TRI News and Events

ENGINEERING'S KHATTAK TO STUDY TRAFFIC WOES FOR VDOT

Tired of traffic backups caused by accidents? Wishing for someone, somewhere to devise better ways to keep traffic moving?

Asad J. Khattak, the Batten Endowed Chair in Transportation Engineering in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at ODU, has been awarded a $169,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to research the occurrence of secondary traffic incidents along the highways of Hampton Roads.

Secondary incidents, or accidents happening within a certain time and distance of a major traffic accident, can cause even more stoppage, and even endanger the lives of rescue workers. Khattak is the editor for the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, and one of the Batten College's pre-imminent researchers in the field of transportation systems and planning.

During the next two years, Khattak plans to define secondary incidents, analyze the factors and causation behind the incidents, and devise ways to predict, and ultimately minimize traffic delays.

"The research will provide a tool that allows VDOT to predict primary incident durations and the probable occurrence of secondary incidents in real-time," Khattak said. "I would like for the tool to be used to better plan for secondary incidents and disseminate better information to the public and more effectively manage incidents."

Partnerships with this study include VDOT, the Smart Traffic Center, the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, and the Virginia Transportation Research Council.

Khattak's research in other studies have already shown that:

*Roadway and other accidents cause 30 to 50 percent of the congestion in U.S. urban areas.

*Up to 20 percent of primary traffic incidents result in secondary incidents, both in same-direction and opposite-direction lanes because of rubber-necking.

*Reducing the time it takes to clear a primary incident is likely to reduce the chance of a secondary incident. In Hampton Roads, incidents requiring emergency response usually last 20 to 35 minutes before traffic flow in normalized.

*A study in California found primary incident duration was reduced from 41 to 29 minutes after an incident management program was initiated.

By using the analysis of certain "hot spots" along Interstates 64. 264 and 664, Khattak hopes his groundbreaking research will be the cornerstone of future traffic studies in a region that has a rapidly growing population. He also teaches courses on transportation planning, intelligent transportation systems, and safety.

ODU Transportation faculty, Dr. Khattak, to present 6 research papers at the 2008 TRB Annual Meeting

ODU Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty will participate in the 87th Annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) to be held in January 2008 in Washington, DC.  The TRB Annual Meeting covers all transportation modes, addressing topics of interest to a diverse group of 11,000 plus attendees that include policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions.  Several papers and posters on transportation planning and operations will be presented.
Traffic Operations and Intelligent Transportation Systems

• Traveler Information Delivery Mechanisms: Impacts on Consumer Behavior, by Khattak A., X. Pan, W. Williams, N. Rouphail, and Y. Fan
• Evaluating Traveler Information Impacts on Commercial and Non-Commercial Users, by Pan X. and A. Khattak
• Economic Impact of Traffic Incidents on Businesses, by Khattak A., Y. Fan, and C. Teague
  

Planning and Traveler Behavior

• Associations between environment and mode choice: Does trip purpose matter? By Shay E., D. Rodriguez, and A. Khattak
• Urban form, individual spatial footprints, and travel: Case-study of the Triangle area in North Carolina, by Fan Y. and A. Khattak
• Household excess travel and neighborhood characteristics: Case of the Triangle area in North Carolina, by Fan Y., A. Khattak, and D. Rodriguez

Click here for summaries of the papers to be presented at TRB

 ODU Recieves Award for Hampton Roads Evacuation Study

Several plans exist for the emergency evacuation of Hampton Roads, but how adequate are they? The Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) has awarded $300,000 to Old Dominion University engineers to get an up-to-date answer to the question.

The 11-month study, administered by ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC), will focus on evacuations ordered when hurricanes are threatening Hampton Roads. It will address the complicating incidents-wrecks, vehicles running out of fuel, debris in the road, lapses in emergency response coordination and irrational behavior of motorists-that have reduced the efficiency of hurricane evacuations elsewhere.

Standstill traffic and blocked roads, for example, are what many Americans remember about evacuations, such as those in Texas for Hurricane Rita. The bridges and tunnels in Hampton Roads are notorious bottlenecks and present special problems for evacuation planners.

John Sokolowski, research professor and director of research at VMASC, is the principal investigator of this study. He has led several of VMASC's transportation modeling projects and was responsible for working with the state Office of Domestic Preparedness to bring this research to fruition.

"Simulation provides a valuable addition to this study that will allow for the exploration of many scenarios not possible with more traditional analysis," Sokolowski explained. "It will provide policymakers with a better understanding of the breadth of possible outcomes under varying conditions."

Asad Khattak, ODU's Batten Endowed Chair in Transportation Engineering, is the leading transportation specialist on the research team. He joined the university last year after serving for more than a decade on the transportation faculty of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he developed the Carolina Transportation Program.

The project's "statement of work" acknowledges the existence of a state evacuation plan that will be implemented if a natural or manmade disaster should force Hampton Roads residents to leave the region. Portions of the plan were developed by a private civil engineering firm and others are the work of public agencies.

"Work accomplished under this (project) expands upon the efforts of the other organizations," according to the statement of work summary. "It complements rather than duplicates other results and findings of those studies and on-going activities, including the Virginia Hurricane Evacuation Study and evacuation transportation analysis by the Virginia Transportation Research Council."

"A lot of evacuation plans do not really account for unanticipated incidents, the crashes, et cetera, that cause half of the everyday roadway congestion," said Khattak. The other half of congestion happens at peak traffic flow periods such as workday rush hours and is called recurrent congestion. Because it can be anticipated, recurrent congestion is easier-but by no means simple-for planners to address.

If a high-category hurricane were headed for Hampton Roads and mandatory evacuation was ordered, the potential for congestion will probably develop in patterns we have seen before, Khattak said. "In a sense you are creating a recurrent congestion situation compounded by incidents," he explained. In other words, an evacuation nightmare will be something like a tractor-trailer getting wedged in a tunnel just at the start of evening rush hour.

But in an emergency evacuation, the congestion problems often are made worse than rush-hour tie-ups by motorists' fears, indecision and plain old bad decisions. Khattak tells of evacuees who hitch their boats to their vehicles and throw as many of their belongings as possible into the boat. (Decisions such as this can put unnecessary vehicles, as well as debris, on the roads.) One example from a Florida evacuation was of a single family that insisted on fleeing in a caravan of several passenger vehicles and an RV towing a boat.

The work of Khattak and VMASC researchers will include an evaluation of baseline evacuation models, one of which is a general model that is widely used in the United States and another of which was prepared by the civil engineering firm that has done evacuation studies specifically for Virginia.

Then the work will bore in on Hampton Roads. A primary area of investigation revolves around the Safety Service Patrols (SSPs), the vehicles with yellow emergency lights that come to the aid of motorists who have run out of gas, had a flat tire or been involved in a fender-bender. SSP operations and their incident reports over recent years will be scrutinized in order to identify patterns of interruptions in traffic flow. Questions to be answered might include: How do heavy rain or high winds impact Hampton Roads traffic? How quickly can SSPs clear up incidents and what is the relative advantage of having extra SSPs in certain corridors?

Emergency managers in all Hampton Roads localities will be interviewed to collect data about recent traffic experiences during hurricane threats. The evacuation plans of these localities, including strategies for communicating with the populace, and channels of emergency response coordination between localities and agencies, will be evaluated.

In addition, existing research will be mined for information not only about traffic, but also about the socio-economic factors and behavioral tendencies that might affect evacuation decisions.

Evacuation incident scenarios will be worked into models, and computer simulations will be run to frame overall evacuation planning and to identify the best responses emergency managers can employ to mitigate the effects of unanticipated incidents.

Khattak, who is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, sees potential in the application of information technology to transportation systems. As such, he predicts that the ability of emergency managers to provide real-time information to evacuees just before they leave home and during their travel will be a critical element of a successful plan.

"Information is key, and especially given that we have greater and greater access to information," he said. "Communication through the Internet, cell phones and other electronic media has been a very effective strategy in difficult situations."

Contra traffic flow-for example, the use of all lanes of major arteries to handle westbound evacuees-is planned already if a Category 3 or higher hurricane is predicted to make landfall. But also important to any evacuation of Hampton Roads, Khattak believes, is the ability of the region to keep the roads open. This can be done by increasing the number of SSP incident response vehicles on major evacuation routes, possibly by drawing in emergency help from other cities in Virginia. He said incidents are sure to happen, but if a typical incident can be cleared up in 15 minutes rather than 30, then the benefit to traffic flow will be significant.

VMASC has several other ongoing projects requiring transportation modeling, including the Hampton Roads Cargo Project and the Critical Infrastructure Modeling Project.

The cargo project was requested by the state legislature. It is assessing the impact of increased container ship traffic to the region as a result of the new Maersk terminal being built in West Norfolk. The critical infrastructure research is examining the effect of disaster events on the region's infrastructure including energy, water and wastewater, communication and transportation.

VMASC also completed a transportation study of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel that was included in The State of the Region: Hampton Roads 2006, produced by ODU's Regional Studies Institute. VMASC's transportation analysis contributed to an understanding of the increase in traffic delay expected at the HRBT over the next 10 years and its economic impact for the region.

This article was posted on: July 20, 2007

Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems selected for coverage in Science Citation Index

Professor Asad J. Khattak of Old Dominion University is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems (JITS), which was recently selected for coverage in Science Citation Index Expanded and Current Contents/Engineering, Computing and Technology databases, beginning with volume 10, issue 1.  These are some of the most important indexing databases in the world and are produced by Thomson Scientific.

Dr. Khattak received the following email from the Managing Editor of JITS at Taylor and Francis, Ms Erin Kelly: "Great news!  I just heard back from ISI this afternoon and they've decided to accept the journal! This is a great accomplishment and I'm happy to bring the good news to you.  Thanks for all your hard work and your dedication to the journal!"

This is great news because Thomson Scientific carefully evaluates journals for inclusion in the database and they presumably accept only the most influential journals. Using the strictest evaluation criteria, only 10%-12% of the nearly 2,000 journals evaluated each year are accepted for coverage in Thomson Scientific. Several factors are analyzed by the editorial development department. Specifically, a committee examines several factors that can be broadly classified as Basic Journal Publishing Standards, Content, International Diversity, and Citation Activity. Coverage in SCI leads to the publication of an Impact Factor for the journal, which is increasingly being noted by funding agencies and by promotion and tenure committees.

Listing in SCI typically increases the quantity and quality of submissions to the journal. It will also help ODU towards gaining a national reputation as a place for submission of scholarly work in transportation.

More information about JITS is available at:

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/15472450.asp

ODU Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty, Drs. Khattak and Fontaine, present 9 research papers at the 2007 TRB Annual Meeting

ODU Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty participated in the 86th Annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) held in January in Washington, DC.  The TRB Annual Meeting covered all transportation modes, with more than 2,800 presentations in 500 sessions addressing topics of interest to all attendees-policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions. The TRB 86th Annual Meeting attracted 11,000 transportation professionals from around the world to Washington, D.C., January 21-25, 2007 at the Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, and Hilton Washington Hotels.  ODU Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty chaired the Advanced Traveler Information Systems sub-committee and presented several papers and posters on transportation planning and operations.

Operations, Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Safety

• What Do Intelligent Transportation Systems Publications and Patents Tell Us? (07-0537) by Asad J. Khattak, Yingling Fan, and Elizabeth Shay
• Assessing the Benefits of Smart Work Zone Systems (07-0371) by Michael D. Fontaine and Praveen Edara
• State of the Practice in Using Cell Phones as Data Probes (P07-1036)
  by Michael D. Fontaine
• Evaluation of Highway Safety Corridors (07-0653) by
  Michael D. Fontaine and Stephen W. Read
• Field Evaluation of Rational Speed Limits (07-0991) by Hojun Son, Michael D. Fontaine, and Byungkyu (Brian Park)
• Merge Management at Work Zones by Michael D. Fontaine
• Wireless Location Technology-Based Traffic Monitoring: Preliminary Recommendations to Transportation Agencies Based on a Synthesis of Experience and Simulation Results (07-0445), by Michael D. Fontaine, Brian L. Smith, Aron R. Hendricks, and William Scherer

Planning and Traveler behavior

• Automobiles, Trips, and Neighborhood Type: Comparing Environmental Measures (07-1119) by Elizabeth Shay and Asad J. Khattak
• What Can Activity Engagement Tell Us About Daily Drive And Walking Time? -Evidence from the American Time Use Survey (07-0599) (P07-1194) by Yingling Fan and Asad J. Khattak

To view photos from the annual TRB meeting, please click here.

Dr. Khattak Honored

Dr. Khattak was recognized as the Frank Batten Endowed Chair at the Annual Celebration event that is hosted annually by the College of Engineering. He was honored as Endowed Professor by Dean Oktay Baysal, along with Chairs and those who have made large donations to the College. During the ceremony he was presented with a plaque. The President, Roseanne Runte spoke at the ceremony as well as Dean Baysal. The ceremony took place in the Atrium of the engineering building on Nov 2, 2006.

ODU-TRI to be Well-Represented at the 2007 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting

The TRI faculty will present six research papers at the upcoming Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington, D.C. in January 2007. Some of the papers involve graduate students as co-authors-reflecting the emphasis that we place on developing a workforce that is exposed to research and a solid curriculum. The research papers are:

• Fan Y. and A. Khattak, What can activity engagement tell us about daily drive time and walking time?
• Fontaine M. and S. Read, Evaluation of Highway Safety Corridors.
• Fontaine M., et al., Wireless Location Technology-based Traffic Monitoring: Preliminary Recommendations to Transportation Agencies Based on a Synthesis of Experience and Simulation Results.
• Fontaine M. and P. Edara, Assessing the Benefits of Smart Work Zone Systems.
• Shay E. and A. Khattak, Autos, Trips and Neighborhood Type: Comparing Environmental Measures.
• Son, H., M. Fontaine, and B. Park, Field Evaluation of Rational Speed Limits.

Click here for summaries of the papers to be presented at TRB