Narrator: Congestion. Incidents. Road Rage. The perils of modern day travel experienced
by most travelers on our roadways today. Today's traffic managers use a variety of tools to
mitigate travel-related impacts on our roadways. From incident management to pre-trip information
to roadside advisories, traffic managers around the country are working to improve mobility
and reliability for the traveling public. But despite our best efforts, safety and congestion
concerns still persist. While travelers' expectations for safety and reliability continue to grow,
agencies' fiscal constraints are getting tighter.
Let's examine some of these challenges and consider an improved approach to managing
our transportation system. We're going to delay the breakdown of our facilities, do
a better job of informing travelers, and reduce the number of incidents by changing the way
we operate. This approach is called "Active Transportation and Demand Management," or
ATDM. Similar to how electric utilities work today, an actively managed transportation
system is continuously monitored to assess system performance. Based on the assessed
state of the system, various actions are evaluated and recommended in real-time.
Active management is part of a step-wise evolution for agencies. At the lowest level is static
management: agencies operate on a time of day basis. The "set it and forget it" mentality
works as long as conditions stay the same. Unfortunately, conditions vary. We have all
experienced weather, incidents, special events, and work zones. Most agencies today are in
the next step of evolution: responsive management, where they react to conditions as they occur.
While responsive management is an effective and a necessary part of operations, there
is another step in which agencies respond to anticipated changes to conditions. We call
it proactive. With a proactive management approach, agencies use new tools like decision
support systems and prediction models to push towards eliminating or delaying the breakdown
of their facilities.
Morgan Balogh: Being active in our traffic management response has reduced collisions
and improved safety by giving people information prior to the event that is needed, and by
being responsive to the problem before it occurs. Smarter Highways is the application
of technology to solve highway problems. And technology is a lot cheaper than adding pavement
to the freeway system. We'll use any new technology that comes up: we use Twitter, we're on Facebook,
we contact the news media. Our vision for the future is for the travelers, the local
agencies, and the state to all come together and provide this information as a team, to
work together and solve the transportation problems of the future.
Narrator: Have you ever wondered why speed limits don't change in response to varying
conditions? A lack of actionable information on DMS? Or a lack of parking information and
improper traffic signal coordination? If so, you are campaigning for active management.
New approaches and practices from Europe and the U.S. offer exciting opportunities to move
along the active management continuum. The approaches are flexible and wide-ranging,
with a common theme of active operations across an entire traveler's trip. Through active
management approaches, an agency can influence both the available demand and supply of the
transportation system. New overhead electronic signs on Washington State's I-5, State Route
520, and I-90 corridors alert drivers to reduce speeds or change lanes when there are collisions
or backups on the road ahead. Depending on traffic conditions, drivers may see alerts,
arrows, or varying speeds. This real-time driver information will improve safety and
reduce congestion. In addition to these examples of active traffic
management, ATDM also considers active demand management and active parking management.
Active demand management uses tools such as smartphone applications, customized traveler
information, and dynamic ridesharing services to provide more real-time travel choices.
Active parking management is a suite of strategies designed to affect the demand for and use
of limited parking capacity. San Francisco is testing new parking technologies and a
flexible approach to pricing that is designed to make parking work better for everyone.
Jay Primus: The goal of SFpark is a singular focus of making it easier to find a parking
space; parking availability. And from that flows all the other benefits we expected:
that in peak times the places that we truly reduced the amount of circling by making it
easier to find a parking space. The average time spent circling went from 11 1/2 to 6
1/2 minutes; oftentimes less. And what that meant was a lot less traffic of distracted
drivers circling around looking for parking. We've also gone to great lengths to share
all the information from the project -- overviews, a technical "how-to" manual, a rigorous evaluation
-- to really make it easy for other cities to understand what we did and learn from it,
and hopefully improve on it.
Narrator: However, approaches alone are not enough. Being active requires careful consideration
of an agency's management approach. Implementing active management approaches requires a careful
look at staffing, culture, agency collaboration, infrastructure design, maintenance, and IT
systems, as they might require modifications due to the increased complexity associated
with real-time responses.
Kamal Suliman: The traditional model is that we wait for something to happen and use this
tool to let people know. With active management, we are trying to get ahead of the game. The
players in the project need to work together. The designer, the construction, and the department
need to work together to deliver the best project possible. Plan ahead and also reasonably
resist the temptation of trying to add things to the project that are not related to it.
VDOT believes that I-66 active traffic management is the right solution for the environment
that we have.
Narrator: With the right mix of active management approaches and organizational capability,
an operating agency can identify immediate cost-effective solutions to persistent problems.
Such approaches also increase the agency's readiness for the connected vehicle future.
Through the tools and approaches of active management, agencies can take advantage of
the big data environment of tomorrow to transform transportation operations.
Jeff Lindley: There are two real elements to ATDM. The first element is taking the information
that's there and trying to operate the system in as real-time and proactive of a manner
as possible. But then you also share that information -- all the information that you
have on conditions -- with the public. And so we've turned our focus to how can we manage
what's already there. ATDM really tries to take a look at the entirety of transportation
in a particular corridor. It looks at traffic control like traffic signal timing. It looks
at how lanes are used, including high-occupancy vehicle lanes if those are present in the
corridor. It looks at pricing if pricing strategies are available in that corridor, like tolling
facilities; like the price of parking. It takes parking into consideration as part of
the system that can be actively managed. ATDM is a strategy that we know works.
Narrator: Please work with us to move towards a more active approach to transportation systems
management and operations. Contact the FHWA's Active Transportation Demand Management (ATDM)
program for customized technical assistance and guidance to support these approaches.
Thank you.