Results of California Department of Transportation Litter Management Pilot Study

Author(s):  
Gary Lippner ◽  
John Johnston ◽  
Suzanne Combs ◽  
Kimberly Walter ◽  
David Marx
Author(s):  
Mobashwir Khan ◽  
Anurag Komanduri ◽  
Kalin Pacheco ◽  
Cemal Ayvalik ◽  
Kimon Proussaloglou ◽  
...  

This paper describes the findings from the California Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey (CA-VIUS) which was administered between June 2016 and January 2018 and obtained data from a total of 11,118 fleets and 14,790 trucks. The surveys were segmented by registration, geography, vehicle type, and vehicle age, and the data collection effort exceeded sampling targets across almost all segments. The CA-VIUS is the largest statewide commercial vehicle data collection effort in the United States and will replace the 2002 National VIUS in transportation planning and emissions studies throughout California. Currently, the wealth of information provided by the survey is supporting the development of the California Statewide Freight Forecasting Model which is a fine-grained behavioral freight model. This model will allow California Department of Transportation and its partners to make more informed infrastructure and operational investment decisions. The CA-VIUS data will also be useful for researchers and practitioners hoping to understand the impacts and benefits of commercial vehicle movements on air quality, economic activity, safety, and vehicle usage. This paper documents key sampling and survey approaches, but mainly focuses on the key findings observed in the survey. This is a practical paper geared towards practitioners who are seeking to analyze a new VIUS survey and those who wish to implement one of their own.


2003 ◽  
Vol 1819 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Ford ◽  
Eugene C. Calvert

Mendocino County is a large rural county in northern California with more than 1,000 centerline miles of county-maintained roads. The terrain is mountainous, with a few small inland valleys. During the 1990s, the Mendocino County Department of Transportation developed a program of road system traffic safety reviews to improve signing and markings on the arterials and collectors in the system. The effectiveness of the program was measured by comparing accident data for the reviewed roads with data for roads not included in, or influenced by, the reviews. To control for different groups of factors, two sets of control roads were selected—county-maintained roads not reviewed and state highways within the county. Over two consecutive 3-year review cycles, the number of accidents on the reviewed roads fell by 42.1%, while on the county-maintained roads not reviewed they increased by 26.5%, and on the state highways they fell by 3.3%. The total cost to conduct the reviews and implement the recommended changes was $ 79,300. The accident histories of the control roads were used to define the limits of the range of probable benefits. On the basis of average accident costs provided by the California Department of Transportation, calculated savings ranged from $ 12.58 million to $23.73 million, yielding a costs-to-benefits ratio between 1:159 and 1:299. The county is expanding the road system traffic safety review program to cover its entire maintained road system.


Author(s):  
Jacob S. Duane ◽  
Joe A. Palen ◽  
Fidelis O. Eke ◽  
Harry H. Cheng

The California Department of Transportation, like many such departments in the United States, is working on developing a new family of electronic sensing devices for the purpose of monitoring certain characteristics of road vehicles as they move along the highway. The devices currently under development are to be located overhead individual highway traffic lanes, from where they can have a clear “view” of ground vehicles. In order to deploy these devices, there is a need to develop the capability to safely and efficiently mount them above highway traffic lanes, using existing overhead bridges and sign structures as support structures. This paper presents a technical study of a universal support platform for these devices. The study discusses such issues as mobility, reliability, and resistance to environmental and other hazards. Results of tests conducted on a prototype are also presented.


Author(s):  
Hongmin “Tracy” Zhou ◽  
Magdy Kozman

Traffic in Houston, U.S., has continued growing over the past decade. The Houston District of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) recently began a pilot study to evaluate a dynamic ramp metering system. The project is aimed to convert ramp metering from local control to system-wide dynamic operation. In Phase I of the project, major control parameters and different metering strategies were tested and evaluated in simulation and field settings for a study corridor installed with six ramp meters. The study identified a base metering plan that overall worked well for sites without restrictive queue conditions. This base plan was that average speed of 50 mph or lower in the right-most two mainlanes will call for metering at a constant metering rate of 850 vehicles per hour for at least 4 min, and that queue occupancy of 50% or higher will call for meter shutdown for at least 1 min. Ramp metering coordinated with the downstream intersection performed well by accommodating diverted traffic caused by ramp metering. When operating ramp meters in a group, metering the immediately upstream meter performed best compared with metering further upstream meters. It is evident that ramp metering caused traffic diversion to the frontage road and also caused reduced queue-jumping behaviors on the frontage road at ramp meters with an immediately upstream exit ramp. The coordinated ramp metering strategy can potentially generate a benefit/cost ratio of 117:1 compared with local metering in the District.


Author(s):  
M. J. N. Priestley ◽  
F. Seible

Following the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, a large number of damaged and undamaged structural concrete bridge structures had to be assessed and evaluated for seismic repair and retrofit. The lack of consistent assessment and evaluation models prompted the formulation of the outlined procedures in a first attempt to develop a comprehensive basis for the seismic assessment and retrofit of existing bridge structures. The presented principles are currently being developed at UCSD into consistent assessment design models in cooperation with the California Department of Transportation.


Author(s):  
Qingcang Yu ◽  
Fidelis O. Eke ◽  
Harry H. Cheng ◽  
Jacob S. Duane ◽  
Joe A. Palen

The California Department of Transportation has sponsored the development of a new family of out of pavement, laser based sensing devices for monitoring road vehicles on the highway. These devices are to be placed over highway traffic lanes, so that they can have an unobstructed view of vehicles moving along the highway. It is expected that there will be need for relatively frequent adjustment of the actual location of these devices over the freeway, so that they can be moved from one lane to another, or so the position over a given lane can be modified. Because of these constraints, a mobile support platform is planned for these devices. This paper presents a motion control strategy for such a mobile platform, and the necessary hardware to implement the control system. The ideas presented in the paper have been tested on a prototype mobile support platform.


Author(s):  
Haiping Zhou ◽  
Zhongren Wang ◽  
Robert Sherrick ◽  
Scott Mathison

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) awarded a contractor a three-year contract to collect, analyze, and report pavement condition of the state highway system for 2018 and 2019 using automated pavement condition survey (APCS). The contract covers 12 Caltrans districts with roughly 52,000 lane miles of on-system roadways and 6,000 lane miles of off-system roadways. Before investing significant resources on statewide APCS data collection, Caltrans and the contractor initiated a pilot study. The purpose is to establish a workable process for data quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA), making sure the data collected closely reflect the field condition. The pilot study was conducted on selected routes in Caltrans District 12. The study included a total of 113 lane miles of roadway, representing roughly 5% of the total lane miles in the district. Of these lane miles, 69 lane miles are asphalt pavements and 44 lane miles are jointed plain concrete pavements. The developed data QC/QA process functioned very well. With this process, the contractor was responsible for performing the QC of the APCS data before submitting to Caltrans. Caltrans performed data QA, which included data completeness check; image review; field review and office verification; data upload into Caltrans pavement management system, and year-by-year data consistency check. The joint effort has resolved many data inconsistency issues caused either by interpretation or software issues. The data quality was thus well improved. It is recommended that this QC/QA process be implemented for all APCS data collections in California.


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