Research Brief: The Anticipatory Route Guidance Problem

Soulaymane Kachani, Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University, and Georgia Perakis, Associate Professor at the MIT Operations Research Center, recently completed a study entitled, "The Anticipatory Route Guidance Problem: Formulations, Analysis and Computational Results." This project was funded through the UTRC Research Initiative, with additional funding from the New York State Department of Transportation.

The Anticipatory Route Guidance Problem (ARG) is an exercise in dynamic traffic user-equilibrium. It envisions a communications system which transmits dynamic, shortest path traffic data to drivers. But anything that influences the path-choice decisions of drivers will, in itself, affect traffic conditions on the ground. The challenge is to develop a model in which shortest-path forecasting does not become a self-defeating prophecy.

This research developed and evaluated a software system which explores the ARG problem from a fixed point perspective. A significant part of the research effort focused on finding the best computational algorithms. Methods evaluated include: MSA (Method of successive averaging), Polyak iterate averaging method, and a variety of potential optimization line search methods.

Further investigation is encouraged using more scenarios of test cases and other averaging algorithms. One algorithm, for example, is an extension of the potential optimization line search algorithm where the optimization utilizes information from more than one past iteration. At the very least, further research should consider the scenarios of executing potential optimization line search algorithms using a larger number of iterations and/or evaluations for each iteration.

More information on this project is available at www.utrc2.org/research/projects.php?viewid=99.

Nancy Mantel, Kaan Ozbay, Pippa Woods, and Martin Robins of Rutgers University are conducting a study on the feasibility of using freight movements as a leading regional economic indicator. Their project is investigating the relationship between truck movements and the economic performance of the New York/New Jersey region and, thereby, testing whether truck movements on the I-95 Corridor are a leading indicator of changes in the performance of the New York/New Jersey regional economy.

They have estimated linear regression models using truck data extracted from the historic transaction records of the NJ Turnpike facility. Additional economic data such as employment, income and other factors were obtained from various national and state databases. Some of the estimated models in this study are promising in terms of developing a useful prediction methodology for the economic activity in the state. A statistically significant relationship between freight traffic on the NJ Turnpike and State economy has been shown to exist, although the strength of this statistical relationship was observed to change over time.

This study is also looking into interchange activity and making empirical observations at this more microscopic level. It has found that over time there have been significant changes in the amount of traffic on the Turnpike and its distribution as a result of the change in the economy of the area. Trends in traffic by interchange between 1975 and 2005 reflects known changes in the local areas' economies (e.g. the more than 600% increase in truck traffic around exits 7A and 8a where major warehouses have been built in the last decade). This kind of interchange level analysis helps to pinpoint major economic activity locations along the facility. However, more detailed analysis is needed to explain the reasons of these changes.

This study expects to show that traffic data collected by the NJ Turnpike Authority can be used as a leading indicator of the state's economy. The results of this study may be used to inform the NJ state forecasting model (R/ECON) maintained at the Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research. This research was funded by the 2005 UTRC Research Initiative. It builds on the pioneering work of Kajal Lahiri of the University at Albany, who developed the national Transportation Services Index currently published monthly by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. More information on this project will be available at www.utrc2.org/research/projects.php?viewid=102.

UTRC Student of the Year Award Presented to Eugene Sit

The University Transportation Research Center has selected Eugene Sit as its 2006 Outstanding Student of the Year.

Eugene Sit is a native of New York City and graduated from Columbia University in 2002 with a departmental citation and a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. Eugene was a C. Prescott Davis Scholar at Columbia, where he supplemented his engineering coursework with classes on transportation and urban development, architecture, planning, politics, and anthropology.

After graduating from Columbia, Eugene was employed by Vollmer Associates, LLP, as a junior engineer in the transportation department. There, he contributed analysis and field observation to a number of projects, including the reconstruction of Route 9A in Lower Manhattan by the New York State Department of Transportation.

Eugene is currently pursuing his master of science at the City College of New York (CCNY) and is the recipient of a scholarship from the Advanced Institute for Transportation Education (AITE). He is working on his thesis under the supervision of Professor Cynthia Chen of CCNY. His thesis project entails performing sensitivity testing on the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council’s Best Practice Model, which represents one of the first uses of this model in academic research. It is hoped that Eugene’s work will have implications for future regional travel demand models, both in their design and in their application to policy analysis.

UTRC's Kamga receives Pikarsky Award at TRB 2007

At the 2007 TRB Annual Meeting in January, the Council of University Transportation Centers honored Dr. Camille Kamga with the 2006 Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award for his dissertation, "Estimation of Network Based Incident Delay in a Transportation Network Using Dynamic Traffic Assignment." The Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award is given annually for the best Ph.D. dissertation and best M.S. thesis in the field of science and technology in transportation studies, and is named for UTRC's founding Director. We are delighted to congratulate Dr. Kamga on this prestigious award.

Left to right Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta, Dr.Camille Kamga, Prof. Neville Parker, and Prof. Kyriaros Mouskos

In this issue

2006 UTRC Best Paper Award

UTRC Student of the Year Award Presented to Eugene Sit