SPECIAL NOTICE
B -- Mobility Applications For Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (MVII) Initiative; RFI
- Notice Date
- 4/14/2005
- Notice Type
- Special Notice
- NAICS
- 488490
— Other Support Activities for Road Transportation
- Contracting Office
- Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Office of Acquisition Management, HAAM, Room 4410 400 7th Street, S.W., Washington, DC, 20590
- ZIP Code
- 20590
- Solicitation Number
- DTFH61-05-RFI-041405
- Response Due
- 6/17/2005
- Description
- DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Federal Highway Administration MOBILITY APPLICATIONS FOR VEHICLE INFRASTRUCTURE INTEGRATION INITIATIVE; REQUEST FOR INFORMATION AGENCIES: Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), USDOT. ACTION: Notice; Request For Information. SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is seeking information from all sources for its Mobility Applications for Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (MVII) initiative. This is a Request For Information only. This is NOT a Request For Applications (RFA) or a Request For Proposals (RFP). The MVII initiative is one of the six exploratory initiatives recently launched by the USDOT?s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program to improve transportation safety, and enhance mobility and productivity. The purpose of this exploratory initiative is to investigate the methods, tools, and techniques that would be enabled by VII technologies and would provide significant mobility benefits to the traveling public. The underlying VII technologies themselves are the subject of another initiative. The USDOT?s vision is that travelers will see significant improvements in personal mobility, and metropolitan areas will realize significant improvements in the efficient movement of people and goods, through the introduction of mobility applications enabled by VII. The goals of the MVII exploratory initiative are to evaluate the mobility benefits of methods, tools, and techniques that would be enabled by a modest to moderate deployment of VII technology, and to accelerate the deployment of applications with highest mobility benefit. The MVII exploratory initiative will identify and close key knowledge gaps with regards to mobility benefits of MVII-enabled methods, tools, and techniques. The exploratory initiative will demonstrate through research, simulations, test track demonstrations, human factors research, and limited prototype testing how VII technologies can be used efficiently and proactively to improve mobility for the traveling public. The exploratory initiative will disseminate to the transportation community the information and tools needed to deploy such applications. The objective of the proposed initiative is to accelerate deployment of VII-enabled mobility enhancements by demonstrating mobility benefits in a convincing evaluation using real world data. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this RFI is to seek broad stakeholder input and interest on the vision, goals, and approach of the MVII Initiative and to identify and gather information on tried, existing, and potential methods, tools, and techniques and evaluation methods. Respondents to this RFI are requested to consider the service concepts described in the section titled ?MVII SERVICE CONCEPTS? and to reply to the questions posed in the section titled ?MVII APPROACH AND DEPLOYMENT ISSUES?. The information will assist the USDOT in identifying which methods, tools, and techniques and evaluation methods should receive further research effort. For methods, tools, and techniques (service concepts), the emphasis is on a medium (5-10 year) deployment horizon that would be achievable with a modest to moderate market penetration of VII equipment. This deployment horizon is shown as Region 2 of Figure 2 described in the appended section entitled ?THE PROMISE OF VII MOBILITY APPLICATIONS.? The Government also is interested in longer-range applications that could see initial deployments in Region 2. Methods, tools, and techniques that could easily be done now without VII technology and applications that would require significant VII market penetration for even an initial deployment are out of scope. Methods, tools, and techniques that primarily yield safety benefits are out of scope; such benefits are already being explored through separate initiatives. For evaluation methods, the emphasis is on methods that will effectively and unambiguously demonstrate mobility benefits (or the lack thereto) without requiring a large model deployment. This is primarily a RESEARCH initiative. DATES: Responses to this announcement should be submitted on or before 60 days after the posted date of this RFI. See the "Supplementary Information" section for electronic access and filing addresses. POINTS OF CONTACT: Robert Ferlis, (202) 493-3268. Mr. Ferlis is located at the United States Department of Transportation, Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center, 6300 Georgetown Pike McLean, VA 22101. James Pol, (202) 366-4374. Mr. Pol is located at the United States Department of Transportation, ITS Joint Program Office, 400 Seventh Street, SW, Washington, DC 20590. Office hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Electronic Access and Filing Addresses Electronically submitted responses are encouraged. Your responses are greatly appreciated, but the USDOT will not be able to acknowledge responses. You may submit responses to MVII@fhwa.dot.gov. Responses may also be mailed directly to the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, HRDO, 6300 Georgetown Pike, McLean, VA 22101, attention Robert Ferlis. THE PROMISE OF VII MOBILITY APPLICATIONS The deployment of VII for both safety and mobility applications will hopefully provide increasing mobility benefits for individual travelers and reduce congestion across the system as a whole. The benefits will (in theory) increase over time as VII coverage increases. Consider the Figure 1 below. The trend line rising diagonally in the figure represents the increasing penetration of the number of VII equipped vehicles over time. The X-axis represents the number of Road Side Units (RSUs) with which the VII-equipped vehicles interact. Over time there will be an increase in both the number of VII-equipped vehicles and the number of RSU deployments, indicating also that over time vehicles will interact intelligently at first with specific facilities like signalized intersections and then with the broader transportation system. Finally, the Y-axis indicates of the sophistication of strategy that is employed based upon the penetration of VII-equipped vehicles, the number of deployed RSUs, and the overall interconnectivity among vehicles and the transportation system. Figure 1: Mobility Opportunities Stemming from VII Vehicle Penetration Overall this figure outlines the growth projection of VII deployment and the growth projection of the application sophistication that results for that deployment. Our projected end-state encompasses full VII-vehicle penetration and full interconnectivity with the transportation system. This end state is outside the scope of this current initiative, however. This initiative establishes the base applications between the near future and that end state ? the period in which partial deployment exists but the growing demands for mobility will require action. The goal of MVII is the proactive management of transportation resources to maximize the individual traveler?s mobility. There are three stages that can be considered in how individual mobility is enhanced through VII. These three stages are depicted on Figure 2 below. Region I describes the advent of VII deployment including services that could be deployed now, with current technology, although perhaps not with the full functionality envisioned in some research literature. This area is out of scope of this initiative. Region II describes a state of with modest penetration of VII, realizing safety and mobility gains through the cooperative interaction among vehicles and the transportation facility. At this stage the traveler is both more informed and further integrated with the performance of the system. His/her mobility options are widened as the safety applications diminish the debilitating constraints of crashes and other spontaneous impediments to mobility. This state of relatively low VII penetration features services that could be viable with a relatively small market penetration of VII on-board units and roadside units. These services typically also have limited safety implications, so communications coverage and reliability requirements are relatively modest. Some of these services add or improve functionality of currently deployed ITS. Region III describes the state with widespread deployment of VII. This is out of scope of this RFI and this initiative. In region 3, congestion mobility constraints of physical capacity are mitigated as fully as possible. In this time frame, congestion solutions may consider services that either have high communications reliability requirements or require near-total market penetration to function effectively. Most of these longer-range services involve vehicle operator assistance and have the potential to deliver dramatically improved functionality from existing levels of service. MVII SERVICE CONCEPTS: DOT is currently considering roughly a dozen service concepts for this initiative. These service concepts were selected as the ones that could be demonstrated with VII technology expected to be available in 2010 AND would be most likely to produce significant mobility benefits in the medium to long term. These service concepts are briefly described below. Assisted Lateral Control: This service uses VII to provide lateral control of vehicle movement, allowing the vehicle to ?track? the lane with greater precision and reliability than would be otherwise be possible. From a mobility standpoint, this would reduce driver stress, reduce congestion caused by lane-departure accidents, and potentially permit the safe operation in narrower lanes (allowing more lanes to provided in an existing right-of-way). In the transit context, assisted lateral control could be used to assist stopping precisely at bus stops (precision docking), improving speed and quality of service. Longitudinal Control/Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control: Vehicles communicate with each other and with the infrastructure to control time gaps between vehicles. This service provides driver stress reduction and possibly system level throughput improvements. For trucks, the mobility benefit could be wireless truck ?platoons?, reducing driver workload for the driver of the trailing truck, as well as reducing fuel usage. For buses, the mobility benefit could include ?virtual articulated bus?, allowing an agency to wirelessly couple buses on an as-needed basis. This service could be employed in low-speed operation to reduce driver stress in congested stop-and-go traffic. Community Transit: Transit vehicle automation is utilized to provide very frequent, reliable circulator service in suburban neighborhoods, providing service both between the neighborhood and transit hubs, and within the neighborhood between activity centers. It may be deployed in conjunction with VII-enabled traveler information services. It differs from the dual mode automated bus described below in that it primarily offers service within neighborhoods, and that it includes driverless transit vehicles. The automated, frequent service reduces the need for parking at transit hubs and local activity centers, and reduces air pollution caused by short trips within the neighborhood. Dedicated Truckway or Busway: This service uses a combination of longitudinal and/or lateral guidance technologies to assist vehicle movement in a dedicated lane. The mobility benefit would be more reliable, faster travel for the vehicles in question, as well as congestion reduction benefits for SOV drivers remaining in non-dedicated lanes. Dual Mode Automated Bus: A transit bus operates with lateral and/or longitudinal control for part of a route, and is manually driven for the neighborhood street portion of the route. This offers similar travel speed and reliability benefits to light rail transit, but without the need to transfer for the ?last mile? service to suburban neighborhoods. The mobility benefits include travel time and convenience of service. This service could make frequent, high quality transit service from neighborhoods to the central business district cost-effective. If the service increases transit ridership, it could improve mobility benefits for transit passengers while reducing congestion for SOV drivers. Full Assistance with Driver Vigilance: Once longitudinal and lateral controls are available in a dedicated lane, full vehicle assistance is possible within that lane. This service would not necessarily offer automated merge capability or system-level traffic smoothing, so driver vigilance would be required. It could substantially improve throughput, depending upon the time gap and speed chosen. This service would be in a single dedicated lane ? the challenges of deploying vehicle operator assistance in multiple lanes are outside the scope of this initiative. Gap Creation for Merging: When most cars have VII-enabled longitudinal control (adaptive cruise control), it should be possible for a car on the merge area or ramp to send a message to cars on the main road requesting that a safe gap for merging be created. This should allow system-level traffic smoothing, offering mobility benefits for all. Individualized Traffic Flow Encouragement: VII is used to send traffic flow advice messages to individual vehicles, smoothing overall traffic flow and improving mobility for all. We envision that this service will first be deployed in a dedicated lane as an opt-in service. The messages sent could include ?please accelerate briskly, the traffic jam is ending?, ?stop tailgating?, ?slow down to match speed of traffic?, or ?caution ? icy road ahead.? The mobility benefits would be generally smoother traffic flow and possibly reduced congestion. Intelligent Speed Advisory and Control: VII is used to provide variable speed limits in work zones and school zones, as well as during inclement weather. The VII is used to provide the speed limit directly to the vehicle. This service could also be used for speed advisory messages based on weather or traffic conditions. In later stages of deployment, control messages also could be sent to the vehicle. Intersection Reservation: VII is used to allow cars to send information directly to the traffic light, allow the signal to adjust to demand, and to allow the signal to send back messages regulating vehicle speed. The concept is that by the time the vehicle arrives at the signal, the light is green. The intersection varies signal timing based on green requests. Provides system level traffic smoothing mobility benefits. VII-Enhanced Work Zone Operation ? VII probe data is used to collect highly accurate information on work zone speed and throughput. This could be used to send speed advisories and warnings to individual vehicles. It could also allow agencies to set metrics for speed and volume through a workzone and require the workzone contractor to meet enforceable minimum performance levels. Ultimately, temporary lateral control could be installed in work zones to improve speed and safety through workzones. Trucking Capacity Management and Dynamic Routing ? VII is used to provide specific route guidance to trucks as they enter the perimeter of an urban area. The specific routing can be based on congestion, air quality, or other criteria. This service could improve trip travel time and reliability for trucks, while improving trip reliability and air quality for car drivers in the area as well. MVII APPROACH AND DEPLOYMENT ISSUES At this point in time, USDOT has a list of potential service concepts that would be enabled by VII technology that might have mobility benefits. These service concepts were developed through a literature review and expert input. USDOT would like to gather information on the service concepts, the possible mobility benefits, and the appropriate evaluation methods. The purpose of gathering the information is to develop a work plan for a detailed multi-year program of research. Responses to the following questions are requested to help the USDOT gather information on Mobility Applications for VII service concepts and evaluation methods. 1. Please provide a brief description of the mobility services/applications that you have researched, are planning or have implemented. Applications outside those listed above may be included. Please address the following in your description: i. Please briefly describe the specific mobility problems that you were trying to solve. ii. Please describe the process adopted for identifying the mobility benefits, including the use of any modeling or analysis tools to assist in the decision making process. iii. Please describe the evaluation methods that were used or are planned. iv. Please provide comments on what you learned and what you would do differently next time. 2. Do you think the proposed service concepts represent a reasonable start for DOT?s program of research? i. What are some of the critical issues that need to be addressed by the initiative? ii. Which applications REQUIRE VII to be successful? Which could be done with many technologies, of which VII is one possibility? iii. What new areas of research, development or analysis would be required to support the MVII initiative? iv. Which services seem to offer the most compelling mobility benefits? The least compelling? v. What do you believe would be helpful in promoting widespread implementation of mobility applications using VII? vi. What are the critical issues that need to be addressed to enable the deployment of advanced mobility applications provided through VII? 3. Would you be interested in you or your organization becoming involved with the MVII initiative? What are your criteria and requirements for participation? Please indicate if you would be willing to be contacted for a follow-up interview. 4. What agencies/organizations/entities are essential to the development of the mobility applications and service concepts? 5. What is the proper forum for carrying out the necessary engagement of the various stakeholders, and how might the USDOT establish that forum? 6. What do you perceive as the greatest obstacle that would thwart the successful research and development of the service concepts that are outlined? Please provide your contact information so that the USDOT may contact you for additional information on your responses. Issued on: __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________
- Record
- SN00788031-W 20050416/050414211833 (fbodaily.com)
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