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Urban STEPS Urban Sustainable Transportation forEconomic Progress and Safety Volume II, Issue 4

Contents

Seat belt usage surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Research at Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Analysis of Alternatives for Accommodating Trucks on Urban Freeways inSouthern Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Regional-level Sustainable Transportation Decision Support System . . . . 3

Sustainable Planning for Large-scale Transportation Systems: A DynamicSimulation-based Model for the Las Vegas Valley . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Safe Community Partnership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

New Arrivals in the Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

FAST real time traffic control system, JMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Driving Simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Real time data collection using the dual camera, GPS, three-axis accelerom-eter etc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Recent Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

‘Click it or ticket’ campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

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Urban STEPS Volume II, Issue 4

Seat belt usage surveys

The Nevada Department of Public Safety(DPS) Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) con-tracted with the Transportation ResearchCenter (TRC) at the University of Nevada,Las Vegas (UNLV) to conduct the StatewideSeat Belt Usage Survey for the year 2010.Every year, media and other campaigns likeClick it or Ticket are held throughout Nevadaduring the month of May-June (beginning).These surveys tend to compare the differ-ence in the seatbelt usage before and afterthe campaigns, and report the results to Na-tional Highway Traffic Safety Administra-tion (NHTSA). This project has been withTRC since many years, but in 2010, severalimprovements were done to enhance the ef-ficiency of data collection procedure, doc-umentation and building a user-interactivesystem which will give the user capabilityto explore the data on-line. The followingfigure shows the software developed.

This software has increased speed of thedata input by almost 3 times in the worstcase scenario and 4 times in the best casescenario. As far as documentation is con-cerned, pre-campaign report now covers thedata analysis over every site included in thesurvey, unlike the documentation in the pre-vious years. Also, seatbelt usage rates forthe elderly drivers and passengers under 15years of age have been reported. For thepost-campaign/final report, statistics would

be used to delve deeper into the data. Theuser-interactive website providing statewideand site-wise analysis is under developmentand would be finished at the end of July.This website would have the animation ca-pabilities of flash and would generate thegraphs, statewide or site-wise, on the go !This on-line website would also be later con-verted into a software where the data couldbe queried on the desktop itself, without theuse of Internet.

Research at Center

Analysis of Alternatives for Ac-

commodating Trucks on Urban

Freeways in Southern Nevada

The objective of the Analysis of Alterna-tives for Accommodating Trucks on UrbanFreeways in Southern Nevada project is toevaluate five potential alternatives to ad-dress truck traffic congestion and accidentsinvolving trucks in the Las Vegas traffic net-work. The alternatives under considerationinclude: (i) Truck Only Lanes, (ii) TruckRestricted Lanes, (iii) Truck Only Toll Lanes,(iv) Truck Bypass, and (v) Truckways withToll. These alternatives are likely to pro-duce system level effects; therefore, a modelfor the entire Las Vegas traffic network isrequired to perform the evaluation. In ad-dition, the operational characteristics of thealternatives require capabilities to simulta-neously load multiple classes of vehicles (trucksand passenger cars) while assigning thembased on the constraints that each alterna-tive imposes. The aforementioned capabil-ities are not present in the existing TravelDemand Model and are unfeasible for theentire system using micro simulation. Hence,large-scale and simulation-based Dynamic Traf-fic Assignment model of the Las Vegas traf-fic network has been built and calibrated.

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The alternatives are currently under eval-uation and some preliminary results illus-trate significant differences across the alter-natives.

Regional-level Sustainable Trans-

portation Decision Support Sys-

tem

This project proposes the development ofa Regional-level Sustainable Transportationdecision support system (DSS) that will en-able the evaluation of transportation projectsconsidering simultaneously many key aspectsinfluencing human quality of life and eco-nomic growth including travel time, emis-sions, fuel consumption, accidents, and reli-ability. The proposed decision support frame-work will be developed using system dynam-ics modeling approach and will be able to in-tegrate information from traffic flow modeland the emissions estimation model MO-BILE. The resulting DSS will potentiallyassist policy makers at the state and locallevel to make informed infrastructure plan-ning decisions. The use of this DSS wouldalso help in making sustainable transporta-tion infrastructure planning and developmentdecisions considering both costs and emis-sions, and would thus jointly benefit state

and local transportation entities such as De-partment of Transportation and the RegionalTransportation Commission of Southern Nevada.The DSS will be applied to the LVV trafficnetwork. To illustrate the potential of theproposed modeling approach several trans-portation projects will be evaluated. Theprojects to evaluate will be determined throughdiscussions with local, state and nationallevel agencies. Some of the projects to eval-uate may include: (i) the transportation im-pacts of the new airport at Ivanpah dry lakebed; (ii) the I-15 widening between Las Ve-gas and Barstow; (iii) the US 95/93 widen-ing between Las Vegas and Kingman (US95) and Needles/I-10 (US 93); and (iv) thedeployment of Intelligent Transportation Sys-tems in Las Vegas.

Sustainable Planning for Large-

scale Transportation Systems: A

Dynamic Simulation-based Model

for the Las Vegas Valley

This research seeks to develop an approachto simultaneously consider key transporta-tion effects required for the planning of sus-tainable transportation systems in the LasVegas Valley. The effects under consider-ation include but are not limited to: traf-fic congestion, fuel consumption, emissions,

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safety, reliability, economic impacts, and so-cial impacts such as human health. Thedifferent transportation effects will be es-timated using an existing Dynamic TrafficAssignment model developed by the Univer-sity of Nevada, Las Vegas, for the Las Ve-gas valley traffic network. The DTA modelwas developed under the sponsorship of theNevada Department of Transportation andis currently been used to evaluate a num-ber of transportation alternatives. Hence,the objective of this project is not the es-timation of the different transportation ef-fects, but the development of a frameworkthat enables the simultaneous considerationof those effects. That is, given the differ-ent basic effects associated with each trans-portation alternative, the problem to be ad-dressed in this research is the determina-tion of a sustainability index that enablesa meaningful and easy comparison (rank-ing) of alternatives. The sustainability in-dex needs to include, to the extent possi-ble, all the consequences of the transporta-tion effects. For example, emissions are out-comes of transportation systems that haveconsequences and cost in human health andthe environment. It is difficult to quantifythese consequences/impacts but the sustain-ability index must consider them.

The Safe Community Part-

nership

The Safe Community Partnership has sev-eral teen driving programs aimed at edu-cating teens about the dangers in a vehicle,both as a driver and as a passenger in a ve-hicle. Sixteen year old drivers are four-timesmore likely to die in a crash than a 20 yearold, and even twice as likely as a 17 year olddriver.

We have a program that brings offendingdrivers, parents and victims into area highschools to tell their stories of horrific crashesand their outcomes, we work on continuingeducation with the drivers education teach-ers in the Clark County School District (5thlargest in the nation) and with private driv-ing schools.

Safe Communities works to educate lawmakers and encourage tighter laws govern-ing teens. We have a week of activities everyfall for National Teen Driver Safety Weekthat kicks off this year with a town hallmeeting and always wraps with a candle-light memorial to remember and acknowl-edge teen crash victims.

The highest profile program for teen driversis our annual PACE Yourself! campaign. Eachyear teens are recruited to form teams offour or five teens, with at a minimum, theirlearners permits. The teams register theirintention and are then able to request re-search and expertise to assist their projectif needed.

Each team develops a traffic safety mes-sage of their choice in whatever medium theyare proficient in. The project is their entryto the program. All entries are invited tothe Drivers Edge program where a group ofrace car drivers teach teens survival drivingin real situations behind the wheel.

The top half of finishers are invited toDisneyland for the weekend and a great time

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ensues, including an awards banquet wherethe winners are announced. In 2010 therewere a total of 13 projects honored at thebanquet that will go on to educate others.Half were videos or public service announce-ments for television, there were two originalrap songs that will also be re-produced atee shirt design and several posters. Oneposter will be produced and distributed tohigh schools across the state, one will be-come a bus shelter campaign and one willbe distributed for graduation and prom sea-son.

Teen driving fatalities in Clark Countyhave dropped more than 50 percent since webegan these programs, with alcohol relatedfatalities dropping the furthest.

Here are samples of some of the winningcampaigns:

New Arrivals in the Cen-

ter

FAST real time traffic control

system, JMC

At the TRC we have recently initiated atie-up with the FAST(Freeway and Arterial

System of Transportation) which enables usto receive live traffic data from FAST to oursystem at TRC, in the university. This dataprovide us access to the details on the inter-section of US95 and I15 and the surroundingareas, displaying various information suchas speed limits on different points, on ar-terials. Using the FAST workstation(one ofthe softwares installed at TRC with the helpof FAST) we can detect ’incidents’ and thestatus of its managerment. Along with thesewe will be able to figure out lane volumesand the different speeds at which the trafficis moving on these lanes, Road blocks of anykind due to various reasons. We also haveaccess to feed from each indiviudal monitor-ing device that has been setup by FAST atvarious locations. Below is a screen shot ofthe information provided by FAST worksta-tion software.

Another interesting tool that we have ac-quired with the cooperation of FAST is theI2 workbench which is used to monitor allthe intersection and traffic signals across thearea. This dynamic feed helps us monitorthe signal timings which can be further usedto study and model these timings and opti-mise them to minimise congestion in traffic.Below is a screenshot of the feed obtainedvia I2.

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There’s plenty of scope for intelligent dataprocessing using these tools, which we arecurrently working on at TRC, which wouldbe a great step forward in the field of trans-portation.

Driving Simulator

The Driving Simulator, stationed in the Trans-portation Research Center lab at UNLV andmanufactured by Simcraft, is equipped withthe latest advanced motion simulation tech-nology. With much confidence, it can besaid that as soon as anyone walks in the lab,’Wow’ is the first word that comes out ofhis mouth. The whole simulation setup, ismounted on a platform with 3-D roll, pitchand yaw capabilities, which accurately mon-itor a driver’s behavior without any delay.This amazing performer can not only be usedfor transportation studies, but it has beenwidely used in flight and racing simulations.Only a few people might be there who havenot watched the recently released movie -Iron Man 2, but out of those who have been

spectators to it, the same driving simulatorcan be seen in many scenes in his workshop.This might give an idea as to what we canexpect about it’s uses in the transportationstudies.

Transportation, as has been said, is aplank of multi-disciplinary fields. It is notlimited to one single problem. Transporta-tion safety, management, planning, economics,policy, infrastructure, operations etc. , allcome under the roof of a single word - rans-portation Such a wide domain is difficult tobe realized in practice without any tool orhardware, but the driving simulator. Thedriving simulator we have can be programmedto simulate multiple events like driver dis-traction while texting, dunk driving scenar-ios, effect of legal and illegal drugs on driversetc. Also, it can be programmed to train theyounger drivers, the elderly drivers and thesnow plow operators. Apart from the afore-mentioned applications, the driving simula-tor can be an exquisite performer in design-ing the traffic infrastructure and a wholebunch of tremendous applications.

Real time data collection using

the dual camera, GPS, three-

axis accelerometer etc

TRChas recently purchased a 2CAMERABLACK BOX with dual camera, GPS, andthree-axis accelerometer. It simultaneouslycaptures both front and interior views aswell as audio and GPS and guess what!!

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it’s pretty COOL!! ? We will be conduct-ing travel runs using the new device andsharing our experiences in drivingthroughdifferentscenarios for example:constructionzones, congestion, snow (just kidding). Ihaven’t mentioned that we are in LAS VE-GAS and just for fun we will be conductingtravel runs on the STRIP!! This way you’llknow what to expect when you come visitus... Travel runs are crucial for studyingflow theory on arterials and signalized inter-sections. This amazing device integrates allthe information that needs to be collectedwhen travel runs are conducted. We arecur-rentlyinterested in conducting travel runs onthe I-15/ I-215 intersection. We’re expect-ing someinterestingstuff since theI-15 SouthDesign Build Constructionis going on.

Recent Events

‘Click it or ticket’ campaign

The annual Click it-or Ticket campaign kickedoff in Las Vegas on Friday, May 21st in theparking lot of the Science and Engineeringbuilding. The event, hosted by our SafeCommunity Partnership, brought local pri-vate and public entities together to remindresidents of the importance of buckling upevery time they get in a vehicle.

The annual campaign includes three weeksor national and local advertising and two

weeks of high-intensity enforcement. A seatbelt citation will set you back $67.50 (feesand fine) and take a big chunk of time fromyour day; but thats the easy scenario. Notbeing belted if you crash can easily cost yourlife.

In Nevada in 2009 there were 150 mo-tor vehicle occupant fatalities, half of them,(74) were unbelted. If those 74 people hadonly taken two seconds to buckle up at least40 of them would still be alive, many wouldhave walked away from the crash.

Many people helped kick off this impor-tant campaign: all local law enforcementagencies, Clark County Fire Department, ClarkCounty School District Transportation, South-ern Nevada Health District, the RegionalTransportation Commission, Nevada Depart-ment of Public Safety, Office of Traffic Safety,Medic West, Nevada Taxicab Authority, SafeKids Clark County, City of Las Vegas andCounty Government were all in attendance,plus others.

Speaking at the event was County Com-mission Chair Lawrence Weekly, advocateJennifer Stehlar and Emilio Parga, Execu-tive Director and founder of The Solace Treein Reno, NV whose grief center for familiesand children gets the majority of their casesfrom vehicle crashes. Motor vehicle crashesare the leading cause of death in the U.S.for all ages from four to thirty three.

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Nevada University Transportation

Center

University of Nevada, Las Vegas,4505 S. Maryland Pkwy,Mail Stop 454007 Las Vegas, NV 89154-4007, USA Phone: (702) 895-1338, Fax:(702) 895-4401. NUTC Homepage

NUTC Staff

Pushkin Kachroo, Ph.D., P.E, DirectorErin Breen,Director,Safe Community Part-nershipAlexander Paz,Asst.Prof.Mukund Dangeti,Ph.D,Asst.Research Prof.

Newsletter Editorial Board

Lindsey Stephens and Sourabh Sriom

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http://nutc.unlv.edu

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