Research Projects
| Project Title: | An Integrated Transportation Network Reliability Analysis Framework |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2002 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2007 |
| Total Amount: | $375,000 |
| Funding Source: | National Science Foundation (NSF) |
| Principal Investigators: | Anthony Chen (USU) |
| Project Summary: | Experience with earthquakes has provided compelling evidence of transportation infrastructure's critical role in
restoring normalcy as well as the need for reliable transportation systems under natural or man-made disasters. Nonetheless,
reliability analysis has received very little attention in transportation research. Moreover, increased economic activity
and improved quality of life have placed a higher value on reducing congestion. Road travelers in the 21st century would
prefer a more reliable transportation system with a higher level of confidence of arriving at their destination on
schedule. Transportation network reliability analysis will play an important role in the planning, design and management
of transportation facilities and networks particularly in developed countries and/or mega-cities. The research plan entails developing an integrated transportation network reliability analysis framework. This integrated analysis framework involves modeling, evaluation, design, algorithm development, and implementation. The modeling includes estimating the maximum capacity of a transportation network and developing stochastic route choice models that account for both the traveler perception error as well as the uncertainty of network travel times. The evaluation component involves the assessment of transportation reliability measures: travel time reliability is concerned with the probability that a trip between a given origin-destination pair can be made within a given time interval and a specified level-of-service, and capacity reliability is concerned with the probability that the network capacity can accommodate a certain volume of traffic demand at a required service level. The design component addresses roadway network designed reliability and cost-effectiveness and includes investigating the role of information and learning in travel decisions. Finally, algorithms will be developed and implemented that will render the framework operational and successful. The education plan focuses on two important tasks: (1) enhancing the undergraduate program to better prepare our students for engineering/technology careers in the 21st century, and (2) developing a graduation transportation curriculum and teaching program with emphasis in systems modeling. These objectives will be achieved by (a) providing hands-on, team experience through computer lab exercises to our students to promote active and collaborative learning, (b) exposing promising students at the undergraduate level to research opportunities in transportation, (c) building a graduate curriculum and teaching program that emphasizes systems modeling, and (d) developing a transportation research seminar to provide an informal forum for students to discuss a wide range of topics related to transportation issues that do not necessarily fit into the course curriculum. In addition to the above educational activities, the PI will integrate research into teaching by bringing in new insights and results generated by this CAREER project into both undergraduate and graduate courses, to broaden the students' educational experience based on the research plan, and to recruit and retain traditionally under-represented students to the transportation program. |
| Project Title: | Development of a Path Flow Estimator for Deriving Steady-State and Time-Dependent Origin-Destination Table Trips |
| Start Date: | January 8, 2002 |
| End Date: | June 30, 2004 |
| Total Amount: | $334,243 |
| Funding Source: | California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH)/California Department of Transportation |
| Principal Investigators: | Will Recker (UC Irvine), Anthony Chen (USU), and Michael Zhang (UCD) |
| Project Summary: | This research proposes to develop a software tool for estimating both steady-state and time-dependent origin-destination (O-D) trip tables using the concept of path flow estimation. The path flow estimator (PFE), originally developed by Bell and Shield (1995), is a one-stage network observer that estimates path flows (hence O-D flows) and path travel times from traffic counts in transportation networks. The core of the PFE is a logit path choice model (i.e., demand), which interacts with link cost functions (i.e., supply) to produce a stochastic equilibrium traffic pattern. The PFE can be implemented for both off-line transportation planning applications and on-line traffic management applications. The PFE is a proven operational model that has been tested in a number of projects in Europe. The goal of this proposal is to adapt the PFE that best meets Caltrans' needs and to further develop it to improve the reliability and efficiency of the O-D estimates. The proposed research intends to develop a path flow estimator as a software tool for deriving both steady-state and time-dependent O-D trip tables for various transportation applications, ranging from long range transportation planning to short-term transportation management and information applications. |
| Project Title: | Considering Risk-Taking Behavior in Travel Time Reliability |
| Start Date: | March 1, 2001 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2002 |
| Total Amount: | $131,505 |
| Funding Source: | California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH)/California Department of Transportation |
| Principal Investigators: | Will Recker (UC Irvine) and Anthony Chen (USU) |
| Project Summary: | Despite the importance of assessing the reliability of road networks, there exist only a few suitable techniques. The approaches used in water supply systems, communication systems, and power transmission systems are not directly applicable for transportation systems. The reason is that these approaches ignore route choice behavior when evaluating the performance reliability of a network. This research proposes to incorporate a risk-taking, route choice behavior when estimating travel time reliability of a road network. The proposed research approach will allow the evaluation of network performance under uncertainty. It is particularly useful for the traffic information systems in which travel time information (not only the mean travel time but also the variance of travel time) is provided to the network users for decision-making. It is anticipated that the proposed research can also be used to evaluate the performance of the Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) and to improve the level-of-service of a road network. |
| Project Title: | Video-Based Vehicle Classification |
| Start Date: | July 1, 2001 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2002 |
| Total Amount: | $32,000 |
| Funding Source: | Community/University Research Initiative Grant |
| Principal Investigators: | Anthony Chen (USU) and Heng-Da Cheng (USU) |
| Project Summary: | Vehicle classification is the process of separating vehicles according to different predefined classes. This information is invaluable in many transportation applications including road maintenance, emissions/pollution estimation, traffic safety, traffic operations and control, and electronic toll collection. This research proposes to develop an automated video-based intelligent system for classifying vehicles. |