Portland State Professor Miguel Figliozzi and graduate student Alex Bigazzi received the best paper award at the annual Transportation Research Forum (TRF) for their paper addressing the effects of heavy traffic and bottlenecking on congestion costs, including time, fuel and emissions. Both attended the annual forum and accepted the award in March in Long Beach, Calif.
The TRF is an organization that facilitates the exchange of transportation information between researchers and those in need of such research. Participants include researchers, government officials, consultants, carriers and suppliers. The forum addresses both passenger and freight transportation on national and international levels. Much of the exchange is done through papers submitted at meetings and the annual forum.
“It’s a great honor to have your paper selected,” B. Starr McMullen, former TRC president, said. “It was an excellent pool of candidates this year.”
McMullen, professor of economics at Oregon State University, is also an OTREC (Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium) researcher. OTREC is a collaboration between PSU, OSU and the University of Oregon that sponsors research, education and technology-related projects. The consortium sponsored research for Figliozzi and Bigazzi’s paper.
Figliozzi and Bigazzi’s paper, “A Model and Case Study of the Impacts of Stochastic Capacity on Freeway Traffic Flow Benefits and Costs,” acknowledges that heavy traffic flow lends itself to congestion and bottlenecking and is affected by even the smallest disturbances. Because these disturbances are difficult to quantify or apply in a formulaic manner, they are addressed in the paper as a “stochastic,” or random, unreliable variable.
Several types of urban traffic flows are accounted for in the paper: medium, large and very large urban areas. Sample cities ranged from Honolulu (medium) to Los Angeles (very large). Data was similarly applied to Portland metro-area freeway flows.
The paper presents a seemingly more realistic representation of traffic movement (because of these unreliabilities), according to Figliozzi.
Figliozzi and Bigazzi submitted the paper because a greater number of vehicles on the road makes the flow less stable, therefore limiting or controlling the number of vehicles that will actually make the entire transportation process more efficient by cutting down on time, fuel and emissions costs.
According to Figliozzi, simply adding more lanes will not remedy the problem. More vehicles would similarly reach another level of instability.
“If we can keep it out of the unstable,” Bigazzi said, “[we] can maximize [efficiency.]”
Figliozzi explained this concept with an analogy of a building fire: The quickest exit for all in the building is an orderly one, not simply a chaotic rush for the door (which only results in bottlenecking).
Figliozzi emphasized his recognition of and appreciation for the contributing work done by colleagues in the field.
According to Bigazzi, the paper is currently under review for publication in a journal. The actual application of the research is the next step after publication.
“[The paper can] inform a process of how we can improve our traffic management,” Bigazzi said.
Figliozzi agreed, adding that the paper is “a framework.”
“There is still the work of implementing it,” Figliozzi said. ?