consistent monitoring and triage and to increase operational up-time and availability. Some of VDOT’s/Serco’s obstacles include issues with regional culture and practices, data format and owner widely varied, there was a continual flow of various data in multiple formats and the need for validation of deployed devices in the field. Some of their successes include one statewide maintenance management system, one statewide inventory and work database, 24/7 statewide monitoring on a single platform and automatic alerting and request service. Next steps for VDOT/Serco involve developing a statewide QPL/APL for replacements, network loading alerts, historical fault frequency, historical and predictive analysis, automatic interrogation of devices and to standardize video walls at TOC and video sharing.