“It’s a fact that safety-belt use saves lives,” says TTI Senior Research Scientist Katie Womack, who manages TTI’s Behavioral Research Group. “For every increment of improvement in belt use, the rate of fatalities goes down. That’s why it’s very useful to know what the level of use is in Texas.”

Womack conducted numerous other surveys in 2012, the results of which show that improvement is still needed. In an 18-city study of nighttime safety-belt use, only 81 percent of drivers and their front-seat occupants were wearing a safety belt. That figure compares to an 89 percent use rate in the same cities during daylight hours. (The survey marks the first time TTI monitored safety-belt use for all hours of the night, not just the early hours of the evening.)

Researchers observed school children aged 5 through 16 in 18 Texas cities to determine if they were restrained by a safety seat or safety belt.

“In our previous nighttime surveys, which occurred during the early hours of darkness, there was not much of a difference compared to daytime safety-belt use,” Womack points out. “There’s a steady decrease in the rate of use after midnight. I think we now have a clearer picture of what’s taking place. In some cities, seat-belt use drops into the 60 percent range during some hours.”

Womack’s surveys help the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) determine where safety campaigns need to be targeted in an effort to reduce the state’s fatality and injury rate. “Recently, the number of fatalities in Texas has been on a downward trend,” says TxDOT Traffic Safety Director Terry Pence. “Unfortunately, it appears that the number will be higher in 2012, based on our preliminary figures. I think it’s very clear that if every driver and passenger wore a safety belt day and night, the numbers of deaths and serious injuries would go down.”

In a survey of child-restraint use, Womack’s team found that 89 percent of the children riding in passenger cars were restrained (either by a seat belt or a child safety seat). However, the number dropped to 85 percent when the children were riding in a pickup truck. Comparing individual cities, child-restraint use varied from 97 percent in Austin to 77 percent in Corpus Christi. Regarding motorcycles, only 61 percent of 910 observed riders were wearing a helmet. A series of final reports on numerous unique surveys relating to occupant safety restraints has been submitted to TxDOT.

Scheduled for completion this decade, the proposed new port of entry, Otay Mesa East, will be a state-of-the-art tolled crossing facility designed to accommodate future growth. The new port is a collaborative project among the California Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, the U.S. General Services Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the San Diego Association of Governments.

Currently, the projected $650 million project is in the planning stages, which include an intelligent transportation systems (ITS) pre-deployment study, led by the IBI Group. The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) is a member of the IBI team.

“This project gives us a perfect opportunity to work with a clean slate to deploy and assess the numerous operating concepts and technologies that will make up this facility,” says Project Manager Don Murphy of IBI. “As part of our team we’ve turned to TTI and its expertise with border-crossing wait-time technologies and operational systems.”

Over the last decade, TTI has worked with various border-crossing technologies for existing ports of entry. This is the first project for TTI researchers on a planned border crossing.

“TTI’s main role is in developing a concept of operations,” says Juan Villa, manager of TTI’s Mexico City Office and part of the group working with IBI. “The team will help determine which technologies would be best suited for this project, how the information will flow between stakeholders, and how best to link the border information system to the local traffic management systems.”

The ITS technologies for Otay Mesa East include the collection of real-time border-crossing wait times on both sides of the border as part of an advanced traveler-information system for the region. The information will include toll rates that fluctuate depending on congestion conditions.

Among the ITS systems planned for the new border crossing are:

• data collection/analysis,
• toll-revenue collection,
• traveler-information display,
• traffic management/monitoring,
• vehicle management/monitoring,
• vehicle safety-inspection support and
• CBP operational assistance.

“The congestion around this busy region is costing everyone time and money and is deteriorating air-quality conditions,” says TTI Associate Research Engineer Rajat Rajbhandari. “Otay Mesa East provides us with a great opportunity to help build an ITS system from the ground up and, in doing so, make a real difference in the quality of life for the millions of people who live, work and travel here.”

• Maintaining and improving mobility in the face of growing congestion and shrinking resources.
• Increasing border-crossing efficiency while maintaining security.
• Improving air quality to advance personal health.

In each of these missions, example projects for which are provided here, CIITR is committed to enhancing the quality of life for the Paso Del Norte Region and helping to develop solutions at the U.S.-Mexico border that help ensure the safe, secure and efficient movement of people and goods.

Understanding Traffic Trends to Facilitate Commerce

Recent negative changes in the global economy have resulted in a significant decline in trade and freight movement worldwide. Stakeholders in the United States want to know how these changes will affect foreign trade and freight movement across our borders.

Since 2009, CIITR personnel have studied freight activities across ports of entry at the border and constructed an annual research brief. Using monthly data from the Trans-Border Surface Freight Database of the U.S. Bureau of Transportation, they have identified trends and quantified variations in freight movement across the U.S.-Mexico border. The study classifies freight by mode of transport (trucks and rail cars, empty and loaded), commodities (six commodity groups) and freight destinations. The research results from this project help public- and private-sector stakeholders from El Paso and other border regions by providing them with more accurate information regarding freight movements, which helps decision makers in allocating resources to support border-crossing operations and activities.

Understanding How Border Delays Impact Consumer Travel

Destination studies can help businesses on both sides of the border anticipate customer volume and thereby impact the volume of goods they keep on their shelves, the prices of those goods and ultimately economic growth in a region. Supporting the economic development of both Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, the Paso del Norte Bridge is one of the busiest border pedestrian crossings between Texas and Mexico. Over the last several years, pedestrian traffic has fallen significantly, partially due to long wait times at border crossings. Although the effects of border delays on commercial and passenger vehicle cross-border traffic have been extensively studied, little is known about their effect on pedestrian cross-border travel. This problem has become so severe in the Paso del Norte region, in fact, that economic growth is suffering. Understanding changes in pedestrian traffic trends is critical for retail business owners to efficiently conduct business and for local economic development officials to proactively address border-crossing operations.

To assist entrepreneurs and local government officials in developing strategies to improve the flow of pedestrians and customers across the border, CIITR researchers studied the implications of border delays on the choices of individual cross-border travelers, their choice of transportation mode to cross the border, and ultimately their decisions to cross the border for work, shopping or leisure, if at all. Knowing these motives can provide policy makers with data for proposing strategies to improve pedestrian traffic flow, and can aid businesses in better understanding and predicting the future travel behavior of their customers. The study’s findings will also offer insights into how to alleviate border-crossing wait times for pedestrians and provide local communities with valuable data regarding these delays to use in planning their region’s economic sustainability.

Developing More Precise Emissions Estimates for Clean Air Act Compliance

The El Paso area is currently in nonattainment of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Air Act standards and deadlines for particle pollution and is on the verge of being in nonattainment for carbon monoxide emissions. El Paso’s continued noncompliance risks losing federal highway funds. To demonstrate compliance, nonattainment areas must develop accurate emissions estimates that can be used to prove compliance with EPA standards.

Border-crossing cities have unique air-quality characteristics not well accounted for in current emissions estimation models. Center researchers are developing a robust methodology to estimate emissions that accounts for the overall impact of cross-border vehicle activity and how control strategies would impact emissions. To develop this unique estimation tool, researchers reconciled gaps in emissions estimation methodologies for border-crossing activities and developed a way to extract second-by-second emissions rates from the Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator model and real-world emissions measurements.

This new methodology will help the El Paso area and other border communities accurately assess the impact of control strategies and future port-of-entry improvements, and provide guidance for their decision-making processes. Specifically, communities can use CIITR’s research product to quantify the pollution impact of cross-border vehicle traffic, ultimately helping them demonstrate compliance with EPA standards and retain federal funding as a result.

The Planning Time Index (PTI), introduced in the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s (TTI’s) 2012 Urban Mobility Report (UMR), measures travel reliability, providing a detailed illustration of traffic problems in 498 U.S. urban areas. The PTI illustrates the amount of extra time needed to arrive on time for higher priority events, such as an airline departure, just-in-time shipments, medical appointments or especially important social commitments.

The 2012 Urban Mobility Report measures travel reliability, providing a detailed illustration of traffic problems in 498 U.S. urban areas.

For example, if the PTI for a particular trip is 3.00, a traveler would allow 60 minutes for a trip that typically takes 20 minutes when few cars are on the road. In this case, allowing for a PTI of 3.00 ensures on-time arrival 19 out of 20 times.

PTIs on freeways vary widely across the nation, from 1.31 (about nine extra minutes for a trip that takes 30 minutes in light traffic) in Pensacola, Fla., to 5.72 (almost three hours for that same half-hour trip) in Washington, D.C.

“As bad as traffic jams are, it’s even more frustrating that you can’t depend on traffic jams being consistent from day to day. This unreliable travel is costly for commuters and truck drivers moving goods,” says TTI Senior Research Engineer Bill Eisele, report co-author and manager of TTI’s Mobility Analysis Program.

Source: 2012 Urban Mobility Report, Texas A&M Transportation Institute

In addition to the PTI, the 2012 UMR also debuts an estimate of the additional carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions attributed to traffic congestion: 56 billion pounds — about 380 pounds per auto commuter.

“Including CO₂ emissions in the UMR provides another dimension to the urban congestion problem,” explains co-author and TTI Associate Research Scientist David Schrank. “It points to the importance of implementing transportation improvements to reduce congestion.”

Researchers say that the most effective way to address traffic congestion varies from one urban area to another. In all cases, improving mobility requires a multifaceted approach that includes more efficient traffic management and public transportation combined with new construction. Travel options such as flexible work hours and telecommuting should also be part of the solution.

The current study includes 30 years of trend data TTI has used to measure and analyze traffic congestion and its impact on life in urban America. The report is the third prepared in partnership with INRIX, a leading private-sector provider of travel-time information for both commuters and shippers.

The 2012 Urban Mobility Report

The 2012 Urban Mobility Report continues to spark broad-based interest among newspaper, radio and television reporters. After the report was released on Feb. 4, nearly 1,700 newspapers, radio stations and television stations wrote or aired stories about the study, reaching an estimated 30 million people. Among the major newspapers covering the report were USA Today, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, with front-page coverage by the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightly News, National Public Radio, and various CBS radio and television spots provided prominent broadcast outlets.

The report also achieved a significant presence on social media via Facebook and Twitter with 800,000 estimated followers.

Until now, the best any city or agency could do would be to assess the results of such an event and then act, using a responsive approach. Advances in computer modeling, however, now make a proactive plan more possible, potentially giving planners the head start they need to minimize the public-safety and economic consequences of a disaster.

Researchers from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) are developing such a plan, using computer simulation and modeling to develop appropriate responses to a disaster scenario involving the collapse of the I-10/US 54 interchange combined with a closure of the Bridge of the Americas port of entry into Mexico. In this example of a worst-case scenario, researchers are determining both the short- and long-term impacts on the transportation system and how the disruptions would affect the regional economy.

“An extreme event will have an immediate impact on both commuter traffic and commercial traffic, and it will also have impacts months after the event happens,” says TTI Associate Research Scientist Jeff Shelton, who manages TTI’s El Paso Program. “We now have the ability to anticipate the impact of both the immediate and longer-term effects on both sides of the border, and that’s something we could not do before now.”

The research findings should make local agencies better able to:

• identify those areas that would be most adversely affected by traffic pattern changes,
• predict traffic pattern changes,
• pinpoint where corrections to existing traffic control, and demand management might be needed, and
• identify and recommend alternate routes to divert traffic from affected areas.

Apart from the mobility-related impacts, the researchers say, extreme events carry significant public-safety consequences, sometimes severely limiting how emergency vehicles can make their way to, from or through affected areas.

The research team is also doing an economic impact analysis to determine the financial costs associated with extreme events. Extensive traffic delays and lost productivity can cripple the supply chains that feed products to a vast network of manufacturers on both sides of the border, and the associated expenses add up quickly. In addition, several state and federal policy questions arise from such an event:

• Would toll rates at other ports of entry be relaxed during reconstruction?
• Would Customs and Border Protection increase agents at other bridges to alleviate the additional strain of vehicles shifting to other bridges?
• All construction projects must go through the environmental process — the Federal Highway Administration requires documentation for reconstruction under the National Environmental Policy Act. Due to the huge economic burden this event places on the economy, can the documentation process be expedited?

“The total amount of U.S.-Mexico trade is about $300 billion a year. Over $30 billion of that passes through El Paso,” says TTI Senior Research Scientist Rafael Aldrete, regional manager for TTI’s offices in San Antonio and El Paso. “So any disruption to that commercial activity would be massive. With a proactive plan, we are better able to minimize that disruption.”

The study is being funded by the Center for International Intelligent Transportation Research, with additional support from the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). MPO officials expect the research to provide insight and possible improvements to existing emergency response plans. In addition, they expect the results to improve the overall MPO planning process and the Horizon 2040 Metropolitan Plan now in development.

“Disasters typically happen with little or no warning, and the consequences can be catastrophic,” Shelton says. “The best that we can do is to be ready for anything. That’s a very lofty goal, but we’re a big step closer now.”

The current fuel-tax system essentially subsidizes travel by highly fuel-efficient vehicles and electric vehicles, because they pay less in fuel taxes or none at all.