I was honored and excited to be elected to the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Board of Governors for a three-year term January 1, 2016 - December 3, 2018. I look forward to working with many friends and colleagues to further develop this wonderful society to the next level of excellence!
Fantastic visit to the College of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou China! Special thanks to Prof. Yibing Wang for the invitation and the wonderful hospitality! I was honored to present "Toward Assessing State Department of Transportation Readiness for Connected Vehicle/Cooperative Systems Deployment Scenarios: An Oregon Case Study" to students and faculty from the Traffic Control Lab, and also was honored to be able to meet with Prof. Yafeng Yin (University of Florida), the Editor in Chief of Transportation Research Part C, and Prof. Hai Yang (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), the Editor in Chief of Transportation Research Part B. Hangzhou is a beautiful city, in particular the famous West Lake.
I had the fantastic opportunity to present "Toward Assessing State Department of Transportation Readiness for Connected Vehicle/Cooperative Systems Deployment Scenarios: An Oregon Case Study" at the 2015 International Conference on Information Technology and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITITS 2015) at Chang'an University in Xi'an, China on December 12, 2015. Wonderful colleagues, hosts and experiences!
Today Lance Knox, master's student in city and regional planning and civil and environmental engineering (dual master's), successfully defended his project, "Roundabout Feasibility Study: Highway 227/Huasna Road in Arroyo Grande." Congratulations Lance!
The Institute for Pure and Applied and Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA kindly hosted a long program in New Directions in Mathematical Approaches for Traffic Flow Management. I was pleased to be a member of the organizing committee (with Alexandre Bayen, Serge Hoogendoorn and Laura Wynter) of Workshop IV: Decision Support for Traffic, held at UCLA November 16-20, 2015. On November 17, 2015 I chaired the afternoon session and also gave a presentation, "Multimodal Transportation System Simulation Manual (TSSM) Framework: From Theory to Practice." It was great to have this opportunity and my thanks to IPAM and my co-organizers for their support.
We were honored to have Dr. David Lovell, University of Maryland visit Cal Poly from November 11-15, 2015. Dr. Lovell presented to the ITE student chapter, discussing his research aimed at improving air transportation systems. He also spoke about air traffic operations management to the CE 321 Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering class. His primary mission was to participate in the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) West Coast Regional Conference hosted by the Cal Poly EWB student chapter.
I was asked to accompany the Cal Poly Chi Epsilon Civil and Environmental Engineering Honor Society to the Pacific District Conference held at San Jose State University November 6-8, 2015. Five Cal Poly students, including Carley Burford, Jason Hsia, Carley Thomas, Elizabeth Coffey and Jonathon Centofranchi participated, and through their efforts earned third place (out of 14 universities) in the Pacific District Cup Competition! My congratulations to the team for a job well done! As a former president of the Cal Poly Chi Epsilon chapter (c. 1987) I was especially proud!
I was honored to be invited to serve on the organizing committee for the 9th University Transportation Center (UTC) Spotlight Conference on Connected and Automated Vehicles November 4-5, 2015, in Washington, D.C. Held at the National Academy of Sciences, the meeting was sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, U.S. Department of Transportation (OST-R) and organized by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), under the leadership of Dr. Melissa Tooley, I chaired the plenary session and breakout session on Modal Applications of connected and automated vehicles, along with John Maddox of the University of Michigan. We had a great session with speakers from Carnegie Mellon, Texas Transportation Institute, NREL and Zipcar. Conference proceedings will be published later. Special thanks to TRB and OST-R staff Rich Cunard, Freda Morgan, Robin Kline and Thomas Bolle for their support.
We had a great field trip hosted by Kyle Rowland from the City of San Luis Obispo at the construction site of the Los Osos Valley Road Interchange with U.S. 101 on October 31, 2015. The CE 321 Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering class learned about all of the issues involved with building a new bridge across U.S. 101, extending a multiplate superspan triple culvert on San Luis Creek, construction of retaining walls, traffic control, stormwater management and more. Thanks to Kyle for a great experience!
Thanks to Eugene Jud for arranging his traditional Amtrak trip to Santa Barbara as a field trip for CE 424 Public Transportation on Saturday October 24, 2015. We are grateful to colleagues at the MTD, and UCSB for their wonderful hospitality. We rode the train, electric trolley, express bus, local bus as well as bicycles on this multimodal trip! We also experienced bicycle roundabouts and several highway roundabouts, all working smoothly! We saw a few skateboards, surfboards and sailboats as well!
I appreciated the invitation to deliver one of the keynote presentations at the North America PTV Vision User Group Meeting, Portland, Oregon October 13, 2015. I was asked to speak about the new Transportation Research Board Task Force on Transportation System Simulation and our efforts to create a Transportation System Simulation Manual. I especially enjoyed seeing former PSU students Ning Zhou (City of Portland), Chengxin Dai (HDR), Matt Dorado (Clark County, WA), and Joe Kirkland (HDR). Thanks to PTV for the invitation!
The Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics (TFTC)found several ways to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the establishment of the TFTC in 1963. The first was a workshop held January 12, 2014 at the TRB 93rd Annual Meeting that focused on traffic and transportation simulation. The workshop provided a means to explore the history, current status, and future of traffic simulation. The results are documented in TRB’s Transportation Research Circular E-C 195: Traffic and Transportation Simulation - Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Celebrating 50 Years of Traffic Flow Theory. The second was Standing Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics Summer Meeting and Symposium, August 11–13, 2014 in Portland, Oregon. Presentations covered fundamental diagrams, traffic flow models, traffic control, freeway traffic analysis, calibration, empirical observations of traffic analysis, networkwide modeling and control, and other paper and poster presentations. Presenters reflect on the fifty years of traffic flow theory and include an analysis of pedestrian flows and the incorporation of autonomous vehicles into traffic theory. The results are documented in TRB E-Circular 197: Celebrating 50 Years of Traffic Flow Theory. Thanks to all of the volunteers who helped organize these fantastic events!
The Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently established a special Task Force on Transportation System Simulation (AHB80T), with Calvin Leggett, North Carolina Department of Transportation as chair. The main task of this task force is to develop a Transportation System Simulation Manual (TSSM). The task force members held their inaugural meeting in Washington, D.C. on September 17, 2015. We are looking forward to a lot of exciting work and progress ahead! Thanks to all who participated!
I was pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the meeting of the Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) Deployment Coalition hosted in Denver by the Colorado Department of Transportation, on September 9-10, 2015. Formed earlier this year, the V2I DC includes the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America). I am co-chairing the V2I Technical Working Group 2: Deployment Research with Greg Larson of Caltrans.
Gary Riggins, a master's student from the Lehrstuhl für Verkehrstechnik (Chair of Transportation Technology) at the Technische Universität München (Technical University of Munich, Germany) completed his 5 month visit to Cal Poly where he was working as a research assistant on the Oregon Department of Transportation project to evaluate the new variable speed limit system on Oregon Route 217. We appreciate all of Gary's contributions to our department and will miss him! We wish him well in his next endeavors!
Nora Chin successfully defended her Master's project, "Investigating the Correlation Between
Freeway Traffic Levels and Freeway Service Patrol Assists," on August 13, 2015. The project is a partnership with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and their Freeway Service Patrol program. This was the subject of some of my early research back in the 1990s, so I particularly enjoyed re-visiting the topic. I was pleased to serve as a member of her committee along with Dr. Anurag Pande, and committee chair Dr. Cornelius Nuworsoo. Best wishes to Nora as she begins her career!
The Cal Poly SLO ITE Student Chapter has recently won the International Student Chapter Award (second year in a row, out of 157 student chapters mostly in the U.S., but also abroad) as well as the 2015 International Collegiate Traffic Bowl, at the ITE International meeting held in Hollywood, Florida. According to President Kevin Carstens, "in the first round, Cal Poly squared off against Auburn and University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. After some initial hesitation, we racked up a significant lead, entering the final question at 2400 to UPR's 1300. After the final question (something related to pedestrian safety scores) which all teams missed, we won with 2100 to the other teams' 0 (each). The second and third rounds saw the University of Manitoba and Purdue University defeating the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Pennsylvania State University, Iowa State University, and University of Texas at Austin. In the final round, Cal Poly ITE took off with a failed launch, falling to -300 versus Manitoba's 700. However, we staged a slow comeback throughout the game, reaching the final question with a slight lead at 1600, against Manitoba's 1300 and Purdue's 1000. The final answer was given (paraphrased: "A lane marking that tells drivers to expect bikes and cyclists where to ride"), and all teams correctly responded "what is a sharrow?" Purdue bet all and ended with 2000, Manitoba bet 701 and ended with 2001, and Cal Poly bet 1001 and ended with 2601." Congratulations to the whole team!