Mike on Traffic

ITE Journal - Improved!

I was shocked when I started flipping through the April edition of the ITE Journal.  They actually made a few of the changes I've been describing.  

First off, by clicking the above link you can get to the Journal whether or not you are a member.  It's not password protected!

Second - they're testing out different formats.  

I really like the quick to digest format of the Measuring the Street:  New Metrics for 21st Century Streets article about New York City.  Interestingly, it looks like repurposed copy the New York City DOT produced.  This means ITE staff took the lead on it and there isn't an author credited.

Several of the other articles also have a shorter format and it looks like they are upping the quality of the graphics and amount of photos.

Well done!

New Way to Set Up Tube Counters in Portland, OR

Jane and I had a little mini-vacation this week.  We went out to Portland, OR to visit Ian and Bill at Vehicle Counts (they manufacture the Pico counters we sell).  They were very gracious hosts and we had a fun trip.

We only had a day to bum around, so we opted to stay downtown and mainly eat/drink (seems like that's what you do in Portland).  I like how the  parking regulation signs downtown are at about waist height as shown in the picture.  For some reason this struck me as more aesthetically pleasing than the signs we have in Minnesota seven feet up in the air.  Also seemed easier to see from the car.

We did a big walking loop along the Willamette River.  As we were walking back over the Hawthorne Bridge, we came across this set of tubes.  It had a knot in the tube on the "dummy end," instead of being two separate tubes the way we would normally install them.  I looked off to the side of the bridge to see where they went, but they tucked under the deck and I couldn't see what they were plugged into.  

When we finished crossing the bridge, we saw this bicycle counter.  It was working accurately as we watched bicycles go over the tubes.

I've always set up a pair of 50 or 60 foot tubes for doing speed and classification counts.  We're going to test out putting a knot in the middle of a 100 foot tube (like the bicycle setup) and see if that has any advantages over using two 50 foot tubes.  I think the knotted 100 foot tube could be more accurate because each tube run should be the same length (sometimes tubes get mismatched).  It would also be easier than cutting and plugging the tube to make it into two 50 footers.  

Has anyone used a tube setup like this (long tube knotted in the middle instead of two paired up tubes)?  Thoughts?

Peak Hour Factor Data Update

In December I wrote about Peak Hour Factors (PHFs) and included a spreadsheet with about 3,500 peak hour counts we've done at Traffic Data Inc.  Kordel rightly commented about cross-referencing the data against the total entering volume at the intersection (as the Highway Capacity Manual does).

It's taken a little while, but we entered that data and here's the updated spreadsheet - Download Peak Hour Factor MN Analysis.  I'm hoping ITE's SimCap committee will take on the role of being a hub for this type of data (without putting it behind ITE's firewall) - I've talked with Dave and Orla about this type of thing.

Here are the average Peak Hour Factors from our Minnesota dataset:

• Total entering volume greater than or equal to 1,000 vehicles per hour:  0.93
• Total entering volume less than 1,000 vehicles per hour:  0.88

This is slightly different than the 0.92 and 0.90, respectively, recommended in the 2010 Highway Capacity Manual.  It would be great if other folks would slice and dice the data in the spreadsheet to look at the PHFs from different angles and put there thoughts in the comments section.  Does anyone know where the HCM's 0.92 and 0.90 recommendations came from?

Soutwest LRT - Case Study of COUNTcam for Flexible Data Collection

Kimley Horn is doing the traffic engineering analysis for the portion of the Southwest LRT line that would go through St. Louis Park and into downtown Minneapolis.  They brought us (Traffic Data Inc) on at the beginning of February to get turning movement counts at about 35 intersections.  

They knew they wanted 13 hour turning movement counts (6 am to 7 pm) on a normal weekday for their baseline analysis.  Since getting extra video is cheap (just leave the camera set up for an extra day), they decided to get 48 hours of video just in case someone had questions that would require a 24 hour or 48 hour count.

Several of the intersections also had trains running next to them, so we logged the train crossings (start time, end time, number of cars) in addition to providing the turning movement count data.  We also gave them a usb flash drive with all of the videos so they could watch the videos to make sure there modeling looked reasonable.

We set out half the COUNTcam 120 Camera Units on a Monday and half of them on a Tuesday in order to get 48 hours of video from Tuesdays/Wednesdays/Thursdays.  Wednesday was common at all of the intersections, so we'd do the initial 13 hour counts all on the same day.  We also setup a couple of intersections to get Saturday/Sunday video at a shopping mall.

The complicater was that we got a little snow Thursday that affected the morning commute.  We did all of the 13 hour counts from Wednesday and opted to discount half the intersections $100 since we didn't deliver "normal video" for the second 24 hours.  We'll get new video with clear weather at those intersections if Kimley Horn needs a 48 Hour turning movement count.

Here's the pricing we gave:

• 48 Hour Video with 13 Hour Turning Movement Count Data at a Signalized Intersection - $750/each
• 48 Hour Video with 13 Hour Turning Movement Count Data at an Unignalized Intersection - $625/each
• Add on Service - Count Additional 35 Hours at Above Signalized Intersection - $725/each
• Add on Service - Count Additional 35 Hours at Above Unignalized Intersection - $550/each

We did the counts in about two weeks.  We averaged about 2x speed at the signals and 4.5x speed at the stop sign controlled intersections.  Kimley Horn has already had us do the additional 35 hours at one of the intersections.  Thankfully it was one of the intersections where we had clear Tuesday/Wednesday video.

Photo Credit:  http://www.newsline.dot.state.mn.us/archive/03/oct/15.html

 

How Does Miovision's System Count Cars?

I have several older posts about Miovision and their automated counting system.  We were an early customer of there's, but after becoming frustrated with their pricing model we ended up developing our own hybrid video/manual counting system which we sell at CountingCars.com.  Our system is far less expensive to own and operate.

Many people over the years have asked me how Miovision's system works.  The guys from Miovision are pretty coy if you ask them - I've never gotten a straight answer beyond its complicated machine vision technology.  A lot of people have insinuated that they have a huge system that beams video to a third world country where the counts are done manually from video.  This would be feasible and profitable given Miovision's pricing structure.

I'm not in this camp.  I think they actually have machine vision doing some of the work.  But I also think their system needs human intervention to make sure it's working correctly - it's probably not 100% automated.  

A skeptical friend of mine has done some digging and he came across Miovision's technology patent, which you can look at here.  Here's the text from the patent description that leads me to think its a hybrid machine vision/human quality assurance system - 

From page 11:

It has been recognized that since the video analysis 42 may not be perfect and for some algorithms and/or types of video content, the results may not be reliable enough to ensure consistency. To mitigate such unreliability and to offer an improved quality of service, the post processing stage 50 is included at the server side. The post processing stage 50 may conceptually be considered a quality assurance (QA) stage that is performed in order to review the extracted data so as to verify the integrity of the extracted data with respect to what actually occurred in the video file 24, correct any errors that are found and, in general, ensure that the analysis is satisfactory. The post processing stage 50 allows the server side to separate duties amongst several server devices. The post processing stage 50 is typically performed in an automatic or partially automatic fashion but may also be performed manually by a human operator.

 

 

Attending the ITE Technical Conference from Home

I got to play superhero yesterday afternoon - being in two places at once.  I dialed into the ITE SimCap Committee (jargon - I think SimCap stands for simulation and capacity analysis) meeting that was held at the ITE Technical Conference in San Diego.  I put my iPhone on a speaker in my exercise room and worked out for 45 minutes while I listened in.  This was awesome multi-tasking.

It sounded like there were about 16 people attending in the conference room and about as many dialed in via conference call.  There were some technical difficulties with echoing when people on the phone spoke, but that was fixed after about 15 minutes.  I really like this option of dialing in versus flying to San Diego.  

But, I'd rather use webinar technology than phone conference technology.  The phone conference system beeped when people came in and out and there was the echoing problem.  I also would have liked to type in comments as the meeting was going on.

Not a lot to report on out of the committee meeting.  It was more of a status update from sections/districts.  It seems like SimCap is struggling to define its mission.  

An interesting side conversation that happened with Phil Carusso from ITE staff - the committee would like to open up to any practitioner interested, but the ITE Community section is closed off to those who aren't full international ITE members.  An interesting conundrum for ITE - further the profession vs. force people to be members.

A counter conundrum for the SimCap folks - if ITE won't open up the Community section, should the group migrate to an open LinkedIn group (which would provide the same functionality as the Community pages, but allow much more openness)?

Last tangent - there was a lively discussion about changing Engineers in the ITE name because it excludes a lot of folks who are interested in SimCap.

SimCity for Travel Demand Modeling?

Todd sent me the snaphot below from SimCity in a very interesting email about using SimCity 5 for travel demand modeling and traffic simulation.  I am not a SimCity player (although it looks like I should start).  Todd tells me you can perform a "select link" analysis by querying any roadway segment and you can also perform a "select zone" analysis by querying any building.

He also sent this link about someone who has recreated their whole town in the latest SimCity 5.  The blog post talks about peak hour traffic conditions and how the models appear reasonable compared to the blogger's driving experiences.  

The comments section on the blog have several transportation industry folks chatting.  It sounds like several people want to improve the calibration tools within SimCity so we could in fact use it for travel demand modeling and simulations.  This is very interesting.  SimCity is built so anyone can create a city - it appears much more user friendly than most of the software tools in our industry.  

Here's a link about a lot of the different simulations that happen in SimCity.  As a transportation guy, I obviously focus on transportation modeling and analyses.  But I wonder if using SimCity to model existing cities could take things to a whole new level?  

A construction worker broke a large watermain in downtown Minneapolis about a month ago and several arterial streets were flooded as well as water being shut off to a portion of downtown.  We also had the collapse of the I-35W bridge several years ago.

A fully built out SimCity model of a region could help with transportation planning for these types of scenarios, but it could also help for emergency response planning.  I know government agencies play "emergency games" to train elected officials and government staff.  Running hypothetical emergencies in SimCity could help an agency think through a lot of different scenarios and identify critical vulnerabilities.

Dinner with Zaki Mustafa - ITE's International President

Zaki flew in this past Wednesday and attended our North Cental ITE section breakfast meeting on Thursday.  I had the please of picking him up at the airport and having dinner with him.  

It turns out Zaki and I are kindred spirits.  He got in trouble during his campaign for having a Facebook account, even though he wasn't campaigning on it!  

Zaki also believes ITE needs major changes.  Here are a few things he mentioned - 

• Campaigning for International VP - he intends to change the rules to allow electronic communication.
• Winter Technical Conference - it's being scrapped (the 2013 one is being held and 2014 may need to be held because of contracts).
• ITE Journal - Needs to be majorly revamped to be relevant.
• Hard Copies - Wants to have publications go much more electronic.
• Institute of Transportation Engineers - We need to change our name to reflect being a group of transportation professionals, not just engineers (I thought this didn't matter, but our speaker at the NCITE meeting is a planner from MnDOT and he didn't think he could be a member of ITE - the Engineers part does really matter).
• Reduce Travel - Use GoToMeeting, webinars and other tools to connect people while eliminating travel costs.  Apparently ITE staff have done a fair amount of international travelling in the past, with very little results.

He got me pretty excited about ITE (his enthusiasm is contagious), but it's going to take several years of progressive leadership to get ITE to evolve into the organization I think it should be.  This includes succession planning for the staff leadership since the top three staff members are all near retirement age.

I'll keep writing about ITE because I do still care about the Institute (even though the legal reaction by staff to the online petition was ridiculous).  I'm also considering going through the process to be an official candidate for the international vice-president next year.  To quote Zaki's catchphrase, "Together we are the Best!"  Stay tuned....

Review of Trafficware's TripGen Software

I sat through Trafficware's 45 minute TripGen Software webinar yesterday.  Here's a quick review so you can save yourself 42 minutes:

• Trip Gen is the old Microtrans software that Trafficware purchased.
• Updated with Trip Generation Manual, 8th and 9th Edition data.
• Includes NCHRP 684 methodology for internal capture - nice add on.
• Supposed to be released in March 2013.
• No pricing available yet (this is lame - pricing was the main reason I logged into the webinar - hard to believe they're releasing a product in less than a month and they don't have the pricing figured out).
• You buy the license - no cloud based annual pricing like OTISS.
• Looks functional, but the interface looks like it was designed in the 1990's.
• Doesn't appear that the user can drill into the dataset (i.e. limit by age or location).
• IF it costs less than $500, it will be a better deal than using OTISS or buying the hard copy of the ITE Trip Generation Manual. 

Police Certified Radar Gun for $199

In August I wrote a review of the Pocket Radar (here) and since then we've started selling it at CountingCars.com.  Several people asked if it was certified for police use and it wasn't when we started selling it.  

I'm happy to report that Pocket Radar has just been certified to be accurate by the Institute for Police Technology and Management (IPTM).  They're the test lab sanctioned by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to certify the accuracy all of the law enforcement radar units used in the US and Canada.  It accurately measured from 7 to 325 miles per hour.  Here's the certificate -