[B' Spokes: A study being done in Baltimore.]

Abstract

The concepts of Connected Vehicles (CV), Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V), and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2X) communications, are about to bring out a new generation of highway infrastructure, traffic controls, and the vehicle/driver functions. These concepts will revolutionize the traditional role of the drivers, which has been to perceive the surroundings, evaluate the situation, make decision, and execute it. This is a passive role given the operating environment. Further, individual drivers perform these processes independent of one another. The lack of coordination among the drivers has resulted in 1.6 million rear-end collisions and 634,000 side crashes annually (Consumer Reports, April 2012). How the Connected Vehicles will specifically change the traditional concept of driving is yet to be seen, although many components of the Connected Vehicles are already being tested and marketed today, for example, advanced warning of a vehicle braking ahead, forward collision warning, and blind spot/lane change warning.

How these technologies will be integrated into the System of Connected Vehicles is not precisely known at this time. Hence, it is timely to explore ideas about all aspects of the Connected Vehicles and identifying their implications. It appears that at this time application of the Connected Vehicle concept is concentrated to the operations of cars and trucks. The proposed research examines how the Connected Vehicles concept can include the operations of public transportation vehicles (including school buses), transit passengers, pedestrians (and school children), and bicyclists. It develops a smart-phone based application for addressing some of the safety and congestion issues related to public transportation, pedestrians, and bicyclists. The following are potential topics of the Connected Vehicle concept when it is applied to the operations of public transportation, transit passengers, pedestrians, and bicyclists.

Bus operations

• Transit priority signal implementation considering the number of passengers on board
• Transit priority (lane changing priority, pull-in or pull-out at bus stops, queue jumping)
• Recovery of delay (transit vehicle priority when passing vehicles)
• Avoidance of bus bunching (delay propagation adjustment)
• Bus driver’s control of pedestrian phase signal (when pedestrians are crossing before boarding the bus or after alighting the bus)
• Bus flag down (particularly in the evening)
• Demand actuated bus operation (bus route deviation according to passenger origin and destination)
• Park and ride parking space, including empty space search and identification
• Bus dilemma zone at intersections

Transit passengers related information

• Information to the waiting passengers about bus arrival times, bus destination and loading conditions
• Information to the passengers about predicted arrival time at transfer locations
• Information to the bus drivers about the number of passengers waiting at stops and their waiting time
• Bus transfer coordination (delay bus to allow transfer at transfer points)

Pedestrians and school children

• Detection of pedestrians at intersections, particularly turning vehicles
• Detection of pedestrians crossing street, particularly at night and under rain
• Personal navigation (Pedestrian GPS)
• School children traffic safety, e.g. school bus driver informing the drivers about children boarding and alighting at bus stop.

Bicyclists

• Detection of bicyclists at intersections and collision avoidance

Most of the applications related to pedestrians and bicyclists may be implemented based on the use of cell phones. Cell phone information connected to a GPS can provide useful information that protects them from collision with the vehicles or bicycles; also, it allows communications with transit vehicles as well as among the pedestrians.

In the above context, a smart-phone based application can be developed that can be used by transit passengers, pedestrians, and bicyclists to address safety and delay related issues outlined above. The application will have the ability to collect real-time data from the vehicle-infrastructure integration and alert the user regarding the safety and delay related issues outlined above. Please note that the PI Dr. M. Jha has a related pending NSF proposal co-developed with two Computer Science Professors at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT); he foresees a good synergy between the NSF work (if funded) and the proposed work in developing a smart-phone based app. for addressing public transportation, pedestrians, and bicyclists issues. The NSF proposal currently in review is titled "NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Real-time Driver Re-routing using Smart Phone-based Vehicular Networks."

The proposed research will explore how to apply these ideas within the concept of Connected Vehicles and test some of the issues outlined above related to bus operations, transit passengers, pedestrians, and bicyclists over a 24 month period. The connected-vehicle test bed of Northern Virginia will be used to carry out the research. Specifically our efforts will be focused in addressing following aspects of research:

• Exploration and descriptions of specific application and operations related to public transportation vehicles, transit passengers, pedestrians, and bicyclists
• Prediction of benefits (benefits to users, transit operator, and community)
• For applications with significant benefit potentials, development of technical details (communications equipment, communications protocol, user interface, computation needs, and costs)
• Decision algorithms (e.g., rule based algorithm, optimization algorithms)
• Implementation challenges (practical problems)
• Real-time data integration for smart phone application development
• Development of a smart phone-based application for addressing some of the safety/congestion issues related to public transportation, pedestrians, and bicyclists