Mashrur Chowdhury

Evaluation of Real-Time Parking Information: Case Study of Isolated University Campus

Although parking is an important issue in transportation engineering and planning, little research has examined the use of new parking information technologies in rural communities. The Clemson University campus, in South Carolina, was used as a case study to determine the ability of roadside parking information systems to reduce delay, cut travel time, and manage changing volumes of cars. To examine these effects, a traffic simulation model of the campus was built, calibrated, and validated. The model used a dynamic assignment approach to capture the rerouting of vehicles in response to parking availability information for several key parking lots. It was found that use of roadside parking information systems, such as dynamic message signs, can reduce delay while not significantly affecting volumes, travel times, or speeds. The findings suggested that delay reduction was caused by a decrease in vehicle circulation time.

Social Physics Techniques for Meeting ITS Deployment Challenges in Cities of Emerging Economies

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) use information technology to improve the safety and efficiency of surface transportation mobility. Emerging cities that are still in the early phases of infrastructure deployment have an opportunity to leapfrog directly to ITS applications that have already been proven to be successful elsewhere. One challenge, however, is lack of availability of real-time traffic data, which are important for the planning and monitoring of most ITS applications in these developing cities. This paper describes how data collected from mobile phones and analysis techniques from the new field of social physics—which is defined as the modeling of human behavior through aggregation of big data—could be used to respond to this challenging lack of useful data. Few studies have indicated that use of cell phone data and application of social physics might help overcome the lack of data obstacle to ITS deployment in cities of emerging economies. Although further study is needed, widespread cell phone usage and the corresponding GPS data suggest other emerging cities may benefit from similar approaches. This paper discusses the potential of integrating cell phone data with social physics for providing the real-time traffic data for ITS applications in cities that would benefit from it the most.