WTI

Rural Transportation Research, Development & Accelerated Deployment Technical Proposal

Primary Investigator Contact Information

External Project Contact(s)

Report(s)

There are no reports associated with this project.

Project Objective

Renewal of a cooperative and contractual arrangement between the Western Transportation Institute and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to continue efforts toward improving safety and efficiency of rural transportation facilities, enhance the mobility of rural travelers, and conserve the ecological well being of the environment through which those transportation systems move.

Project Abstract

The project is divided into focus areas over a four-year period that will assist both Caltrans and WTI achieve certain objectives. These objectives include: • Identify potential California public and private sector organizations and federal agency partners to leverage resources and funding to address Caltrans’s rural transportation challenges. • Provide formalized methods of cooperation among the Caltrans district customers, sponsoring organizations and universities for advanced rural transportation technology research and technology transfer. • Conduct outreach and assess rural transportation challenges and ITS needs. • Accelerate the deployment of ITS to address driver behavior, safety, operations and maintenance through improved documentation of systems for replication in Caltrans districts with similar challenges. • Assess opportunities to improve driver simulation capabilities and coordination between WTI and Caltrans. • Improve coordination and communication between organizations involved in rural transportation solutions, including Caltrans DRI, Caltrans district offices, universities, and WTI. • Improve the dissemination of research results to assist Caltrans, practitioners in other states and researchers by providing a one-stop-shop clearinghouse of information on rural transportation. • Accelerate dissemination of research findings through working papers, publications and conference presentations.

Task Descriptions

1. Rural ITS Outreach and Assesment
   1. WTI will conduct outreach meetings to appropriate rural Caltrans District (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) offices. The purpose of the meetings will be to engage those District (customer) representatives in a dialogue on the transportation challenges they are experiencing, assess how those challenges relate to California Strategic Highway Implementation Plan goals and objectives, identify common focus areas between the District customers and to identify potential problem statements that could be used by DRI for further discussion with customers, Rural Program Steering Committee (PSC) or Technical Advisory Committee (TAP). A second objective for the outreach will be to provide insight on how the potential research could address DRI 38 Strategic Questions and to highlight which are of the highest priority to Caltrans, DRI and the District. From this information the Rural PSC and TAP could make more informed and holistic decisions on what is best for rural California and the rural Districts. District stakeholders who will be targeted include Deputy Directors and senior level engineers responsible for both oversight and field implementation, and who are responsible for tactical decisions. The individual targeted representatives will be based on availability. Outreach meetings will be conducted every two years. Deliverable: WTI will develop questions for discussion and conduct outreach meetings, in coordination with DRI Rural representatives, either on-site or via video or telephone conference depending on the needs of the sponsor. A technical memorandum summarizing the process, common challenges and research needs, potential problem statements, identification of DRI Strategic Question high rural priority areas, and next steps will be produced.
2. Safety Countermeasure Acceleration
   1. In concert with the Rural ITS Outreach and Assessment Task, WTI will inventory existing Caltrans ITS infrastructure and other safety (short-term) countermeasures to determine best practices, lessons learned, gaps and transferability from District to District based on the challenges identified from the Rural ITS Outreach and Assessment activity. Also, WTI will inventory WTI’s current research and deployment projects. From the information collected from Caltrans District or the WTI assessment, WTI will determine the deployment stage (Stage 1-5) where the different countermeasures may reside and methods that may be undertaken to accelerate wider scale deployment. The inventory and assessment will take pace every two years to allow for implementation, operational experience and lessons learned to occur. Deliverable: WTI will produce a technical memorandum that will assess the Caltrans Rural ITS and Safety State-of-the-Practice and identify gaps for further research development. The technical memorandum will be prepared every two years and be presented at a TAP meeting for discussion and comment.
3. Development of Rural Transportation Clearinghouse adn Technology Transfer
   1. In an effort to improve the dissemination of rural transportation research and practical solutions, WTI will develop a one-stop-shop clearinghouse on best practices relating to road ecology, public transportation, winter maintenance, safety, systems engineering and integration, transportation planning and economics, freight and logistics, and ITS. Information collected in previous scope-of-work efforts in this project will allow for greater understanding of needs and functional requirements of Caltrans needs to be collected and analyzed. Also, included within the Clearinghouse will be best practices from other state DOTs and WTI activities in other states. Information on the Clearinghouse would provide essential “lessons learned” to others who may be considering deployment of new technologies. This information sharing among transportation professionals with Caltrans and other states potentially would advance the national state-of-the-practice, and accelerate the availability and successful integration of new technologies into widespread use. The goal of the clearinghouse will be accelerated knowledge sharing and deployment, and it will build on the past success of the Caltrans Rural ITS Website. For this effort WTI is contributing $30,000 per year for three years for the development and maintenance of the Clearinghouse. Deliverable: WTI will produce a technical memorandum providing an overview of the challenges and issues in developing an effective clearinghouse. One section of the memorandum will be a survey of users to determine how they would use the Rural Transportation Clearinghouse and what types of content would be most useful to them. Caltrans will research current copyright policies to determine if Caltrans documents can be included in the clearinghouse. If Caltrans and WTI decide the Clearinghouse is a feasible effort, then WTI will develop and host the Clearinghouse on the WTI website. Caltrans will post as many documents as possible to the Clearinghouse once it is operational.
4. California University Transportation Centers (CaUTC) Partnership Opportunities
   1. WTI will conduct outreach and assess potential partnerships initially beginning with the University of California affiliates, including the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley; Institute of Urban and Regional Studies at UC Berkeley; Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis; Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Irvine and Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Los Angeles. The goal of the outreach will be to determine if there are partnering opportunities between WTI rural focus areas and CaUTC focus areas, and to improve cooperation and coordination between CaUTC and WTI. The assessment will examine which universities are addressing rural related research and how the organizations can work together to assist Caltrans. The purpose of this effort is not to conduct a quality assessment of those CaUTCs versus WTI. WTI will also examine which of those CaUTCs are performing research in each of the DRI 38 Strategic Questions to the greatest extent feasible. This work area will also include continuing efforts to support and develop the Caltrans/WTI relationship. The primary component will be conducting regular Caltrans/WTI meetings. Caltrans provides critical strategic and directional input as a member of the WTI Governing Board. Additional meetings with Caltrans staff help facilitate project development and implementation. These meetings are essential to the continued development of the collaborative relationship. As part of this task, a liaison position will be explored between WTI and Caltrans. Deliverable: WTI will develop a technical memorandum documenting outreach meetings to universities, assessment of common mission and research focus areas, feasible partnerships, and identify a more robust process that could be used to work together, and financial leveraging opportunities.

Milestones, Dates, Schedule

Student Involvement

True

Relationship to Other Research Projects

True

Technology Transfer Activities

True

Transportation Research Board Keywords

rural transportation, intelligent transportation systems, safety

Partners

Caltrans