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July 2008
Special Research Conference Issue: Concurrent Sessions
University involved in Minnesota UPA project
The University is contributing to the Minnesota Urban Partnership Agreement (UPA) in several ways.
Robert Johns, CTS director, represents CTS on Minnesota’s UPA steering committee, which meets monthly. Lee Munnich, director of the State and Local Policy Program at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, is a member of the evaluation team, led by Battelle. Munnich and Gina Baas, CTS communications and outreach director, serve on the project communications committee. CTS and the Humphrey Institute are also planning outreach activities to share lessons learned from the project.
On the research side, two labs of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Institute, which is housed at CTS, will lend their expertise to the effort. The Intelligent Vehicles Lab, led by Craig Shankwitz, will deploy lane-guidance technology on 10 Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA) buses. The system will help drivers navigate narrow shoulder lanes on Cedar Avenue, the Crosstown Freeway, and I-35W, both into and out of downtown Minneapolis. The IV Lab developed and tested the technology in earlier research for Metro Transit. “This project represents the first time that a comprehensive technologybased lane-assist system will be put into operational service,” Shankwitz says.
The HumanFIRST Program, led by Mike Manser, will help the MVTA procure and prepare a driver training simulator and develop the training protocol. Because lane assistance represents a significant change for bus drivers and because of the short deployment timeline, the simulation approach was chosen to guarantee a pool of trained drivers when the system goes live on September 30, 2009. The IV Lab will optimize the driver interfaces based on driver experiences gained during both the simulator and on-road training sessions identified by the HumanFIRST Program.
Another research element is a study of the telecommuting component by Adeel Lari, research associate with the Humphrey Institute (see related article).