This project constitutes a research effort to verify and calibrate a Dynamic Toll Lane (DTL) microsimulation model (Phase I) that will be used to test innovative pricing and control strategies aimed at reducing congestion (Phase II), specifically in a DTL and the main tollway lanes in the Metropolitan Area of San Juan, PR. The DTL was built recently and has already experienced congestion at the entrances and exits. The primary objective of this facility is to reduce, in some way, the time it takes to traverse the congested section of the freeway during peak hours.

Signal optimization and coordination represent a cost-effective approach to mitigating congestion and improving traffic flow, obviating the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades or construction. By effectively optimizing traffic signals, delays, travel times, and stops experienced by drivers can be significantly reduced, resulting in decreased fuel consumption and improved safety. In addition to the immediate benefits of reduced congestion and improved traffic flow, signal optimization and coordination offer long-term advantages.

One of the most important aspects of transportation planning is understanding employment information of businesses and organizations. Information such as location of employment, size of organization or business in terms of employees, sales, can provide valuable input to understanding travel patterns and human activities. Visualizing this information along with several administrative, transportation and infrastructure facilities provides key contextual information to transportation planning agencies.

Currently, asphalt mixtures are design using volumetric concepts to determine optimum asphalt content levels with no means of verifying mixture performance prior to field production and placement. A new design methodology called Balanced Mixture Design (BMD) promotes the use of evaluating and design asphalt mixture using rutting and fatigue cracking methods and criteria to achieve an optimum asphalt content that will result in an asphalt mixture performing well in rutting and fatigue cracking scenarios – thereby “balancing” the asphalt mixture performance.

The global positioning system (GPS) has been increasingly used to gather data for transportation modeling and planning. However, the potential of this emerging technology and its combined power with other technologies such as wireless telecommunications, geographical information systems (GIS), and Internet have not been fully understood and utilized.

The highway transportation plays a very significant role in the nationwide economy and society development, including in UTRC2 area. For the routine traffic management and future planning of the highway infrastructure and other transport systems associated with it, a reliable traffic monitoring system is highly needed along the highways. Inductive loop is the most widely used method for the real-time traffic information nowadays. However, the cost-effective, convenient and reliable power supply needed for the traffic monitoring system is still a big challenge.

Project Descriptioin