TRB A3A18 Meeting

Marriot Park City

Ball Room IV

 

Mid Year Meeting Minutes

 

 

July 21, 2002

 

 

1.      Welcome and Call to Order

·         Tom Urbanik called the meeting to order at 1:05pm.

·         Attendants introduced themselves. (Attachment)

2.      TRB Report (Rich Cunard)

·         TRB is moving from Wisconsin Ave to 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, DC, 20001

·         7500 Word limit will be strictly enforced this year..

·         This year, TRB will require that multiple submissions on same research project must identify companion papers.

·         9057 people attended January 2002 Meeting

·         Annual meeting will be held January 12…16 , 2003 (same three hotels).

·         NATMAC would like TRB mid year meeting to be held in conjunction with TRB committees such as Signal Systems and Freeway operations.

·         Upcoming NCHRP projects (Railroad preemption, and advance detection for critical intersection control)

·         NCHRP problem statement will now be a one stage submittal process (essentially the 2^nd stage will be submitted directly).

3.      Approval of the Midyear Minutes

·         Minutes from the committee meeting held in January 2002 were approved unanimously.

4.      FHWA Report

·         Communication Handbook is now under contract to be updated.

·         Traffic Signal Systems Handbook will be under contract this fall.  The A3A18 committee completed a review of that in 2002. (Attachment)

·         Small Communities Handbook is being planned.

·         Updated Detector Handbook will be printed in September

·         ACS-Lite project was initiated in Spring 2002 (Siemens GTSA).  The A3A18 committee will be briefed on the project status in January 2003.

·         Freeway-Arterial Coordination project has been initiated (University of Tennessee)

5.      Subcommittee Reports

·         Paper Review (Larry Head)

o        Reminded people that similar topics should be combined.

o        Peter Koonce raised the issue of outstanding paper award.

§         Larry Head will forward 3-5 papers to outstanding paper subcommittee chair.

§         Peter Koonce (Kittleson Associates) will chair assisted by

·         Paul Olson (FHWA)

·         Brian Park (University of Virginia)

·         Brian Van De Walle (TxDOT

·         Problem Statements (Jim Powell)

o        Reviewed past effort (Attachment) (Word doc)

§         Noted that advance detection has been programmed and may be combined with RR preemption for a possible project for $700k. (3-66A, 3-66B).

o        Three other problem statements were forwarded, but have been declined.

o        Synthesis topics were submitted this year, but did not make the cut.

o        Problem statements are now due September 15^th, but with TRIS search already completed.

o        Distributed list of possible research topics, asked committee to rank.  The committee completed ranking and submitted to Jim. (Attachment)

·         Strategic Plan (Don Dey)

o        No report.

·         January Workshop (Olson/Koonce/Bullock)

o        Morning Topics

§         Historical past practice

§         IP Communications

·         Rick Denney

·         Douglas Gettman

·         Somebody from NTCIP side

·         DSL over recycled twisted pair copper.

§         Wireless

·         Gary Duncan

o        Afternoon Topics

§         Procurement Economics

§         Olson presentation on fiber optics

·         Critical Issues (Craig Roberts)

o        Document was submitted, other issues raised by Craig include;

§         Raised issue of clearance interval related to critical “safety and congestion issue”

§         Raised issue of institutional issues – state route going through an urban area with city owned signals – how do you coordinate

§         Raised issue of enhancing traffic signal education – “attracting and retaining technically diverse people needed in 21^st century”

6.      Summer meeting 2003 (Location/Workshop Subject(s))

·         Advanced Transportation Control Evaluation Symposium (Roeloff)

o        Hardware (or software) in the loop traffic simulation

·         Signal Timing (Design of Signal Controller Operations) (Koonce)

·         Tom proposed noon Sunday to noon Tuesday.

·         Beckman center was proposed as first choice venue, backup site would be Portland, OR.

·         Possible date is 7/27, 28, 29 when Urban Street Symposium meets, other dates are 7/13,14, 15 or 7/20,21,22.  Date will be negotiated with Rich Cunard.

·         Koonce and Engelbrecht will be co-chairs of the technical program (1.5 day technical program). 

7.      NTCIP 1211 Signal Coordination and Priority (Tom Urbanik) (Attachment) (Microsoft Word doc, 3.4 MB)

·         Summarized NTCIP Working group activity on the user comment draft of NTCIP 1211 v01.24.

8.      NCHRP Flashing Yellow Arrow Update (Peter Koonce) (Attachment)

·          www.kittelson.com/pplt

9.      FHWA Report – Raj Ghaman

·         Finalized program plans for Houston, TX and Los Angeles, CA

·         Houston

o        TREPs-Dynasmart

o        Claire – French Expert Systems

o        Rhodes

·         Los Angeles

o        Their transit priority

o        Claire – French Expert Systems

o        DynaMIT

·         Adaptive Control Handbook is underway

·         Working at understanding how weather impacts progression/capacity/operation

·         Working at understanding Evacuation Dynamics

·         Will provide electronic copy of the RTACL results

10. Lessons Learned

·         Peter Martin – Will report on Olympics

·         Larry Head – Houston is happy with CDPD communication, they are using SNMP traps to generate messages instead of polling.

·         Craig Roberts – students like experimenting with hardware.

·         Dave Henry – Video Detection lengthens vehicle lenghthens à vehicle gap should be reduce slightly (Attachment).

·         Gary Duncan –

o        Workshop being conducted in Indiana to synthesize lessons learned with regard to video detection.

o        Good results with CDPD and IP/Serial Device in Denver area.

·         Raj Ghaman – City of Los Angeles will being distributing through McTrans their adaptive control software.

·         Dennis Eyler – almost need to couple vehicle classification with volume density so you can change those parameters to match vehicle mix.

·         Rick Denny – We need to start thinking about security when we start doing IP addressing.

·         Paul Olson – The best thing about standards is that there are so many of those.

·         Brian Van De Walle –

o        Too much signal timing is done by signal technicians… their goal is to minimize trouble calls.

o        Video detection in fog mode

·         Ron Allen - Being aware that displays meaning varies by country.

·         Gay Pitrokowitz – Software has taken a long time to install on their 2070  - one controller supports both SCATS and non SCATS software.

·         Peter Koonce – Different countries perspective on security varies

·         Roelof –

o        Gaps change as the height of the leading vehicle changes.

o        We need to read the manuals on our signal controllers.

·         Brian Park – variable speed limit

11. Coordinated Freeways and Arterials Project (Tom Urbanik)

·         Solicited committee input

·         Several suggestions for additional case studies were proposed.

12. Raj Ghaman

·         Asked for committee input on how to shape national R&D policy.

o        Rich Cunard indicated TRB has a very formal process for providing policy guidance.  If FHWA wants guidance, it must be requested formally and follow TRB procedures.

13. Jim Powell

·         Summarized member voting on research issues (Attachment)

14. Attendants

A list attending the meeting is Attached.