Toll plaza designs have implemented electronic toll collection and other technologies to improve toll systems; however, an increase in crashes has appeared with these improvements. To study safely the pertinent aspects of driver behavior in toll plazas with electronic toll collection, a cockpit driving simulator housed at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez was used. Specifically, in this study a comparison was made of two configurations of the signs that indicated the corresponding speed limit and toll station for each lane in the area before the toll plaza. One configuration corresponded to the current condition of the signage in Puerto Rico, with signs located at the roadside; the second configuration presented a proposed overhead signage treatment. A representative group of 20 subjects was selected to test the effectiveness of the two signage configurations on the approach zone leading to the toll plaza, calculating the standard deviation of roadway position, speed, and acceleration noise in five zones. The behavior of drivers using the proposed signage configuration appeared to be safer than the behavior of drivers following the current signage configuration. Specifically, at each of five zones in which behavior was sampled on the approach to the toll plaza, drivers using the proposed configuration changed lanes more smoothly and reduced their vehicles’ velocity more when approaching the toll plaza. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference between configurations in acceleration noise. The results of this study provide strong evidence that driving simulators can be used effectively to identify efficient and inexpensive alternative signage configurations at toll plazas.
As an example of integrating signal control with network traffic assignment, the notion of path-based signal coordination in transportation networks is introduced and illustrated. The use of a real-time dynamic traffic assignment system allows prediction of the traffic flow patterns and identification of the dominant paths in the network. The signalized intersections along these paths, which may consist of combinations of straight sections and turning movements, are coordinated to increase the capacity of the freeway and the surface street system to efficiently absorb diverted traffic from the freeway. A set of experiments is designed to compare the network performance under the path-based coordination scheme with no coordination and arterial-based coordination. The experiments are conducted for both pretimed and vehicle-actuated signal control. An actual network, which represents the south-central part of the Fort Worth area, is used in these experiments. The network consists of a freeway (I-35W) surrounded by a street network with a total of 178 nodes and 441 arcs. The path-based coordination scheme is shown to outperform arterial-based coordination in the cases of both pretimed fixed control and vehicle-actuated signal control. A significant reduction in the network average travel time under the path-based coordination scheme is observed compared with the other schemes. This application further illustrates the benefits of real-time dynamic traffic assignment for advanced traffic management under incident conditions.
Cost considerations are critical in the analysis and prevention of traffic crashes. Integration of cost data into crash datasets facilitates the crash-cost analyses with all their related attributes. It is, however, a challenging task because of the lack of availability of unique identifiers across the databases and because of privacy and confidentiality regulations. This study performed a record linkage comparison between the deterministic and probabilistic approaches using attributes matching techniques with numerical distance and weight patterns under the Fellegi–Sunter approach. As a result, the deterministic algorithm developed using the exact match of the 14-digit police accident record number had an overall matching performance of 52.38% of real matched records, while the probabilistic algorithm had an overall matching performance of 70.41% with a quality measurement of the sensitivity of 99.99%. The deterministic approach was thus outperformed by the probabilistic approach by approximately 20% of records matched. The probabilistic matching with numerical variables seems to be a good matching strategy supported by quality variables. On record matching, a multivariable regression model was developed to model medical costs and identify factors that increase the costs of treating injured claimants in Puerto Rico.
Driving simulators have been widely used in transportation research and have potential applications for toll plaza safety research. The University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass-Amherst) performed a collaborative investigation using driving simulators to evaluate drivers’ behavior in two toll plazas with different signage and lane configurations that operate under the U.S. jurisdiction. The studied toll roads were the Caguas South Toll Plaza in Puerto Rico and the West Springfield Toll Plaza in Massachusetts. The major safety issues identified in both toll roads were unexpected lane changes, sudden vehicle stops, and variable speed patterns. The purpose of this study was to exchange research scenarios between UPRM and UMass-Amherst to test drivers who were unfamiliar with the areas of the study and enlarge the scope. Assuming that the patterns of behavior were similar, the results would suggest that drivers’ behaviors from different regions depend largely on the geometry of the toll plaza and not on the driving culture particular to a region. This study will greatly add to the utility of driving simulator studies because the results reported from one region and one toll plaza arrangement should generalize to other regions around the country and to territories. Results show that familiar drivers had a better driving performance, with respect to variability of lane position, when compared with unfamiliar drivers. However, the proposed treatments for each toll plaza improved road safety for both familiar and unfamiliar drivers.
After massive disasters and catastrophes, communities’ infrastructure and communication systems can be severely affected to the point that they cease to function. Furthermore, the affected areas are supplied with significant amounts of donations, which need to be optimally inventoried, stored, and distributed to benefit those affected while minimizing logistics costs. In these events, it is vital to have disaster response plans in place, and readily available trained personnel who can reach and support the affected areas with critical supplies in time to prevent the loss of lives and property. In 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, a category five hurricane. Non-established relief groups (NERGs) formed immediately after the disaster to reduce the distress of the severely affected population. This research presents a conceptual framework with the key factors to improve the operation of NERGs when participating in the relief efforts after a catastrophic event. The proposed framework considers the steps required for an efficient relief effort, and it is intended to support a well-organized emergency response process by NERGs. Simulation tools were implemented to assess the operations performed by these groups to manage supplies. Various layouts for the space usage distribution and factors that affect the material convergence phenomenon were evaluated. Recommendations are provided for NERGs to improve the efficiency of their activities and increase the benefits offered to the affected communities.
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