Deborah Horton

Spatially Referenced Probe Data Performance Measures for Infrastructure Investment Decision Makers

Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, the recently enacted highway bill, challenges transportation professionals to develop a comprehensive set of performance measures for managing most aspects of the transportation system. Historically, performance metrics have been created on an agency-by-agency basis with little consistency between data collection frequency and quality. In recent years, crowdsourced data have become a high -fidelity data source that could be used to develop spatially oriented performance measures that could scale nationwide. This paper summarizes the rapidly evolving literature on probe vehicle data and proposes a series of performance measures to characterize the temporal and spatial aspects of congestion in a graphical manner that decision makers may use to evaluate the impact of past investments and prioritize future investments. The I-80-I-94 corridor in northwest Indiana, near Chicago, Illinois, is used to present the methodologies. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these techniques can be extended on a national scale to characterize corridors such as I-80 from New York to California.

Probe Vehicle-Based Statewide Mobility Performance Measures for Decision Makers

Decision makers in state transportation agencies typically manage budgets approaching or exceeding

Evolution of Data Creation, Management, Publication, and Curation in the Research Process

1 billion. Historically, the data used to make investment decisions have been quite coarse and have been typically based on short-term volume counts fed into models to forecast performance. As a result, it is not uncommon for construction projects to address needs that were forecast to be a priority 5 to 10 years earlier, while more pressing congestion challenges go unmet. It is essential that long-term planning begins to be supplemented by more current performance measures. The emerging private-sector probe vehicle data obtained from commercial providers offer an opportunity to augment traditional forward-looking planning models with performance measures that reflect the conditions motorists are experiencing today. This paper proposes scalable, analytical probe data–reduction techniques to create technically sound, yet visually intuitive, system-performance measures of current freeway conditions. These types of performance measure are increasingly used by high-level agency management to identify locations at which customers experience congestion, and the magnitude of that congestion, and to compare congestion on various highway corridors. These proposed performance measures can be used for policy-oriented decisions, such as the prioritization of capital program investments, the management of snow removal, and the scheduling of lane closures. The techniques are applied to seven Indiana Interstate highways, comprised of 1,886 directional miles. The Interstates span rural and urban sections that experience varying levels of recurring and nonrecurring congestion as a result of winter weather and construction activity. Specific examples adjacent to the Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; and Chicago, Illinois, metropolitan areas are presented, along with the 10 most congested Interstate segments.

2012 Indiana Mobility Report: Full Version

Sharing research data and scholarship is of national importance because of the increased focus on maximizing return on the U.S. governments investment in research programs. Recent government policy changes have directly affected the management and accessibility of publically funded research. On January 18, 2011, the National Science Foundation, a U.S. agency that supports research and education in nonmedical fields, required that data management plans be submitted with all grant proposals. On February 22, 2013, the U.S. Presidents Office of Science and Technology Policy extended a similar requirement for all federal agencies with research and development budgets of more than

Engaging New Partners in Transportation Research: Integrating Publishing, Archiving, and Indexing of Technical Literature into the Research Process

100 million. These requirements illustrate the need for further coordination and management of data as scholarship with traditional publications. Purdue University Libraries and its Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP) collaborated to develop a comprehensive work flow that links technical report production with the management and publication of associated data. This paper illustrates early initiatives to integrate discrete data publications with traditional scholarly publications by leveraging new and existing repository platforms and services. The authors review government policies, past data-sharing practices, early pilot initiatives, and work flow integration between Purdues data repository, the traditional press, and institutional repository. Through the adoption of these work flows, the authors propose best practices for integrating data publishing and dissemination into the research process. The implementation of this model has the potential to assist researchers in meeting the requirements of federal funding agencies, while reducing redundancy, ensuring integrity, expanding accessibility, and increasing the return on research investment.

Applying Lean-Engineering Principles to Agency Business Processes to Improve Collections Associated with Infrastructure Damaged by Motor Vehicle Crashes

This report introduces the use of crowd sourced probe data collected from vehicles and mobile devices to quantify the location and duration of congestion on Indiana interstates. The report presents a summary of the I-65 corridor, I-465, and I-94 speed profiles. Summary monthly mobility statistics for all 943 centerline miles of Indiana Interstates 64, 65, 69, 70, 74, 94, and 465 are tabulated in a graphical format to facilitate comparison of mobility along those corridors in both 2011 and 2012. In addition to the Interstate, the report describes arterial travel time characteristics for SR 37 as well as before/after analysis of a traffic signal retiming project on US 31 in Kokomo.

Real-Time Probe Data Dashboards for Interstate Performance Monitoring During Winter Weather and Incidents

Over the past several decades a variety of federal and state programs have invested in transportation research. The U.S. Department of Transportation annually invests approximately

2011 Indiana Interstate Mobility Report—Full Version

180 million in State Planning and Research (SPR) and university transportation centers (UTCs). This investment generates an extensive portfolio of gray literature (i.e., patents, governmental or scientific research group technical reports, white papers, or preprints) that is not yet uniformly cataloged or accessible, despite the best efforts of the National Technical Information Service, TRB, and the National Transportation Library. This paper reports on a review of the publishing and archiving practices for transportation research technical reports, summarizes best practices, and recommends that UTC and SPR research programs seek and strengthen partnerships with libraries to facilitate the improved production, stewardship, and dissemination of research reports. This paper describes an open access program in Indiana that has digitally archived approximately 1,500 SPR reports dating from 1956, implemented consistent name authority, and created digital object identifiers for reports and data sets to systematically integrate technical reports into scholarly literature. Through new partnerships between the researchers and the home institution, researchers have developed processes to leverage technical report production with the university press to ensure an agile adaptation to emerging digital publishing and open access trends. The adoption of the techniques and the partnerships described in this paper are believed to result in a more efficient investment of state and national transportation research funds by reducing research duplication and demonstrating an improved stewardship of research dollars.

2013–2014 Indiana Mobility Report: Full Version

State and local agencies have an enormous investment in roadway infrastructure that is routinely damaged by motor vehicle crashes and must be repaired in a timely manner. Recovering the costs associated with repairing damage to state property (DSP) from responsible parties can be difficult if careful business processes are not followed by state and local agencies. In 2009, the Indiana Department of Transportation (DOT) initiated a review of its DSP business processes; a survey of peer state DSP business processes was also conducted. Subsequently, the Indiana DOT implemented a series of improvements that have increased the amount invoiced for repair of damaged roadway infrastructure from

2015 Indiana Mobility Report and Performance Measure Dashboards

1.4 million in FY 2010 to