This
newsletter is available online in an Adobe Acrobat Reader
PDF
file (369k). You can view it using the Reader
plugin for your browser and/or download it for viewing
offline. Free Reader software is available at the Adobe
Systems Incorporated Website.
ITS
CANADA MISSION TO CHINA
By
William Johnson, TRENDS
In October 2007, ITS Canada
led a mission to China, timed in conjunction with
the 14th World Congress on ITS. ITS Canada's hospitality
event, held on October 11 at the Dazhaimen Great Theater
in Beijing, included a cocktail reception followed
by dinner. Joseph Lam, Chairman of ITS Canada, represented
the Society at the event, which was attended by 175
invitees.
Guests
were welcomed to the event with a reception in the
lobby that included a photo opportunity with Chinese
in traditional costume. The Canadian Ambassador Robert
Wright, Susan Spencer of Transport Canada, and Joseph
Lam, Chairman of ITS Canada, officially welcomed everyone,
and invited guests to network. There was entertainment
throughout the meal. The actors were brilliant and
the arrangement of the raised stage and tables surrounding
it gave everyone a good view. The food was excellent,
and compliments poured in afterward from attendees
as everyone had an excellent time.
A
full report on the mission will be included in the
November newsletter.
ITS Canada Chairman Joseph Lam (second from right)
chats with fellow delegates in ITS Canada's booth
at the 14th World Congress on ITS.
Visit
www.itscanada.ca/english/WCbeijing.htm
for more photographs and information from the mission.
TORONTO
IMPROVES INCIDENT RESPONSE
A traffic management system
being used to detect disruptions to traffic flow along
the Don Valley Parkway, Gardiner Expressway and Lake
Shore Boulevard in Toronto, Canada, has been enhanced
through the adoption of Citilog's VisioPaD video image
processing system on 21 of the 57 cameras on the network.
The
RESCU management system, which has been in service
since 1994, also has 635 vehicle sensors (loops) and
six overhead changeable message signs. It is operated
by the City of Toronto's Transportation Services division.
Spokesman Steve Kemp says, "We didn't have a
significant accident problem. But there is a public
expectation that we are able to detect any incident
that happens and to respond quickly. There were a
few high-profile incidents that we did not detect,
so we started to look at ways to have a better chance
of detecting incidents. It was not the numbers of
collisions that was the problem. It was those that
were not being captured."
The
outcome was a pilot project to test Citilog's VisioPaD
which, according to Kemp, successfully augments existing
incident systems. He says, "Although there hasn't
been a dramatic reduction in accidents, we are now
responding to incidents quicker than before."
The City of Toronto Transportation Services Division
is responsible for the operation and maintenance of
over 5,300 kilometres of roadway, including 60 kilometres
of urban expressway. The network includes over 2,000
traffic control signals and 600 pedestrian crosswalks.
The
Gardiner Expressway is a six-lane urban freeway with
at-grade and elevated sections. Running parallel to
the expressway is a six-lane arterial roadway called
Lake Shore Boulevard. The Gardiner-Lake Shore corridor
carries approximately 300,000 vehicles a day. The
Don Valley Parkway (DVP) is a six-lane urban freeway
at-grade. The DVP carries over 200,000 vehicles per
day.
Both
the Gardiner and the DVP experience congested conditions
for most of the day. In many areas these expressways
have limited or no shoulders.
As
a result, incidents that are not cleared quickly cause
significant delay to other road users. RESCU uses
a combination of tools to detect incidents within
the road network. Traditionally, automatic incident
detection algorithms have used data from inductive
loops to identify disruptions. Operators then confirm
these disruptions through closed circuit cameras and
implement response plans accordingly.
This
method of incident detection has been successful;
however, it is dependent upon traffic congestion building
as a result of the incident in order to "trigger"
the upstream detector station. During periods of light
traffic, some incidents do not result in a significant
disruption and are therefore not detected by traditional
methods.
Citilog's
VisioPaD provides traffic operators with an alarm
(audible and visual) immediately after an incident
occurs (within seconds), even before the consequences
of this incident can be noticed by traditional monitoring.
Video signals from the existing CCTV system are fed
into video detection units that run a detection algorithm
that identifies stopped vehicles within the field
of view of the cameras.
Because
it requires no setup or calibration, Citilog says
VisioPaD fits perfectly into any CCTV system without
the need for additional or new cameras. It also does
not require the use of preset positions on PTZ cameras;
cameras can be moved at will and within a minute the
system automatically recalibrates and is fully functional.
The system works in the background on all pictures
of the network, 24/7, and traffic operators can concentrate
on other tasks than pure surveillance of screens.
VisioPaD
turns a traditional video surveillance system from
a reactive monitoring system (incident verification)
to a proactive monitoring (incident detection) system.
Additionally, for each incident detected, a digital
video clip is automatically recorded by the system.
These clips are tools to investigate the nature and
the cause of incident.
Toronto's
Steve Kemp says that during periods of light traffic
overnight, existing systems would not detect vehicles
stopped on the shoulder of the expressway. Operators
relied on detecting these incidents visually either
through closed circuit cameras or reports from field
patrols. These shoulder incidents (although most are
often minor) have occasionally become major when secondary
collisions occur. The combination of a stopped vehicle
on the shoulder and high speed traffic in the adjacent
lane has, at times, had deadly consequences.
"Our
ability to detect this type of incident quickly and
get the appropriate emergency services on scene has
been greatly enhanced by the Citilog VisioPaD system.
"The
system immediately improved our ability to detect
incidents within our coverage area. The false alarm
rate is minimal, usually caused by shadows under bridges,
and managed easily by our operators."
The
added benefit of storing incident video has helped
to identify problem areas within the network. It has
also proven useful to determine the cause of some
incidents, added Kemp.
Reprinted with permission from ITS International
GOVERNMENT
OF CANADA STRATEGIC TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS
Below
is a sample of the types of strategic transportation
projects the Government of Canada is current involved
with:
Canada
Line - Vancouver
The transportation corridor connecting downtown Vancouver
with downtown Richmond is one of the busiest in Greater
Vancouver, experiencing the greatest traffic density
and associated problems. The Canada Line will provide
additional transportation capacity equivalent to 10
major road lanes in a dense corridor where expanding
roads and bridges is neither practical nor desirable.
This additional capacity will address congestion and
make growth in these centres more manageable, boosting
liveability, sustainability and competitiveness. For
info: www.canadaline.ca.
Autoroute
30 - South of Montreal
The project involves construction of a highway connecting
the industrial municipalities south of the St. Lawrence
River, providing Montreal with a bypass to the south
to reduce congestion on the city’s highway network.
Completion will also facilitate the integration of
Autoroutes 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, and 540 into a more
efficient network, enhancing economic development
in the region. Autoroute 30 will also reduce congestion
on the segments of Route 132 and Route 201. For info:
www.autoroute30.qc.ca.
Kicking
Horse Canyon Project - BC Rockies
The highway is being improved to a modern four-lane
standard with a design speed of 100 kilometres per
hour to move traffic more safely and efficiently.
www.th.gov.bc.ca/kickinghorse
Route
2 Twinning in New Brunswick
www.gnb.ca/0113/fed-prov
Corridors
for Canada Project – Northwest Territories
www.dot.gov.nt.ca/_live/documents/documentManagerUpload/cfc_4.pdf
ITS
CANADA WELCOMES NEW MEMBER
CORPORATE
Nova Bus
NEW
TRANSIT ITS INITIATIVES: MODELLING PASSENGER BEHAVIOUR
THROUGH MILATRAS
By
Mohamed Wahba, PhD Candidate, University of Toronto
Intelligent
Transportation Systems (ITS)
technologies are promoted as a means for improving
the transportation system, including public transit
services. The intended benefits of ITS include better
and more regular information, seamless transportation
services, and improved productivity. ITS deployment
in public transit is seen as a tool to improve efficiency,
increasing service quality, and ultimately attracting
more choice riders. Technology such as automated passenger
counters (APC) and automated vehicle location (AVL)
systems may allow transit operators to better balance
supply and demand, and improve reliability of the
service, for example through schedule adherence. Electronic
fare cards may reduce dwell time and make fare payment
more convenient. Traveller information services can
enhance and expedite trip-planning and provide real
time schedule information to travelers, hence affecting
their decisions. Transit Signal Priority (TSP) systems
can reduce travel time, thus improving the transit
network performance, which subsequently affects traveller’s
choices. In the transit assignment field, the dynamic
modelling approach is receiving growing interest because
of the importance of explicit system simulations to
enable user decisions to be evaluated if ITS is used.
Traditional
transportation planning methods have serious limitations
in evaluating the effects of information technologies,
since they are neither sensitive to the types of information
that may be provided to travellers, nor to the traveller’s
response to that information. New research focuses
on addressing the issues concerning the development
and the implementation of a new modelling framework
for the transit assignment problem, namely the MIcrosimulation
Learning-based Approach for TRansit ASsignment - MILATRAS.
In MILATRAS, the underlying assumption is that individual
passengers decide about their choices (departure time,
origin/destination stops, transfer/connection stops)
for a trip on consecutive days and this decision process
is based on a "mental model" of the transit
network conditions. For a given day d, each passenger
has a perception of the transit network conditions
as stored in his mental model.
This
perception is built up over time through experience
with the transit system. For day d, a set of choices
are made by each individual passenger (e.g., departure
time choice and route choice), with the aim to realize
a Desired Arrival Time (DAT) at the destination. By
modeling passengers' travel behaviour on their journey
from origins to destinations, MILATRAS distributes
a given travel demand on a network and models the
interaction between the travel demand and the network
supply.
MILATRAS
is well suited for testing transit-ITS technologies
and polices. MILATRAS provides an integrated dynamic
modelling framework that is sensitive to time-dependent
and stochastic transit service characteristics (supply
modelling), that models adaptive departure time and
path decisions by passengers (demand modelling), and
that captures the interaction between passenger decisions
and transit network performance (via an integrated
framework).
A
full-scale implementation of the City of Toronto Transit
System, Ontario, is underway. The constructed model
will provide a testbed for the recently published
Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) future plans for
rapid transit expansions along major transportation
corridors. These rapid transit initiatives address
transportation needs identified at both local and
regional (GTA-wide) levels. It complements ongoing
TTC initiatives and the City's longer-term "multi-modal"
vision for transportation in the City.
ITS
AND THE ENVIRONMENT
By
Mark Pinet, Totten Sims Hubicki Associates
Based
on a presentation made at Industry Canada’s
“Focus Day” held August 30, 2007, at the
Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, Ontario
Industry
Canada’s recent “Focus Day” reviewed
the impact that Information, Communication and Technologies
have on the environment. They recognized that this
presented an opportunity to expand on the role of
ITS, and TSH in turn saw it as an opportunity to emphasize
the TSH “Greensmart” principles by illustrating
how projects can integrate sustainability by introducing
a “triple bottom line” into each project
from the outset: the consideration of environmental,
social and economic implications. The audience was
comprised of engineers, administrative personnel,
communications officers and policy staff.
Mark
indicated that a primary goal of ITS is to promote
sustainable mobility through the use of intelligent
technologies: to make systems safer, more efficient,
more reliable and more environmentally friendly without
necessarily having to physically alter infrastructure.
After
a brief introduction of ITS highlighting the importance
of the ITS Architecture for Canada, the presentation
reviewed Traffic Management Systems, Traveller Information
Systems, Incident Management and Maintenance Management,
and how these work together to assist in protecting
our environment.
Agencies
are often impacted in their goal to deliver a high
level of service by a number of factors that are beyond
their control: weather, collisions, capacity, construction
and incidents. These events result in congestion,
which is costly from a number of perspectives, including
the cost on the environment. Traffic Management Systems
use devices to collect data on the conditions. Through
Traffic Management Systems, drivers are redirected
by a central agency to alternate routes. Incident
Management involves identifying occurrences and rapidly
removing obstructions to mitigate effects, while providing
travellers with real-time information on conditions.
Maintenance Management focuses on improving conditions
to reduce their negative effects. Traveller Information
Systems allow drivers to access the information to
make their own route choices. These coordinated efforts
result in reducing congestion duration.
Traveller
Information can be delivered to drivers through Dynamic
Message Signs, Highway Advisory Radio and 511, as
well as in-vehicle systems and cell phones. Pre-trip
planning is supported through the Internet, 511 and
media such as radio stations. Mark provided examples
from in around Eastern Ontario of existing ITS infrastructure
and systems.
Adverse
winter weather means increased driving risks. The
resulting collisions, aside from being a safety concern,
also result in traffic congestion. Congestion has
a significant negative impact on the environment.
Advanced approaches to winter maintenance have been
enabled by ITS technologies, including Road Weather
Information Systems (RWIS). RWIS provide the capability
to remotely monitor atmospheric, visibility and pavement
conditions. RWIS provide input information required
to produce pavement condition forecasts, allowing
more effective salt use along with improved efficiencies
in equipment and labour planning
RWIS
forms a basic building block for other more advanced
winter maintenance approaches, facilitating improvements
in road conditions and driver responses at critical
high-risk locations during adverse winter weather.
Fixed Automated Anti-Icing Spray Technology (FAAST),
for example, improves safety and reduces congestion
associated with collisions at high-risk locations.
The introduction of FAAST on Highways 401 and 416
eliminated collisions at a site historically a problem,
and also allowed automated application of non-chloride
de-icing chemicals, a proactive approach and an environmentally-friendly
solution.
Congestion
contributes to greenhouse gases and air pollution.
For the future, moving towards even “greener”
solutions will involve continuing integration of a
variety of ITS solutions, including further development
of an enhanced weather-responsive approach to traffic
management.
Mark
Pinet speaks at Industry Canada's Focus Day
NEWS
bITS
Ministry
of Transportation of Ontario
The Ontario government is developing a more sustainable
transportation system that balances investments in
highways and transit to ease congestion, reducing
smog and harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
In
August 2007, the Ontario government announced three
new initiatives to encourage commuters and businesses
to reduce greenhouse gases. Incentives will be identified
to encourage people to buy green vehicles that will
be recognized with an Eco-license plate, to be launched
next summer. The government is also investing $15
million over four years for a pilot to help businesses
convert to more environmentally-friendly technologies,
such as hybrid power.
Ontario
will also increase the use of cleaner fuel in its
own fleet by installing two new ethanol fuelling stations
in the province. These new facilities could also be
made available to other users, such as municipal fleets,
once they are operational. Other initiatives include:
Move Ontario 2020, a $17.5 billion plan to expand
public transit in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area
The Municipal Eco Challenge fund, a three-year,
$220 million loan and grant program to help municipalities
reduce greenhouse gas emissions
The Next Generation Jobs Fund, which will make $650
million available to develop clean cars, fuels and
other technologies.
For
more information, please visit: www.mto.gov.on.ca.
U.S. Traffic Signals Report Card
In early October, the National Transportation Operations
Coalition (NTOC), a group of transportation associations,
released a new report that reports on the benefits
of effectively managing traffic signal systems. Benefits
include a reduction in fuel consumption and mitigation
of congestion, leading to improvements in air quality.
Shorter commute times and decreased driver frustration
make these initiatives a win-win.
By
implementing a more pro-active preventive maintenance
schedule, the City of Austin reports significant savings.
“The City of Austin is a great example of how
low cost changes to traffic signal operations can
result in big savings,” said Congressman Lloyd
Doggett (Texas) whose district includes the City of
Austin. “Spending no new money, the City of
Austin was able to save more than $40 million in operating
costs in just one year by simply changing the way
it manages its traffic signal operations.”
The
report shows that studies consistently demonstrate
the benefits of investments in signal timing outweigh
the costs by 40:1 or more. The NTOC is raising awareness
of the value of traffic signal management.
For the full report, please visit:
2007
National Traffic Signal Report Card
Technical Report and Executive Summary
www.ite.org/reportcard
MEMBERS
IN THE NEWS
Applanix
Technology Aboard Coast Guard Icebreaker for Arctic
Survey Trip
Applanix announced today that its POS MV™ position
and orientation system technology will be working
with nautical sensors aboard the U.S. Coast Guard
icebreaker Healy, which left port in early August
2007 to map the sea floor off the Alaskan Arctic coastline.
The installed POS system will assist onboard marine
echo sounder systems and other vessel sensors during
bathometric mapping by accurately measuring sensor
and ship positioning and orientation during data capture,
even under the most demanding sea and ice conditions.
Along with environmental and geographic research goals,
the data collected onboard the Healy will help register
U.S. coastal boundary information with the U.N. Commission
on the Limits of the Continental Shelf so that rights
over the resources of the sea floor and subsurface
(including oil and gas drilling rights) may be preserved.
For details: www.applanix.com.
Dynamic
Message Signs Improve Operations on America’s
Dream Highway
Daktronics has supplied several full-matrix Galaxy®
dynamic message signs (DMS) to the Pennsylvania Turnpike
for use at four toll plazas, to better identify exit
and entry toll operations. The signs use state-of-the-art,
full-color light emitting diode (LED) technology to
create clear, readable messages, which make it easier
for travellers on the turnpike to see the messages
at a greater distance from the toll plazas. Seven
messages were created for the signs and can be changed
easily by the toll booth operator via a simple control
interface powered by Daktronics. For details: www.daktronics.com.
Nokia
to Acquire NAVTEQ
Nokia and NAVTEQ have announced an agreement for Nokia
to acquire NAVTEQ. The acquisition has been approved
by the Board of Directors of each company and is subject
to customary closing conditions, including regulatory
approvals and NAVTEQ shareholders’ approval.
For details: www.navteq.com.
TransLink
Wins Prestigious APTA Award
TransLink has won first place in the Public Relations/Awareness
or Education category and received the "AdWheel"
marketing award from the American Public Transportation
Association (APTA), recognizing TransLink's employer
branding and recruitment campaign that promotes TransLink
as an employer of choice for professional workers.
For details: www.translink.bc.ca.
UPCOMING
EVENTS
Newsletter
published by ITS Canada.
Submissions
or comments can be emailed to askus@itscanada.ca.
|
