Traffic congestion will always exist, but one way to ease congestion is to make traffic systems more efficient through Intelligent Transportation Systems, said Matthew Barth, Director of UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering-Center for Environmental Research and Technology, known as CE-CERT.

Intelligent Transportation Systems attempt to improve the capacity of existing infrastructure through the use of computer, communications and control technologies, Barth told the audience attending the June 21 Randall Lewis Seminar Series.

Providing traffic control, such as tailoring stoplights to traffic load; providing pre-trip travel and route guidance information; electronic payment services for toll roads and quick response wrecker and emergency services are examples of intelligent transportation system techniques. Others include vehicle collision avoidance, automated highway systems and public travel security.  

Barth discussed several general solutions used to help ease traffic congestion beyond building more freeways or additional lanes.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we can’t keep building more roads,” Barth said. “We’ve used our land and to build a new freeway or sustain a freeway, you often have to purchase right of way, and that right of way has becoming more and more expensive -- it’s expensive both in time and cost to do that. The tactic then, is to instead make traffic systems more efficient . . .  let’s get traffic moving more smoothly . . .” he said.

One other way to ease congestion is to manage demand in a variety of ways, including pricing mechanisms such as toll lanes. 

“Basically, what we’re going to see over the next decade is a transition from HOV lanes, High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, to HOT lanes, High Occupancy Toll lanes, which allow the user to get into those lanes by paying a price,” Barth said. “By adjusting the price, you have the ability to control how much demand is there.” 

Other ways to manage demand are by providing a wider range of alternative transportation modes to the automobile, and greater use of telecommuting or flexible work locations and schedules, Barth said. 

Another method to ease traffic congestion is to better manage land use through improved urban design -- by encouraging mixed-use development that shortens distances between work and home, or by designing mixed-use developments around mass transportation, he said.

Over the years, CE-CERT and Barth have studied several of these different alternatives, primarily to measure effects on fuel consumption and emissions. CE-CERT also has used traffic modeling -- which tracks the individual motion of vehicles – to simulate traffic flow at the 91-60-215 interchange in Riverside. The simulation shows how traffic flow will improve under the interchange re-design now under construction. 

CE-CERT also has developed models to measure fuel consumption and emissions based on the level of traffic congestion, in High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes versus other freeway lanes; and in intelligent speed adaptation that totally or partially controls vehicle speeds to lower congestion and improve safety. 

Barth developed and CE-CERT operates UCR’s IntelliShare program, a shared use vehicle system with six stations on or near the UCR campus. The program is used to research various car sharing experiments, and utilizes 20 natural gas vehicles.

The June seminar was the last before the summer break. The Randall Lewis Seminar Series will resume on Sept. 20. More information on the fall Seminar Series will appear on this website at a later date.     

Download Matthew Barth's slide presentation here (1.75 MB).