WTI

Safety and Operations Ongoing Projects

• Evaluation of a Variable Speed Limit System for Wet and Extreme Weather Conditions

  The objectives of this project are to develop and evaluate an advanced, weather-responsive, speed limit adjustment system for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT).

• Making Driving Simulators More Useful for Behavioral Research

  The overall goal of this project is to refine driving simulator research methods so that findings correspond more closely to on road behavior, in order to make driving simulators useful for roadway design.

• FWS Traffic Monitoring Assessment and Demo

  The purpose of this project is to evaluate the current traffic monitoring practices of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and make plans for a series of demonstration projects to test alternative techniques for improving visitor estimation.

• Interface Metrics for IntelliDrive

  The objective of this project is to develop metrics for evaluating the most effective way to integrate and deliver multiple information sources from IntelliDrive applications.

• Rural Transportation Research, Development & Accelerated Deployment Technical Proposal

  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.

• Cost Effective Local Road Safety Planning and Implementation

  The purpose of this project is to develop a simplified resource and reference document, identified as necessary by the American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA), for local government personnel to consult in identifying safety issues on their network and appropriate safety solutions that can be applied to address them.

• Traffic Calming for Rural 2-Lane Roads

  The objective of this project is to summarize past and current work on traffic calming applications and recommend techniques to address safety issues along continuous, rural, 2-lane road sections on Federal Lands.

• Explore ITS Technologies for Work Zones and Impact Areas

  The objectives of this project are to identify existing work zone Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) applications that are appropriate to Federal land road projects, and to provide guidance to federal land units that are considering or implementing work zone ITS systems.

• Coordinated Speed Management Systems to Reduce Speed-Related Crashes on Rural Roadways: Augmented Speed Enforcement (aSE)

  The long-term goal of this project is to develop and evaluate system concepts that can be implemented across the rural road network to reduce speed related crashes. As a first step, the immediate objective if this first phase of research is to deploy a system to reduce speed violations (citations) and the number of speed related incidents at work zones on rural highways.

• Science and Engineering Integrated Research Facility for Human Factors in Rural Traffic Safety

  The purpose of this project is to better understand and address driver–related factors in rural traffic fatalities by expanding capabilities of WTI’s current research facilities. Through a grant awarded by the M. J. Charitable Trust, WTI will instrument a vehicle fleet for naturalistic studies of rural traffic safety human factors and field tests of rural traffic safety interventions.