View the February 2018 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is the Wyoming Interstate 80 Connected Vehicle Pilot Project.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
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Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
Today we'll have one presentation given jointly by:
Kate Hartman is currently serving as the Chief - Research, Evaluation and Program Management in the ITS Joint Program Office at the US DOT. She serves as the Program Manager for both the Connected Vehicle Pilot and Smart City Programs. She has a diverse background, including work as a marketing manager, financial researcher, a paralegal and serving in the Peace Corps. She has both a BA in Economics and an MBA as well as being a certified PMP.
Ali Ragan is a project manager for the Wyoming Department of Transportation's GIS/ITS program. She joined WYDOT in 2013 and has served as project manager on a number of projects including a Federal Highways Administration funded Weather Responsive Traffic Management project. She has a bachelor's degree from Colorado State University-Pueblo in mass communications and previously worked as a journalist.
Deepak Gopalakrishna is a Principal at ICF International with 18 years of experience in ITS, transportation systems management and operations (TSMO). He is the project management lead for the Wyoming Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program, one of the three selected CV Pilot sites. He currently also serves as an adjunct faculty in the Department of Geography at the George Washington University in Washington DC, where he teaches a junior- and senior-level class on Transportation Systems every fall semester.
Sheila Foertsch has been with the Wyoming Trucking Association, Inc. for 41 years, serving as their Managing Director for the past 24 years. She has served as the Chairman of the Western Trucking Association Executive Council, the Chairman of the national Trucking Association Executive Council and was a member of the Board of the American Transportation Research Institute. She is a current member of the Governor's Seat Belt Coalition and facilitates the Governor's Wyoming Transportation Safety Coalition. The Wyoming Trucking Association has 400 members, representing all types of motor carrier operations from the owner operator to national carriers, as well as allied members who serve the trucking industry.
I'll now turn it over to Kate Hartman of the USDOT ITS Joint Program Office to start us off.
Kate Hartman
Thank you, Jennifer. Welcome everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Talking Freight Seminar Series on the Wyoming I-80 Connected Vehicle Pilot Project. Today's agenda is going to do a brief overview of the USDOT pilot program and go into the Wyoming formation for submitting a project proposal and an overview of the project, including a system overview. We are lucky enough to have a state trucking perspective on this project.
The Connected Vehicle Deployment Program was the USDOT ITS Joint Program Office's attempt to spur connected vehicle deployment. We thought technology was ready and with a little boost we could get it done. We also thought by doing it in a coordinated, focused effort we could measure deployment benefits and be able to share those with others who were interested in deploying, as well as address some issues around technical, institutional, and financial challenges that would come up in deployment. We have been doing that in spades.
Currently, we have three sites that have been selected: New York, Tampa, and Wyoming. They are in Phase 2, the design test build phase. Phase 1 was completed. It was a planning phase. All of the documents from those sites are available at the website listed below. We intend to move into Phase 3, the operational maintenance of the pilot, late this spring and summer across the three sites.
As I said, the USDOT went out with an open announcement looking for deployment problems and possible solutions to solve them. We got an overwhelming number of responses and out of the group of bids we got we selected the three in New York, Tampa, and Wyoming. The Wyoming project is looking to reduce the number and severity of adverse weather incidents along the I-80 corridor. It's really focused on the needs of commercial vehicle operators in the state of Wyoming. When you hear more you will see how it affects more than the commercial operators, which is a good thing. The New York City DOT is focused on improving safety and mobility of travelers through vehicle technologies and focused on installing V2V, vehicle to vehicle, and V2I, vehicle to infrastructure, technology including packaged truck deliveries in downtown Manhattan and central Brooklyn. The Tampa project is on the Tampa Hillsboro Expressway and toll road entering into and out of Tampa. The focus of this project is to alleviate congestion and improve safety during commuting hours. Tampa is deploying a variety of technologies on and in the vicinity of these reversible express lanes and three major arterials in downtown Tampa. While they don't have freight or truck traffic specifically, they are deploying these technologies on buses as well as historical streetcars.
Just a slide to put the connected vehicle technology and the Wyoming project into context. The ICF project has been doing connected vehicle freight activities over the last few years. In particular, they were a small part of deployment in Ann Arbor in terms of having integrated trucks and retrofitted safety trucks participate in the deployment. This was an on-road test of vehicle to vehicle technology. Additionally, a more mobility related project that has been completed is something called FRATIS, the freight advanced traveler information system. That was a dynamic mobility bundle and looked to integrate information related to freight movement. Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, includes vehicle to vehicle research. So, the pilot was the next logical step for connected vehicles and freight. Now we will hear a little on the motivation for the Wyoming DOT to participate in this project.
Ali Ragan
Thank you. My name is Ali Ragan. I will give an overview of the Interstate 80 corridor through Wyoming. It runs along the southern border of Wyoming. It connects 402 miles from the Utah border to the Nebraska border. Every year more than 32 million tons of freight travel across the corridor. Typically, the volume is about 30 to 55 percent of the total traffic stream. Seasonally, that gets as high as 70 percent. If you can imagine, on a day with bad conditions, which happens regularly during winter, passenger vehicle traffic drivers can decide to stay home if the weather is not good and the roads aren't clear. They will say I will travel tomorrow. Freight traffic doesn't have the luxury of making that decision. Their job is to be on the road. They have to travel. That is why we get some of these seasonal peaks. I-80 across Wyoming is very high in elevation. Elevation never drops below 6000 feet across Wyoming and reaches a height of 8640 feet at the Sherman Summit which is between Cheyenne and Laramie.
Those factors can create a problem in the traffic stream. With heavy freight traffic it means there are a lot of trucks on the road and they are often traveling during severe weather conditions during our winter season, which we consider to be between October and May. The high elevation of the roadway combined with heavy wind, snow, and fog, there are severe weather events caused by blowing snow and low visibility. This shows the annual hours of blowing snow in the United States. You can see the purple area is concentrated in southern Wyoming right through the I-80 corridor. What this means for a truck is a higher than normal number of incidents on the roadway, multivehicle crashes, and fatalities.
For freight specifically, we see many truck crashes per year. This map shows the number of crashes over a one-year period. Most are property damage only, but a property damage only crash, doesn't mean it was a low impact crash. That can have a really big impact on not only the truck driver, but the company. We take all crashes seriously even if there was not an injury involved.
In addition, because of the severe weather conditions that come from blowing snow or heavy snowfall, there are a lot of road closures. During the winter of 2016, there were more than 250 hours of lane closures. In addition, we closed the roads to light, high profile vehicles for 180 hours. The closure delay for high profile vehicles happens when wind speeds reach a threshold that suggest a vehicle could blow over. Or they are put into place if a vehicle does blow over. That happens frequently during the winter.
Corridor-wide, this map shows that closures affect the entire corridor. It is not local to one area. Certainly some areas have more closures than others. Drivers on I-80 can expect that any portion of the road could close due to adverse weather conditions. There is not really a point where a truck driver can think to himself or herself if I've made it this far I will be able to make it through the rest of Wyoming. There is adverse weather across the entire 402 miles of I-80 and drivers can expect impacts at any point in the road.
To put it in perspective we have a couple videos we want to show. The first is a video of a truck crash on I-80. There was a Highway Patrol trooper stopped on the side of the road tending to one vehicle blow over. As they were at the site, they had dash cam video that showed from the front and the back and this is one of the vehicles that was captured by a trooper.
[Video Playing, no sound ]
It's a pretty dramatic video. You should know that there was not a trooper in the vehicle when the blow over happened. The trooper was not injured, and the driver of the truck did not sustain any injuries either. While that is not an incident that happens often, it is the second one that happened last winter. I think it was a few weeks before that crash an RV traveling down I-80 blew over on top of a trooper vehicle. It is not something that happens often but it does happen.
Another video we would like to show has shown a multivehicle crash on I-80. This happened right after we submitted our proposal. There was a crash and one lane of travel. Someone got out of her vehicle and she was reporting on herself. You can't really see off-camera, but in this particular area truck drivers were coming down a hill in low visibility conditions. The crash they encountered was at the bottom of the hill. We had speeds reduced to 45 miles per hour.
[Video Playing, sound of trucks crashing]
What you see is truck after truck entering this crash. We did have the speed reduced to 45 miles per hour. Although there were more than 60 vehicles involved in this crash there were no fatalities. It illustrates the problem that there is on I-80 with the reduced visibility and slick roads. It creates very dangerous conditions. We know drivers want to travel safely. What we really want to do is find a way to give drivers the information to help them make safe travel decisions when they need it.
The problem on I-80 isn't just a Wyoming problem. This map shows the origins and destinations of westbound traffic. You can see t trucks coming from all over the United States, coming from one area to another. There really is a lot that happens across I-80. It's not just something that affects drivers in Wyoming or the West.
We have a system called the Commercial Vehicle Operator Portal that was designed to give information to truck drivers to help them make travel decisions. It provides weather, road service, and forecast information in 12 hour increments up to 72 hours in advance. Additionally, we provide wind forecast information in three-hour increments. We worked with the trucking communities to develop a website and chose the 72 hour forecast because we understood that's how much time they needed to be able to make any changes. We have this website available. It is free but we require registration. Through this we hope to know where truck drivers are based. As you can see from the map, there are more trucking companies in Wyoming than any other state. Trucking firms across the United States are signing up to getting information about travel conditions. All but five states have a trucking company represented. We also have representatives from Canadian provinces. It really is not just an issue that affects truck drivers in Wyoming. It is an issue that affects the entire transportation network.
As we are working on this vehicle project, we have seen an increase in the numbers of people who are looking for interim travel information in Wyoming in general and on I-80 specifically. We have more than 800 firms subscribed to receive information from our portal. From the time we released our apps and the Wyoming 511 app in February 2016, we have had more than 100,000 downloads. In two years, more than 100,000 people have downloaded the app to get information about travel conditions.
With all of that in the background, we applied for the pilot because we wanted to have a way to be able to get better, more timely travel information to truck drivers so they could get the information when they needed it the most. We want to improve the road weather condition reports received so then the Transportation Management Center could more effectively disseminate that information. We want to do that through better alerts and advisories. We want to more efficiently manage road closures and restrictions. We want to send and receive messages from our Transportation Management Center to vehicles while they are on the road. We want to improve information we are giving to commercial vehicle state managers to the fleet managers so they can make better decisions about when to send trucks on the road. In addition, we want to do a better job of sending alerts to the vehicles. We want to be able to do that and sending and receiving vehicle to vehicle messages to try to reduce the number of crashes and crash severity and to improve emergency notification. In the end, what we are trying to achieve is improved speed adherence and speed variation on I-80, which will improve safety and reduce the number and severity of crashes.
We are doing this through a number of different ways. First is by deploying a connected vehicle environment. That includes installing 75 roadside units across I-80. That's the way that they will be able to send information from the management center to connected vehicles and then also be able to collect information from vehicles and send it back to a management center. There are 402 miles of I-80 in Wyoming. The 75 units will not provide complete coverage. We did a hotspot analysis where we looked at crash locations and weather conditions to determine where we should be to have the greatest effect so we can alert vehicles and send information before they get into these areas where we know they are at risk. In addition, we plan on having 400 vehicles outfitted with connectivity so they can communicate with other vehicles and communicate with WYDOT.
Using this technology, there are five applications that we deployed to be able to give information to drivers. The vehicle to vehicle applications are applications that run based on information sent vehicle to vehicle. They include a warning and distressed notification and our vehicle to infrastructure applications run based on information sent from WYDOT to the vehicle. This includes situational awareness, weather, and warnings. The way the pilot system will work is with the vehicle systems allowing the vehicles to communicate with each other. We plan on outfitting snowplows, highway patrol vehicles, and some private fleet vehicles. The vehicles will communicate with this technology with our second system, which includes the roadside infrastructure and the applications that run in our Transportation Management Center. They will be able to use those instances and have information on the road and be able to get information back from vehicles. In addition, we are working with Sirius XM, so in those areas where we don't have roadside units we can use their satellite network to send travel information messages to vehicles. That is a one-way system. We will not be able to use it to get information back from vehicles. But it will help bridge the gap in the areas where we don't have the coverage.
There are number of ways to participate. The first is to have connected vehicle technology installed. The second is to subscribe to the portal. Another is to ingest the WYDOT data feed to support any existing applications.
We are looking for about 150 to 200 commercial trucks to equip with our units. No personally identifiable information is collected. It is just a very basic amount of information. It runs on an android-based user interface. It has applications for speed warnings, forward collision warnings, and traveler information messages. We were looking for trucks that run frequently on I-80 at various times. Ideally their home bases are in Wyoming or nearby states. As part of the pilot we would provide the equipment to install and in return we would ask for access to drivers. We need the ability to train the drivers. We would like training to be in person at the University of Wyoming or online in virtual training. We also need access to send drivers surveys, so we can help determine the effectiveness of the pilot. We also need to be able to communicate with managers and find out how they use the information.
The other way is to subscribe to the portal. As I mentioned before, it covers the three interstates in Wyoming as well as some additional routes that have the heaviest truck traffic. The road weather impact is updated daily by a meteorologist and it's designed to give the worst case scenario so truck drivers know what to expect when they are on the road. Based on the information that we are getting we expect to be able to provide better and more granular forecasts then we are providing now. We recently did a survey and we found they use the information we are providing to help make their travel decisions.
The final way to participate is by ingesting the WYDOT data feed. We are setting up a feed so we can provide data directly with third-party developers that is based on traffic management dictionary standards written for the USDOT. It is intended for freight dispatchers to be able to get information from WYDOT and send it to their users. As the pilot progresses, we extract the data feed to include things based on the connected data.
We will now talk more about the connected vehicle system.
Deepak Gopalakrishna
Thank you. Before I get started on the system overview I want to thank the USDOT and WYDOT for their support. I want to acknowledge the team that has worked so hard on this. It has been a long 14 months getting from phase 1 where we did the planning, to get to our design of the system and as you will see we are fairly close to getting to the operational demonstration.
There are a couple of features that I need to mention. We wanted to make sure we showcased and used DSRC technology. We want to show how it would work in the context of a long 402-mile corridor and in a truck environment. As the needs of the project indicated, it was clear from early on that freight is the primary target for us. The pilot applications and the stakeholder engagement that were conducted all pointed to the need for enabling better freight movement but also making freight travel safer. The third element is that the pilot was integrated with the Transportation Management Center in Cheyenne. This is a center that manages the roadways including I-80 in the state of Wyoming. We wanted to make sure that the CV pilot was not a research effort but an operational deployment. To make it an operational deployment required us to understand how we can bring the CV data and environment into the legacy Transportation Management Center systems used by operators in a manner that is quite seamless on how CV data is used and consumed and transmitted back.
As a starting point in terms of getting CV equipment on vehicles, the WYDOT fleets are early movers. They are what you call a friendly fleet. In fact, as we speak, the devices are being installed on WYDOT's snowplows and patrol vehicles. They will be the first batch of the vehicles on the road. Once we have the WYDOT fleets set-up we will be moving to getting the rest of our 400 vehicles equipped working with private sector and partner fleets. We have several agreements with several local trucking firms already in terms of using our equipment on their vehicles.
Lastly one of the guidance and requirements from USDOT was to make sure this pilot is not a one off and it is sustained beyond the demonstration. We are looking at the financial implications and the business models that will sustain the pilot beyond the demonstration phase. In particular, what is required in terms of the equipment maintenance and the participation of the private sector especially around the security credentials management system.
We finished Phase 1 in September 2016. Phase 2 goes up to April 2018. It may run a little longer and be concurrent with Phase 3. We have an 18-month demonstration coming this year and going on to October 2019 where we will have about 400 vehicles running along I-80 receiving information from all their vehicles, as well as getting advisories. Today, we are in the system testing and acceptance phase.
What I will be spending the next 15 minutes or so on is to describe how the system would work from the truckers' standpoint. What are they expecting to see and do with respect to this pilot? There are two categories of applications that are enabled by this effort. The first one is what we are calling on-board applications. These are applications available to the vehicles (the vehicles that we equip with the technology). I will go through each of the applications. It is also important to know that the connected vehicle pilot is not just for the 400 vehicles we are installing the devices on. We anticipate the information coming into here will help with broader transportation system management, including how the TMC decides on its operational advisory control and treatment strategies, from setting speed limits to road closures to informing people of forecasted conditions and alerts. We see this pilot not only helping the vehicles that we are working with, but also all travelers in and out of Wyoming.
Each equipped vehicle has certain core capabilities. The first is the ability to share information. This is with other connected devices. This includes other vehicles that have been similarly equipped and roadside units. Roadside units are devices that were hung at various spots along I-80. Each of the vehicles, when we talk about sharing information, they are able to broadcast a basic safety message, which provides a heading and direction so it allows a vehicle to factor that information into its algorithms. Each vehicle is able to receive what's called a traveler information message. This is a packet of information that provides the onboard unit with information on road conditions both from what's upcoming or a more general situational awareness. All systems have what's called a human machine interface (or a tablet) that allows those alerts and advisories to be communicated. We have an onboard unit, and then we have a device that is a solution we are trying to run some applications on. It is also important to note that all of the onboard units also have a satellite receiver, which allows for them to receive alerts sent via satellite. That is very important for us. I don't think we have the budget or the interest to install a RSU so we can get full coverage on I-80. We see satellite communications as playing a very important role. Lastly for the WYDOT fleets we are installing additional environmental sensors. These sensors go on a snowplow on the windshield. They can collect and report weather conditions. This includes - precipitation, visibility, road temperatures, and a few other weather parameters that are used by the TMC to better inform forecasts.
Here is our onboard unit. We are working with Lear and Sirius XM. They not only share information each other but they also do broadcasting messages to the road side units. It connects to the weather sensors if they are available on the vehicle. The unit also stores and transmits event logs that we are collecting. Not shown is the antenna and the wiring required to make this onboard unit work.
This (the HMI) is what the driver will see. It is an android device. I think the graphic did not come through well when it transferred to PDF. But there is a top half of the screen, which is for alerts like what the current speed limits are and what critical warnings are and advisory warnings. In the bottom half are a distress notification button and setting button. The middle is the V2V information. This is an android based interface. Some companies may already have a tablet, otherwise we have our own we can install.
What applications are supported by this onboard unit and the user interface? As Ali said, there are five applications. I will walk you through each one of these so you have a more clear understanding of what they can and cannot do. The first one is what's called forward collision warning. The idea behind this application is that I-80 frequently has snowplows and some of the snowplows have a tandem plow they are using. They are slow moving and in low visibility situations we want to make sure a slow-moving vehicle can broadcast where they are so if a vehicle is approaching them they get a little bit of advance notice especially if they come too close to the WYDOT vehicle.
I will get to distress notification application later because that is one of our more complicated applications. On the right side, the three applications are all variants of getting travel information messages in the vehicle. One of the challenges that Wyoming DOT faces in their existing systems is the ability to get the message where it matters in terms of geographical specificity but also alerting the driver. All three of these applications try to get that message through to the driver. The situational awareness is more broad-based in terms of what's happening. This was a user need that was important because there is not a high density of services or truck parking distributed evenly along the corridor. You may need information on what is happening in the middle of I-80 corridor as you approach Rock Springs, which is on the western side. So situational awareness gives you a sense of if there are any issues you may need to react to right now, while you may not be in immediate danger.
The next one, work zone, is obvious. It's to alert a truck about work zone conditions, including what lanes are closed and what direction it is. Finally there is situational awareness to provide spot-specific, upcoming events like a wind advisory or ice on the road or a particular weather condition reported by the Wyoming fleets that can be transmitted to traveling vehicles.
Lastly, we have the Wyoming Trucking Association and our local stakeholders to thank for the distress notification app. As we were discussing what applications are of value to us, one thing that came up was the conditions we saw in the video when Ali was speaking. We saw a multivehicle crash that keeps going on and on. What can we do to minimize that severity? Maybe we cannot stop the first vehicle or first two vehicles, but can we prevent it from growing into a 60-car pile-up. One thing that came up as an idea and has been explored is this notion of distress notification. The simple concept is a vehicle on the bottom half of your screen generates a distress message, which can be manual or automatic, it is picked up by a vehicle traveling in the other direction and relayed to another vehicle that may be approaching the distressed vehicle can have advance warning. We've set up some parameters on how much distance should the vehicle broadcast in the opposite direction, but ultimately a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction would act as a beacon. Once it reaches an RSU it sends the notification straight back to the TMC.
These are the five applications we will provide on all of our vehicles. If you are a trucker with an Android device, these are alerts you are seeing pop-up as you drive on I-80. Let me run through a couple of scenarios to give you a sense of the level of integration between the Transportation Management Center and the CV vehicle. The first one is a work zone warning. In this case the TMC is the best source of this information. They know when work zones are planned and when they start. In the TMC an operator enters the work zone information. He sends that information to the system where there are services that translate this information into a message format that can be transmitted to the RSU. They can also decide which Roadside units we want the message to be transmitted to. Once that is done the backend services send out a packet for the message. That goes through the roadside units but also through our satellite services. So, then you can receive an alert. If you are by the RSU you would receive it when you pass by or if you are in a corridor where there is not a RSU you will receive it through satellite services.
The next application shows a more complex example of the next level of integration where we show data coming into the TMC being processed and used and sent back out. This is the spot weather warning applications. The sources of weather data available are the remote weather station that WYDOT maintains coverage. In addition, Several of the WYDOT fleets, will have the environmental sensors. They will provide data on the road conditions. As they drive by on I-80, they will be able to transmit the weather conditions to data messages. The RSU picks up the message and sends it back to the TMC where we have the system called the Pikalert system. Pikalert processes the probe data, WYDOT remote weather stations but also the National Weather Service models and other weather models to come up with alerts and advisories and also forecasts. Pikalert provides road-segment level road weather conditions and forecasts on I-80. Alerts from the Pikalert system goes directly into the backend services and in some cases, it goes in operator approval. Regardless, of the backend services do the same thing as before where they build the message in a format where it can be transferred and the messages are moved through the roadside unit as well as a satellite.
The integration allows us to use the same data collected for multiple applications. A lot of the information that comes out of the system will directly support a 511 travel information system. So these are benefits from the CV environment. We are also improving the commercial operator portal. It's the same one that Ali talked about. Initially, when we started this pilot at that time, the CV portal focused primarily on providing the forecast. Now with the CV data we have more current advisories, alerts, and information and other messages that may be useful to truckers as part of this effort. We have already talked about that. One of the things we want to do in the pilot is not just keep this in an isolated silo but also have this widely available to the traveling public, as well as to other institutional consumers. For example, the freight telematics industry, the third-party information service providers. Essentially this feed will provide all the CV data but also have other data not just on I 80 but for the entire state of Wyoming. Other things we are talking to is to figure out if any vendors that can use this information to provide this information on their applications and their onboard units as opposed to Wyoming having to provide them as well.
Lastly, I want to highlight this other piece that is being done as part of a pilot. That is the Wyoming 511 system updates. This has about 100,000 downloads. One of the improvements made as part of the pilot is the inclusion of the crowd-sourced truck parking availability feature. The idea is there are several truck parking locations on I-80. We want to make sure we have the ability for people to report on truck parking if it is reaching critical levels. We provide information on this, but we also allow the user to submit this if they are in the parking lot. All the information is geo-coded. This feature was just rolled out and it will be as part of this demonstration phase. We will be marketing this feature now so that people know this is available as part of the 511 app. As we get information on parking available that information can be shared back with our CV trucks. As they are driving by and approaching a truck parking area, information from this app can be sent back so they know if it's available or not.
That is the system overview. I didn't want to take up a lot of time going into some technical details. I did want to note that as part of our Phase 2, we have a slew of documentation coming out in the very near future. We are waiting for final approval but included in our documents coming out are the final system requirements that we used for our system, a complete system design document that includes how we designed the physical elements of the system, and also the algorithmic processes. We also have the interface control documents. They could be specific to the WYDOT TMC and how we interface. But I think it is useful for others to look at the complexity involved in interfacing CV technology to existing legacy systems. We are also updating the Phase 1 deliverables to make sure that we have gone back and made some corrections to some of our earlier plans. The USDOT has been good in making our documents available in a timely manner. You will also have a link at the end of the presentation to the CV Pilot Site. That's the best place for us to keep tabs on the documentation. With that, I want to turn it over to Sheila Foertsch from the Wyoming Trucking Association who has been our guiding light in terms of understanding what is needed for the trucking operations and freight community.
Sheila Foertsch
Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am pleased to be invited to participate in this webinar. The Wyoming Trucking Association has long had a very good working relationship with the Wyoming Department of Transportation at all levels and the Wyoming Highway Patrol. I think what you see here is just an extension of that working relationship. As all of the speakers have indicated, the safety of truck travel in Wyoming is critical. It's critical from WYDOT's perspective and also the trucking industry perspective. No accident is something that a carrier welcomes. We do not want to see fatalities on the road whether it is our employee or a person in a passenger vehicle. This effort to make I-80 and the corridor more safe is absolutely critical for the trucking industry to be involved in.
As Ali explained, the conditions of I-80 from border to border makes it a challenge for drivers on that corridor. The elevation and changing weather from border to border. You can start out in Nebraska and have clear weather and halfway through you are in a storm where you can't see anything. If we can advise truck drivers in real time what they are going to see on that corridor, this will impact the entire freight system.
The videos you saw are dramatic and disturbing from the trucking industry perspective. We know when the public sees those types of accidents happening whether they see them because they are involved or see them on the media, that kind of perception drives public policy. We understand that. We need to make an effort to keep our drivers safe and keep the corridor safe so we can lessen the impact of the perception of truck driving. We have been long supporters of the commercial vehicle portal and the 511 system. In fact, we have worked hand-in-hand developing those systems. They brought that information to us. I think our members have been a vital partner helping to determine what information is necessary to make those decisions on whether to go ahead with a planned trip or to delay that trip or to let the driver make that call once he gets on the highway.
One of the important parts of this connected vehicle program is that it will be so broad-based that we will continue to improve those systems and the commercial vehicle portal. I think it's imperative that that information, while Wyoming carriers depend on it and are high users of those systems, we see it branching out into the other states that are driving through the state of Wyoming. That is important. The corridor is used heavily by out-of-state carriers. It's important that information is accurate and timely and easily accessible by the carriers. That portal is accessible.
We also work as a facilitator for a transportation safety system. That coalition has been highly supportive of this connected vehicle program. We see that as an effort that if we cannot prevent some of the crashes from happening, at least we can reduce the severity of the crashes. That is a very important factor when we look at workplace safety for the drivers who are on the road. Our collaboration has been from day one. When we were approached by WYDOT to support this project, we were able to have carriers on the road giving information about what they need to know when they are on the road. WYDOT has been very receptive to that information. I think that is obvious with the direction that a lot of this is going, and the type of information they provide to those carriers, whether it be in the cab of the vehicle or whether it be broadly based out through 511 and the CV portal. I appreciate the sensitivity to not bombard a driver with too much information and provide them just more graphics than written information. We want to keep our drivers safe. We urge them not to use a lot of things that will make them have distracted driving problems and this effort has been highly supportive.
We are excited about the program. We were able to connect WYDOT with a lot of members who travel I-80 regularly. Those are some of the carriers participating. We recognize there were a lot of carriers in other states that are not necessarily members of the Wyoming Trucking Association but they use the corridor heavily. We were able to do that outreach and connect WYDOT with the trucking associations in the surrounding states, and states we identified as having domicile carriers. We bridged that gap in order to help WYDOT get as many carriers involved as possible. We know we want to have a range of carriers holding different commodities and using the corridor at different times so we can get the best information possible out there.
The road closures are a big impact on the industry itself. Not only the industry but places that they deliver. Anytime there is a road closure, that radiates out throughout the nation, trying to get the freight moved. If we can prevent an accident from happening that turns into a road closure, I think that's another win for this process.
We are extremely supportive. We are appreciative of the efforts to make sure that this addresses the type of information carriers need and that truckers need and the drivers need. We commend WYDOT on being sensitive to that issue and listening to the input we have given to the pilot program so far. We are excited about the program going forward, and looking forward to the information once the pilot program is over. Jennifer, I will turn it back over to Ali to continue.
Ali Ragan
Thank you, Sheila. The contact information for all of us is available on this screen. If you have questions about the pilot please feel free to send me an email. You can also learn more about our pilot at the website. The website has basic information on the pilot, as well as some infographics that explain in more detail about how the connected vehicle technology works, and what we plan to have on the roadway.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. I think that is all we have for the presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session. We do have a few questions that were typed into the chat pod. I will start with the questions typed in. I encourage you to continue typing questions and if we get through the questions typed in we can open up the phones as well.
Are there any thoughts about including weigh-in-motion to your system? During a wind event, an 80K pound truck might be okay to travel but an empty truck would be advised not to travel
Ali Ragan
That's a very good question. We decided not to use the weigh in motion as part of the pilot program. It's more than just the weight but it also has to do with the distribution inside the vehicle or the shape of the vehicle. For example, an oil tanker is less likely to blow over than a traditional box trailer. Weight is certainly an important factor in determining the likelihood of a truck blowing over but it's not the only one. We are not using that particular measure. One thing we do is we factor in weight. We ask them to input their weight on the HMI. But it is just one of the factors. Initially, when we conceptualized this we did think about this but we ended up deciding not to use it. It is something that as the system develops if we get more information on the research it may be something we can do.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question. Can you provide a quick overview of the number of WYDOT employees and consultants involved in the project?
Ali Ragan
That's tricky. Certainly, WYDOT employees were involved at different levels. There are probably eight or so involved with system development and installation. There may be even more than that when you consider installing equipment on the roadside, there will also be all of the drivers if you want to include those. There could be 100 WYDOT employees involved in the pilot. I'm not exactly sure how to quantify it from the employee perspective. I think that Deepak kind of gave an overview about the different contractors we are working on. You may ask Deepak for his perspective on this question.
Deepak Gopalakrishna
Sure. One of the interesting things for us is as we put this together was how many different groups within WYDOT have to be involved. We have seen folks from the IT, GIS, TMC, maintenance shop, Highway Patrol. Not only could it be hundreds of WYDOT employees, but it seems to be from various different parts. So, this has been critical and WYDOT has been the lead and they are ones pulling all of this on the field. They are also making sure that snowplow devices are installed.
In the private sector we have the CV vendors. We are using three vendors, they are for the bulk of our onboard units and the weather cloud, which is for environmental sensing. Those are the vendors. In addition, we have a development team that includes ICF. And then we have the University of Wyoming and the National Center for Research and we have consultants. It's a big team involved in bringing these concepts from planning to design.
Kate Hartman
This is Kate Hartman. I want to add that it's not just the people touching and coding and fixing things. There's been a very high level of senior management support within WYDOT. They are not working on this day by day but they are interested, engaged, aware, and supportive. If you were thinking about doing this type of deployment, it is huge to get that kind of support from senior management.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. The next question what company manufactured the DSRC equipment?
Deepak Gopalakrishna
We are using two vendors, Leer and Sirius XM.
Jennifer Symoun
For the pilot, WY was looking for 150 to 200 commercial trucks, were they all multiple companies or generally just a few larger companies? How many have signed up so far?
Ali Ragan
We're looking at a number of different trucking companies. It's not just a few large ones. Sheila mentioned this when she talked but we are looking for a broad range. Right now, we have about half a dozen trucking companies that have signed MOUs. We are still actively recruiting to get more trucking companies.
Deepak Gopalakrishna
These companies range in size and function. The commonality is they are all frequent users of I-80. I think most of them are in Wyoming or nearby states. Across all of them would we say we have about 60 or 70 that are confirmed and several others we are waiting for the MOU to be signed?
Ali Ragain
Yes, that is correct.
Jennifer Symoun
What data will be collected and measured to evaluate and improve the program?
Kate Hartman
That is a big part of why USDOT is involved, to have in independent evaluation being managed by the Texas Transportation Institute. We have a huge data management plan where a lot of that data is being collected for the evaluation. Additionally, Wyoming is a first information real-time data feed. I will put a link into the chat box. There will be actual, and there is right now, some current data coming out of the project that is available for anyone to use. It has been sanitized. There is no PII or business sensitive information in there. But it is transportation data that we hope researchers and people looking to improve the transportation network can use. If there is data to be had we are probably collecting it in some form or fashion. I know the poor Wyoming team feels like we are asking them to create data for us but it is a fairly data intensive project because we think that is how you prove this actually works.
Deepak Gopalakrishna
The question is really important. It actually has had a significant influence on what we are designing. The previous efforts have had the luxury of being in an R&D mode so the had the luxury of being able to set up big data acquisition boxes. When you collect the data once in a while they will come in and pull the data back and do analysis. As we move to a more operational setting, we have really had to think about what can we collect that will be indicative of the CV performance while not requiring trucks to come back to WYDOT shops to pick up on the data acquisition systems. We have this concept of event logs that will really take snippets and snapshots of V2V and V2I infrastructure that are recorded and shared. That will be the primary data point that will enable us to see if the V2V and V2I applications are useful. In addition, there will be VSM data, other nonsystem data including things like the road condition, RWIS data, speeds and variable speed limit locations. There's a lot of data. All of it is being collected and all of it will be shared with the IE, the independent evaluator and a large subset of those will also be made available to the public through the ITS public data hub. We have been required to work with a data collaborative mindset. I think the Wyoming DOT is really on board with that. And we already started sharing this through the ITS public data hub.
Ali Ragan
I would just like to reiterate that through the connected vehicle system, we are not sending any personally identifiable information.
Jennifer Symoun
The next question is, is there any automatic incident detection system incorporated in the pilot? Or how to detect an incident before transmitting warning signals?
Deepak Gopalakrishna
I assume the question is about the advance notification app. If you are looking at the I-80 quarter as a whole, the primary sort of incident detection approach is through the TMC and the camera images and patrol vehicles, the eyes on the road that Wyoming has. They have really good coverage on I 80 that allows them. The Iowa Highway Patrol is co-located with the dispatch. There are pretty good eyes on I-80. At the vehicle level if you are talking about airbag deployment, at this point the applications can use it. As part of the pilot, we haven't integrated vehicle-level incident detection, like airbag deployment, yet into the application.
Jennifer Symoun
Would some of CV applications developed in this CV Pilot be available for other deployers?
Deepak Gopalakrishna
Absolutely. Parts of the applications and that efforts have been dealt with as part of the pilot are open source and will be made available through the ITS JPO software collaboration. That is one of the requirements of the effort. It is possible that certain aspects from a vendor standpoint might be developed before and in that case, it may not be available. In large part the things we have developed as part of the CV pilotwill be made available.
Kate Hartman
I just posted a link to our OSADP where government paid for code developed on projects is required to be posted. Stay tuned. There is an effort underway to bring that into the 21st-century, but there is code available there if it was developed with federal funding.
Jennifer Symoun
Have other state DOTs and/or other carriers expressed interest in getting involved in or expanding this project in some way after the pilot is completed?
Ali Ragan
We got a lot of interest in other states. We regularly talk with other states about we are doing and how we are implementing the project in Wyoming. We have a very good working relationship with neighboring states, specifically we have talked with Utah and Nebraska about the potential for expanding any sort of system on I-80 outside of Wyoming's borders. But, we haven't gotten into a lot of specifics or details about that. There are no firm plans to do it, but it is definitely a conversation we have had.
Kate Hartman
The input from USDOT has been encouraging.
Deepak Gopalakrishna
From the private sector standpoint, I think it is a little early. Hopefully the pilot will show how agencies and how private sector can benefit from this technology. There's a lot of effort in terms of figuring out the business models that need to happen from the private sector. Part of the pilot is to showcase the value of this information being sent to truckers at the right time in their journeys so they can help improve their decision-making and also be safe in terms of upcoming driving conditions. Hopefully, this will be a proof point in enabling more adoption of technology by private sector carriers.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. I don't see any additional questions. We have about 10 minutes left. Let's see if anyone wants to ask a question on the phone. If you are on the phone and you want to ask a question press * five. We will give a few seconds to see if anyone has any questions on the phone.
While we are waiting if you think of anything else you want to type in feel free to do that.
Another question for all presenters. How beneficial for the trucking industry would this kind of project be if it were also implemented on parallel corridors (I-70, I-40, I-90/94) in states north and south of Wyoming?
Ali Ragan
I think it would be a wonderful idea because it gives carriers a choice to determine what kind of route they want to follow depending on weather conditions or if there are other incidents happening in those other corridors. I think that would be a wonderful expansion of the project, and would certainly be helpful to the trucking industry in general.
Deepak Gopalakrishna
I think some of this is also occurring on I-70, Colorado is pushing for this sort of technology on that corridor, and other corridors are also looking at. I think it's interesting if we look at these large, statewide corridors, there may be real value in these technologies, at least in some of the urban areas. I think there is a lot of interest by a lot of states to look at some of these quarters not just from a freight standpoint, but also from a road weather management standpoint. I think it is progressing and hopefully it will continue to do so.
Jennifer Symoun
We don't have any other questions typed in and I don't see any questions on the phone. We will end early. In the meantime, if anyone thinks of anything, feel free to type them in. I do want to thank all the presenters for presenting. Thank you everyone in attendance for attending. The recording will be available online in the next few weeks. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website. Information will be sent soon about the January Talking Freight seminar. The Freight Planning LISTSERV is the primary means of sharing information about upcoming seminars. I encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
