TBWG April 2012 Ed Strocko Federal Highway Administration
Purpose Test, Evaluate and Deploy Technologies to Automate the Measurement of Real-Time Border Wait Times at United States – Canada Land Border Crossings
Phase I Evaluated four solutions GPS/Smartphone Bluetooth RADAR Vehicle Waveform identification
Phase 2 Elements Deploy a system Validate its performance Put in place a long-term operational model Technologies Bluetooth GPS/Smartphone (dropped)
Phase 2 Activities Installation of a Bluetooth-based system at two US-Canada crossings in the Niagara region Peace Bridge between Buffalo, NY and Ft. Erie, ON Queenston-Lewiston Bridge between Queenston, ON and Lewiston, NY Calibrate and verify the functionality and accuracy of the system and to support integration with existing traveler information systems. Concept of operations will be developed that describes the operational model as applied in the Niagara region, and applicable to other international border crossings.
Issues Technological Intermittent technical malfunction internal to some of the detectors Need to lengthen readers from 1 hr. to 2 hr. queue Misalignment of some readers Operational Funding Maintenance Reporting
Recent Activities Relocation of upstream readers to enable wait time detection up to 2 hours (January-February 2012). Calibration of system with new readers positions (to be determined based on historical volume information-spring 2012). Meeting with stakeholders (March 2012) Ground-truth measurement and analysis supporting system acceptance following system calibration (measurement completed April 6 th and analysis currently underway).
Next Steps Integration of agency systems with BWT system (spring 2012) Concept of Operations (Spring 2012) Investigate funding of instrumentation for Rainbow Crossing Plan for transition to agency responsibility (Summer 2012) Continued operation and monitoring of system until transition to agencies (through December 30, 2012)