TRB A3A18 Meeting
Marriot SeaTac Hotel
Seattle, WA
2000 Midyear Meeting Minutes
July 9-10, 2000

1.      Welcome and Call to Order

·         Tom Urbanik called the meeting to order at 1:15 pm
·         All attendants introduced themselves.

2.      Approval of the Midyear Minutes

·         Minutes from the January 2000 committee meeting were approved unanimously.

3.      Task Force /Subcommittee Reports

• Rich Cunard – TRB January 7-11, 2001
  • August 1 is the due date for paper, papers can be submitted electronically via www.nas.edu/trb.
  • No preliminary program will be mailed.  The web page will serve in that role – it will be posted in October 2000 and then updated and refined.
  • Number of sessions will be reduced by about 5% to about 450 sessions.  This is to address the reduced session attendance and increased committee meeting attendance.
  • Committee meetings will now by synchronized with session schedules.
  • All sessions will now have computer projectors (users will have to provide laptops).  They will not be standard in committee meetings.
  • New Highway capacity manual will be available in October.
• Don Dey - Adaptive Signal Control
  • Sunday January 6, will start at 9:30am and run all day.
  • The workshop this year will be on operation and maintenance of adaptive traffic control systems.
  • It will be composed of 5 sessions.
  • All presentations will follow the same structure.
  • Part of a session in the workshop may cover “creative financing.”
• Tom Urbanik – Web Site
  • Reminded audience that the web site is http://signalsystems.tamu.edu.
• Raj Ghaman, FHWA
  • TSIS 5.0 is being released in August/September.
  • Subsequently, development will start on a large scale simulation package.
  • FHWA had a seminar on legal issues related to software development/intellectual property/patent issues and have produced a draft report.  It will be published on the USDOT electronic document web site.
• ATC
  • Cabinet Spec is in review and available on the ITE Web www.ite.org.
  • ATC hardware spec is almost out for review.
  • ATC API is still in development.
• Pam Crenshaw, FHWA.
  • National Dialog: Effort by FHWA and ITE in late 1999 to discuss Transportation Operations and expanding it to action. (Presentation)
  • ACS Lite update. (Presentation)
  • ACS Survey. (Presentation)
  • Inquired if the committee would serve as an editorial body on the development of the new “Traffic Control Systems Handbook.”

4.      Triennial Self Evaluation

·         Tom Urbanik reviewed the document the committee must fill out as part of its triennial self evaluation.  A brief discussion took place regarding the parallels between the self evaluation and the updated strategic plan.

5.      Jim Powell, Update on Problem Statement

•          Dynamic Phasing Problem Statement (submitted via Ken Kacir and Florida DOT)
•          Advanced Detection for Critical Intersection control (submitted via Jim Powell and Colorado DOT)
•          Pedestrian Timing Strategies in Coordinated Signal Systems (submitted via Jim Powell and Illinois DOT)
•          Took straw poll of audience to gauge interest in approximately 30 topic areas. 
•          Survey results will be posted on the http://signalsystems.tamu.edu web page.

  Associated documents:

•          Implementation Guidelines for Alternative Traffic Signal Phasing, submitted by Davis Husch, Larry Head, Darcy Bullock, and Tom Urbanik.
•          NCHRP FY2002 Stage 1 Problem Statement
•          First Stage Problem Statement for NCHRP FY 2002 Program May, 2000, submitted by Richard Griffin.

6.      Don Dey, Update on Strategic Plan

•          Reviewed the current status of the strategic plan
•          Suggested that the http://signalsystems.tamu.edu web page link to the NCHRP, TCRP web site that provides status of research relevant to the traffic signal system committee.
•          Collected attendant’s thoughts on issues for the strategic plan.

7.      Chris Brehmer, Update on NCHRP 3-54(02) (Presentation)

•          Chris Brehmer presented Kent Kacir’s slides on the Evaluation of Traffic Signal Displays for PPLT Control
•          www.kittelson.com has animated web pages illustrating the various protected/permitted left turn display.

8.      Summer 2001 Meeting

•          One alternative is a joint meeting in metropolitan New York, NY.
•          Another alternative is a meeting in Salt Lake City, NV.
•          Backup is the Beckman Center in Irvine, CA.
•          The straw poll showed New York, NY as the clear winner.

9.      Welcome, Introduction, and Purpose

·         Tom Urbanik summarized the organization of the day’s presentations.

10. Ken Wood, New Practices in Illinois (Presentation)

•          Summarized history of Traffic Signal – Railroad Interconnect in Illinois following the Fox River Grove accident.
•          Minutes of Illinois meetings regarding interconnect and advance preemption is on web at http://cee.ce.uiuc.edu/tol.   Password is “palantinestudy”  

11. Roelof Engelbrecht, Advance Preemption Issues (Presentation)

•          Summarized study of train arrival data (collected via doppler radar sensors).  Details of study procedure are on web at http://railview.tamu.edu.
•          Simultaneous Preemption:  Signal to track warning devices and traffic signal controllers arrives simultaneously.
•          Advance Preemption: Signal to traffic signal controller arrives in advance of the signal to the track warning devices.
•          Speaker provided several time lines illustrating the operation of preemption.
•          Speaker provided graphs illustrating the probability of “fouled track”
•          Key issue – decoupling of preemption times between warning devices and the traffic signal controller can cause traffic to be stopped on railroad track when advance preemption is used.  It is particularly problematic when trains slow down after the advance preemption is triggered, but before the crossing warning system is activated.

12. Rick Campbell, Current Best Practices (Presentation)

•          Lights must flash for 3 seconds before gates start down (typically 6-10 seconds)
•          Gates must be horizontal 5 seconds before train arrives (typically 8-10 second).
•          Typical minimum warning time provided by railroad is 20-25 seconds.
•          Introduced the concept of “Gate Horizontal” Preemption for location with GATES.
•          Constant warning type devices
  •          A grade crossing predictor – there is some variance in the estimate.
  •          Very accurate for trains with constant speed.  However, if a train is slowing down or speeding up - the estimated times time can vary significantly.
  •          Best current technology, but not widely deployed yet.
•          In order to prevent the “Preempt Trap” a fixed time period can be configured in the constant warning time device so that there is a maximum latency between when the advance preemption is activated and when the crossing warning system must be triggered.
•          Preemption call should be dropped by railroad as soon as gates go up.  Very important in double track scenario so that a call on track 2 could be identified as an independent preemption event.
•          As soon as preemption call is dropped by railroad, any successive preemption (even say 1 second later) should immediately trigger preemption, regardless of the status of a preemption exit procedures.

13. Steve Venglar, New IDEA in Preemption (Presentation)

·         Reported on the status of the High Speed IDEA research project (Link to IDEA Report). 

14. Rick Campbell, Future Possibilities

•          Covered wish list of features
•          Summarized detection circuits(Presentation, Presentation, Presentation)
  •          Old Track Circuit – just on or off
  •          Motion Sensor (AC frequencies from 86 Hz to 970 Hz), tune sensor to frequency used.  This Rx voltage decreases linearly from 10 volts at the limit to 0 volts as the train gets to the sensor. 
    •          Device has some smarts so that if voltage does not change for 20 seconds, it turns off the warning devices. 
    •          Similarly, if voltage starts increasing, it know the train is moving away and turns off the warning device.
    •          Equipment response time is 3 seconds.
  •          Logical extension of technology of motion sensor was the constant warning time sensor.
    •          Gets complicated if circuit has to extend out so far that it must cross a “break” in the track.
    •          Does not work on electrified tracks.
    •          Equipment response time is 5 seconds.

15. Tom Urbanik, Standards Issues

•          Discussed meeting scheduled for Tuesday on Signal Priority Working Group
•          Trying to develop a holistic notion of priority
•          Signal Priority Working Group is starting on evaluating “Use Cases”

16. Tom Urbanik, Group Discussion – How do we make it better?

•          Recapped days session by discussing topics and posing a series of questions:
  •         How do we make it better?
  •         What are the research needs?
  •         Where do we go from here?

17. Jim Powell, Problem Statement Topics

•          Jim reviewed the rankings from the July 9^th meeting.
•          Added additional topics based upon feedback from attendants.

18. Parting Comments

• Start at 1pm on July 11^th at the Holiday Inn, the NTCIP Signal Priority Group will meet.