MTI, CATT, CapWIN?

These UM-Led Initiatives Spell Relief for Regional Traffic

It's 4:05 p.m. on a Friday and you are anxiously trying to finish your work and get home early. Can you send one last email and still beat the traffic? Quickly you check a highway department Web site run by the University of Maryland and get estimates of how long it will take if you leave now or wait 15 minutes. Better get going! You head for the interstate, only to see traffic starting to back up. Using your cell phone, you find an accident has just occurred, get an alternate route and still arrive home early.

This scenario may be imaginary, but time-of-travel estimates and nearly immediate traffic and alternate route information will soon be real, thanks to experts in the university's Clark School of Engineering who are working with state and federal agencies to make travel in our region faster and safer. As one of several departments and centers working with the university's Maryland Transportation Initiative, or MTI, the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology, or CATT, is developing and helping to put in place a host of intelligent transportation technologies that can reduce regional traffic problems, help businesses and even save lives.

"These new tools will yield traffic improvements through better traffic control and quicker emergency response," says CATT director Philip Tarnoff. He explains that a new CATT laboratory is collecting data from all of the state's traffic sensors and accident reports. The lab also is linked to each state traffic camera and is writing image-processing software to make it possible to glean data from these cameras.

The CATT lab has developed Maryland's first-ever traffic database, a source of information essential to research and to the creation of traffic forecasting and other new traffic management and planning tools.

CATT also is leading regional development of a laptop-based wireless communication system to allow transportation managers, first responders and public safety agencies to communicate quickly and coordinate their responses to everything from traffic accidents to terrorism attacks. Known as CapWIN, this federally funded regional initiative began its initial testing phase this fall.

Another area of transportation technology in which university researchers are taking a leading role is the creation of computer models that use traffic, communications and other data to improve everything from evacuation planning and management to the efficiency and security of transportation freight. The Maryland Transportation Initiative and its director Hani Mahmassani are leading a number of such projects including one to improve the tracking of freight, one to develop evacuation models for use by the city of Minneapolis and another designed to help Houston officials plan for and manage traffic during disasters, whether human-caused or natural ones like that region's frequent flash floods.

"Homeland security is now a broad focal area for a lot of transportation research," Mahmassani explains. "Our related work is in evacuation planning and transportation security, and my own work is in software development that can help significantly with these two areas."

Of course, whether the issue is easing rush-hour gridlock or evacuating large numbers of people after a terrorist attack or natural disaster, one of the greatest challenges for regional transportation and public safety officials is the rapid rise in the number of vehicles jamming area roads. Mahmassani and the MTI also are tackling this broad problem through collaborations with Maryland faculty in the School of Public Affairs and the university's National Center for Smart Growth.

For more information go to: www.CATTLAB.umd.edu