HOT Lanes in the Bay Area

Photo courtesy of johnmarkos.

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) has approved a plan to allow solo drivers to pay a toll to drive in Bay Area carpool lanes, turning HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes into HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes. The article states:

The system would be phased in over nearly two decades, starting in late 2010 or early 2011, and the first pilot projects would open on two congested corridors: southbound Interstate 680 over the Sunol Grade and both directions of Interstate 580 between Livermore and the I-680 interchange, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional planning and funding agency, which is coordinating the plan.

Eventually, the toll-lane network would be expanded to cover nearly 800 of the region's 1,200 miles of freeway lanes.

The price of the tolls hasn't been decided, but it could start out at a couple of dimes per mile. Motorists would use FasTrak transponders to pay.

You can read more about MTC's proposal here.

Transportation Seminar and Cookie Time: Freeway Congestion is Not So Good

After this week's Cookie Time, from 3:30 to 4:00 in the ITS Library, the Transportation Seminar will commence in the Bechtel Engineering Center, Room 240. We will be regaled this week with a talk, Freeway Congestion, Ramp Metering, and Tolls, given by Prof. Pravin Varaiya. The abstract-

The Cell Transmission Model of a freeway with multiple origins and destinations is used to compare four schemes to reduce freeway congestion: (R) ramp control only; (T) one lane is tolled and ramps are uncontrolled; (B) bottlenecks are tolled and ramps are uncontrolled; (RB) ramps are controlled and bottlenecks are tolled. In the base case no ramps are metered and there are no tolls. It is found that (T) is inefficient and likely to leave all travelers worse off than in the base case; (R), (B) and (RB) can achieve efficient freeway utilization; (B) can eliminate queues, but has adverse spatial and equity side effects; (RB) minimizes these side effects. (RB) is likely to be much less costly to implement and maintain than (T) or (B).

Prof. Varaiya holds the Nortel Networks Distinguished Professorship in our very own Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Having previously taught also in the Department of Economics and heading the PATH program, he currently studies communication networks, transportation, and hybrid systems. If you miss this talk you will definitely look like a sucker.

Highways are a Series of Tubes

Senator Ted Stevens said "The Internet is a series of tubes."
Prof. Carl Ross from University of Portsmouth would like to see highways as a series of tubes.

Professor Carl Ross's innovative concept for an enclosed 'double-decker highway' would not only help cut road congestion but also significantly reduce the levels of harmful gases emitted by cars being released into the atmosphere.

Open double-decker highways already exist in Mexico City, but the mechanical engineer's vision sees the roads walled and roofed in soundproof plastic to trap carbon dioxide.

The poisonous emissions would then be blown into filters or 'scrubbers' much like those used on submarines and space shuttles for decades.

I-35W Bridge Collapse Myths And Conspiracies

I-35W Bridge Collapse Myths And Conspiracies

By John A. Weeks III

http://www.johnweeks.com/i35w/i35wmyths.html

The Maze Meltdown

The San Francisco Chronicle has a well-organized webpage providing full coverage of the April 29 MacArthur Maze meltdown and its aftermath.

New bibliographies from the Transportation Library

Library staff members Seyem Petrites and John Gallwey have recently compiled bibliographies that may be of interest to our readers. Seyem compiled Sources of Information in Intelligent Transportation Systems, a solo effort, while John engaged the help of several members of the Special Libraries Association's Transportation Division (including our own Kendra Levine) to assemble Sources of Information in Highways.

These bibliographies are part of the 6th edition of the SLA Transportation Division's "Sources of Information in Transportation." The new edition will become available on the National Transportation Library website in summer 2007.

Hybrid Buses for the Long Haul?

Live from the Third Rail describes some of Elk Grove's e-tran's growing pains. The Sacramento Bee reports (registration required, Third Rail provides a pdf.) It seems that e-tran's hybrid buses aren't up for the long routes using freeways:

A hybrid-powered commuter bus fleet -- the cleanest in the nation -- would be the heart of what's called the e-tran.

But now, Elk Grove's path to clean-air mass transit has taken a detour. Diesel buses, both chartered and purchased, currently make up nearly half of e-tran's 42-vehicle fleet and most of the daily commute buses to downtown Sacramento.

Instead of cruising into the nation's history books, the hybrid fleet has had trouble accelerating into the fast lanes of the freeways. Instead of comfortable rides, hybrid bus air conditioners have quit in triple-digit temperatures, leaving passengers sweating in ovenlike heat.

Now, only five of the city's 21 hybrids are used on freeways.

"In the quest to be leading edge, you have to take chances at times on new technology," Mayor Rick Soares said. "We took that chance."
...
So, what's the problem with the hybrids? They perform best during stop-and-go traffic, Tobar said. The hybrid's electric energy booster, an ultra capacitor, works in tandem with a 145-kilowatt generator. That booster is recharged every time a driver applies the brakes.

That's great for intercity transit, but is troublesome on freeways where brakes are less often applied.

"At highway speeds, many of the systems are stressed," Tobar said.

Among the stresses are air conditioners that switch off on ultra-hot days during freeway travel. To relieve passengers, Tobar either pulls buses from service or delivers bottled water in ice buckets to buses on afternoons hotter than 105 degrees.

Still, passengers have been howling. With sunlight beating into bus windows, the hybrids have been compared to rolling hot houses.

NHTSA's Multitaskers of Horror!

Last month news agencies reported about NHTSA's report about distracted drivers. The report, entitled The Impact of Driver Inattention On Near-Crash/Crash Risk tracked 100 vehicles equipped with video and sensor devices for one year.
A brief analysis of the study shows:

• Drowsiness is a significant problem that increases a driverÂ’s risk of a crash or near-crash by at least a factor of four. But drowsy driving may be significantly under-reported in police crash investigations.
  
• The most common distraction for drivers is the use of cell phones. However, the number of crashes and near-crashes attributable to dialing is nearly identical to the number associated with talking or listening. Dialing is more dangerous but occurs less often than talking or listening.
  
• Reaching for a moving object increased the risk of a crash or near-crash by 9 times; looking at an external object by 3.7 times; reading by 3 times; applying makeup by 3 times; dialing a hand-held device (typically a cell phone) by almost 3 times; and talking or listening on a hand-held device by 1.3 times.
  
• Drivers who engage frequently in distracting activities are more likely to be involved in an inattention-related crash or near-crash. However, drivers are often unable to predict when it is safe to look away from the road to multi-task because the situation can change abruptly leaving the driver no time to react even when looking away from the forward roadway for only a brief time.

Toronto's GO Transit Hacked

Tronto's GO Transit (Greater Toronto Transit Authority) was hacked. From Computerworld:

“It was Thursday evening, April 27, about 5:30, and I was leaving Toronto and I was taking the GO Transit train,” said [Stephen] Nicholls, vice president of the National Citizens Coalition. “Each car has a little electronic advertising sign and messages scroll across them and usually it’s something like buy tickets to this event or messages about train safety. But this time the message on the sign was reading ‘Stephen Harper eats babies,’ every three seconds. Stephen Harper used to be my boss and he’s president of the organization I work for right now.”

Nicholls, who lives in a suburb of Toronto, thought the message on the sign was strange and figured it had to be some kind of parody, with some kind of kicker explaining what it meant. But there was no punchline, he said.

“My first thought was maybe I’m hallucinating and that this couldn’t be. So I sent an e-mail to the GO Transit people and I put it on my blog. I never got any messages back from the GO Transit people over the next couple days,” he said. “But people in the blogging community picked it up, and it sort of got all over the place and local media picked it up. Then I talked about it on a radio station and suddenly the GO Transit people were contacting me. They explained that a hacker got into the system and changed the message. Apparently, this person did it with a wireless device [that] costs about $25 ... at any hardware store or any tech store.... They don’t know who it was and apparently it was running all last weekend on different trains.”

The LED signs are programmed with an infrared remote, and apparently weren't password protected all the time. The signs will most likely be protected now though.

Stephen Harper doesn't eat babies.