Wellborn Road Arterial Traffic Management/Railroad Monitoring Testbed

TransLink^®'s multimodal approach to increasing the safety and efficiency of traffic operations resulted in the development of an arterial management/railroad monitoring testbed within the Wellborn Road corridor in College Station. The testbed includes five railroad grade crossings with adjacent traffic signals that split College Station and the Texas A&M University campus. The testbed allows researchers to implement multiple system designs to achieve the integration and interoperability of the Wellborn Road corridor from the standpoint of emergency vehicles, pedestrians, and traffic signals with respect to railroad operations.

The primary system in place within the testbed is a railroad monitoring network arrayed along a 7-mile section of a single track infrastructure. The network detects the train's presence and direction, monitors speeds, and predicts arrival times at grade crossings critical to emergency service operations. This information is then relayed to the TransLink® Gilchrist Laboratory, supplemented with live video from the corridor, and delivered to the College Station Fire Department as an additional input into their routing decisions made at the local fire station.

Another system deployed within the testbed is a high-speed communications network capable of carrying both data and video information. Designed and implemented by TransLink^® researchers, the IP-based network has received national acclaim as the model for transportation communication systems of the future.

A forthcoming addition to the testbed will be the ability to monitor the traffic signal inputs, phasing, and controller response of individual intersections. This capability, currently available only when using closed-loop master software, will greatly increase researcher understanding of how to effect traffic operations on a limited intersection scope. Finally, because of the flexibility of the deployed infrastructure within the testbed, additional capabilities can be easily added. Previous supplemental uses of the corridor were to replicate a light-rail corridor and examine the feasibility of vehicle to roadside communications at light-rail operating speeds.

The Wellborn Road corridor testbed serves a diverse role in the research program, providing the opportunity to enhance transportation system management, emergency response management, traffic signal operations, arterial operations, and transportation communications.

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