Transportation and Solution to Traffic Congestion

Transportation andSolution to Traffic Congestion Anil V. Kantak Anil Kantak

A Solution to Traffic Congestion • Currently traffic in larger cities throughout the world is becoming a very big issue. • Low priced automobiles are now readily available and affordable to the general public. • Almost everyone with the ability to get a driver’s license has an automobile to drive. • The recent increase in fuel cost is not sufficient to quell the rate of traffic increase. • Population is increasing and death rate is decreasing, this problem will only worsen. Anil Kantak

Possible Solution to Traffic Congestion: • No single technique can solve traffic congestion problem completely. It will need many pronged attack to produce a nearly complete solution. Besides, congestion problem is not time stationary in nature, i.e., it is a continuously evolving problem depending upon changing habits of drivers, perceptions of society, involvement of the governments at state and federal level etc. So solution for one time may not be the permanent solution for the problem. Following three methods may have a possible solution for this problem. Anil Kantak

Education • Education of general public about traffic and traffic problems and what they can do to reduce congestion of vehicles on roads will go a long ways towards the solution of this problem. • Alternate mode of transportation: • Short range transportation • Walking. • Bicycles. • Etc. • Long range transportation • Public transportation such as buses, • trains, trams, taxis etc. Anil Kantak

Public school system: Through this system young adult population will be taught about psychology of traffic and the problems created by it (such s the road rage etc.) in the society if some preventative measures are not adopted. • Effect of accidents on the traffic flow. • The usual traffic jams and how to combat frustration and anger generated by these situations of the traffic. • characteristics / statistics of the usual daily traffic should also be taught in the schools. This should include the education of the statistics of traffic on major thoroughfares / freeways in the Anil Kantak

city and methods to use it for your benefit. • The schools should also teach trip planning and trip combining etc. as favored methods for reducing driving distance and optimizing even at the cost of some inconvenience to the driver as well as the passengers. • Teachings should also include the use of public transportation (buses, train, trams, etc.) available in the city as an acceptable mode of transportation. • Car pooling, van pooling etc. should be introduced to the students at the young age through the schooling so that when the Anil Kantak

students become of driving age, the idea of car pooling is an universally accepted idea. • The schools should teach traffic rules, understanding of signals, speed limits on freeways, common curtsey during driving etc. • Individualistic attitudes of the society may be curtailed a little bit for the purposes of saving environment and reduction of the traffic problems. • Above all, the damage done to the environment due to the gasoline vapors in terms of smog and carbon particles etc. should be taught in Anil Kantak

schools. This education should be made mandatory to graduate from the school. • Along with the driver license exam or when the license is to be renewed, there should be a requirement that the applicant should also pass a “Good Traffic Practices” exam. The materials for the “Good Traffic Practices” will be written and complied by the government and distributed to the applicants along with the other usual material for the exam. • Government actions to reduce traffic: • Make the fast lane/lanes available for freeway / highway traffic that can be accessed only if the vehicle carries at least 3 people. Anil Kantak

The state/federal government may allow a tax break of certain amount to households if ratio of driver age people to total number of cars family has is above a certain threshold. • The government could make subside available to companies for their employees to form van pools and car pools. • Government may provide subside for large company that employ a large number of people to bus their people from their company building to some drop off / pick up points in suburbs where general employee population lives. Anil Kantak

The government also will provide the park and ride places where employees from suburbs can park their cars and then car pool in one car reducing the number of cars on the roadways. • Make fast lane/lanes available for freeway / highway traffic that can be accessed only if vehicles carry at least 3 people each. • The state/federal government may allow a tax break of certain amount to households if ratio of driver age people to total number of cars the family has is above a certain threshold. • Freeways usually have much more traffic leading to the areas of employment than the opposite side. This is true while going to work as Anil Kantak

well as coming back from work. Provide reconfigurable lanes on side of freeway that has more traffic thereby reducing congestion. Anil Kantak

Technical Solution to Traffic Problems: • Newer technology may be used to at least reduce effect of traffic congestion in future. • Properties and Requirements: • A realizable system: A System that can be actually built and tested using new technology. • Not too expensive: Newer technology is usually expensive hence care should be taken to avoid unnecessary expenses. • System should be completely automated with manual override when necessary. • Easily up gradable: When necessary system may be up graded, i.e., additional capacity may be added to system without any major work Anil Kantak

and without stop the current system working. • A back up system should also be present in case the primary system either needs to shut down for any reason or the performance of the existing system is reduced below a threshold for any reason that cannot be accepted. • The system should be built such that normal users of the system can come on the system easily when service is necessary and then dropped off the system easily when the call for service is not needed any more. It should also be easy to add new users of the system anytime necessary. Anil Kantak

System should be able to provide service to users even in the most adverse weather conditions and natural disasters like earth quakes etc. • System should produce minimal pollution if any. • The system should have very high reliability. • The system should be difficult to break in and produce chaos. • System should not interfere with other electrical/RF systems employed in the area the system is serving. Anil Kantak

There should not be a large cost of operation for the users if any. Government should implement the system on tax bases or there may be a small amount of fees for the users. • The system should be able to reduce congestion on freeways and important streets etc. • System should be useful for community needs such as the police work, helping disabled vehicles to be taken off the roadways etc. Anil Kantak

Traffic Control System (TCS): • This system is modeled after a combination of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airplane collision avoidance system. • TCS will need a small special purpose transponder to be installed in each and every vehicle that will need TCS service. Vehicle manufacturers will install this transponder in new vehicles or it may be installed in the older vehicles still on the roadways of the nation. This process is similar to installing the GPS receiver in the new vehicles today. Since each vehicle that does not have this transponder Anil Kantak

will affect the traffic situation for the other vehicles, the government (either state or the federal government) may make installation mandatory similar to catalytic converter installed in the current vehicles is illegal to tamper with it. • Each transponder installed in a vehicle will be given a unique identification number like the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) each vehicle has, however a different Transponder Identification Number (TIN) will be given to each vehicle. This will allow free trade of transponders from vehicle to vehicle with of course proper registration transfer. Anil Kantak

TCS Description and Working: • The city / county to be served by TCS will be divided into predefined sectors. Sizes of these sectors will depend upon the capacity of TCS to be installed as well as the number of vehicles on the roadways. • The TCF will have one Central Computing Facility (CCF) that is primary and a back up computing facility that is equally capable as the CCF and could be brought on line seamlessly when the primary facility is disabled or suffers a fault reducing its performance below par. • The TCS has a master control facility where the CCF and backup CCF will be installed. Anil Kantak

Master facility will also have the tower and the antennas and the communications hardware for as follows. • There will be a number of substations spread around in service area. Number of substations used will depend upon number of roadways and traffic density on these roadways. Main function of the substation is to send queries received from the CCF to the roadways being served and send the replies for the vehicles after adding the ID of the substation to CCF. Thus CCF knows not only which vehicle message has came from but also which substation relayed that message to CCF. Anil Kantak

This information will be used to position locate the vehicle and also compute speed as well as acceleration of all vehicles. • Substations will be located in the service area such that each vehicle on any roadway will have a line sight to three or more of the substations in the area. • Each vehicle has a transponder installed in it and it will be automatically turned on when the vehicle is turned on. Transponder will stay on as long as vehicle is on and when the key is withdrawn from ignition transponder will be turned off. When transponder is initially turned on, it will gather information such as the Anil Kantak

transponder ID, the destination of the vehicle that driver has entered through a keyboard, velocity of vehicle and store this information in the storage registers in a “Frame” using the sequential method. This information will be modulo two added to a spectrum spreading code and after modulating on a carrier and subsequent amplification will be radiated out through the vehicle’s antenna. This radiated signal will be received by three or more of the substations. The substations after adding their id code will relay out these messages to TCS’s computing facility, CCF for further action. If this is the first time the vehicle has sent the message, the CCF will include the vehicle in Anil Kantak

the active database of users and commence the computations. • The vehicle transmitting its signal will use already existing vehicle antenna for the radio and such. The frequency of transmission and reception will be decided after doing a thorough investigation of interference phenomenon with all in-band and adjacent channel users. Most likely this band will be either UHF, L Band, or S Band. • Vehicle will be queried by CCF at regular intervals to keep current with position of the vehicle and use information to guide it to its destination in an optimal way. Query frequency (repetition rate) will be determined by Anil Kantak

experience, i.e., repetition rate will change as the need arises. • Designated (designated by CCF) substation transmits to a particular vehicle and the vehicle transponder responds with an answer that gets relayed by the substation to the CCF for further processing. This process goes on as long as vehicle remains in designated substation’s allotted area. Once vehicle exits this area, it will enter another substation’s designated area and current substation hands this vehicle to next substation. Handing over is done very smoothly and the vehicle does not suffer any break in the service given by the CCF. Anil Kantak

Instructions to vehicle driver will be in audio and video both the driver may turn on or off as desired. In fact, the use of TCS will not be mandatory and Operator of vehicle can turn vehicle transponder system on or off as desired. • The system will be free of charge, all the user needs to do is to fit their vehicle with necessary transponder for the system and transponder will come with an acceptable user id code that the system will use to identify this vehicle when the ping from the substation is answered by the vehicle transponder. • TCS will be an open ended system, i.e., to add a vehicle to system or drop out of system there Anil Kantak

` • needs to be no special communications with the system apart from described above. Any vehiclehaving the necessary transponder and transponder id can join the system at any time and drop off from the system at any time desired. • System does not perform a broad cast of data but it services each vehicle in the area individually. The unavoidable delay between ping and return needs to be determined which will naturally depend upon many parameters of the communications systems at the vehicle as well as at the towers. • It should be noted that the TCS is not meant Anil Kantak

To and from vehicles To and From CCF Anil Kantak

CCF Substation Substation Substation Substation Substation Substation Anil Kantak

Front End Spread spectrum de-spreader with banks of correla- -tors. Identify the user. Temporary storage of ID to be used for the reply. Database of all ID codes Extraction of user information High speed computer with the required software for the traffic decision making Making of the transfer frame for the reply to the users. Spread spectrum mod- -ulator Amplif-ier To CCF antenna pointed towards the user’s subst- -ation tower. Anil Kantak

for accurate determination of position location of vehicles or accurate determination of speeds of vehicles. Thus system will work at a reasonable accuracies but it should be such that the traffic problems are solved. • Other advantages of the system: • In the future system, vehicle control may be managed by the traffic system so that driver may be relieved off that duty. The driver may at any time take over the driving without a contest. • Local towing service participants may be tuned into the TCS and they will be called upon to provide service when deemed Anil Kantak

necessary by the substation pending approval of vehicle driver. Thus help will be possible for every vehicle even without a phone available to them. • TCS can also be useful in fast resolution of emergency situations medical or otherwise for vehicle or driver of the vehicle. Emergency medical help can be easily scheduled by TCS by contacting emergency providers and giving them location and best way to go to the location. All these information will be present in the system. • TCS will be able to detect patterns of drunk driver or people under the influence and Anil Kantak

report that to police along with location of involved vehicle and best path for police to get there. • Since TCS tracks vehicles all the time and knows each vehicle position on road/freeway, it can easily detect accidents between vehicles and if needed, help can be sent to location. • As a corollary to above thought, TCS can function as collision avoidance system. TCS knows position of every vehicle and hence it is easy to predict when two cars will occupy the same spot. The CCF will use the Anil Kantak

extrapolation routines to predict the positions of the cars and this can be done on a routine basis to predict collision and notifying the authorities if a collision does occur. • Tracking of car thieves, criminals etc. would become easier if transponder is not allowed to be turned off (this is similar to the smog control system which gives less miles per gallon but it is against the state laws to turn the system off). • There is yet another way the TCS can be used for benefit of users. Since TCS knows position, speed and acceleration of each and every vehicle currently in the system, it can send messages for the vehicle that is exceeding safe Anil Kantak

speed posted for the roadway. • Special events occurring in city during year that may create traffic problems can be studied beforehand and special routs may be designed for overflow areas for that time and let public know about it beforehand. Anil Kantak

Conclusion: The presentation has shown a possible solution for the future traffic problems of large cities in the US. As was stressed before, technical solution is only a part of the solution. A properly thought out solution between the education and the technical system would be successful. In the beginning this system should be tried out for a small area, may be including the freeways. That will give the engineers a sample of the performance of the system and with experience the desired changes may be laid down on the system and eventually the system will provide the much desired permanent solution for the whole city’s traffic problem. Anil Kantak

Transportation and Solution to Traffic Congestion