Reliability

Reliability research in SHRP 2 focuses on reducing congestion through incident reduction, management, response, and mitigation. Achieving this goal will significantly improve travel time reliability for both people and freight. Projects that comprise the SHRP 2 Reliability Research Plan are shown in the Projects database, which is organized by project number. Click the project number for a description of the expected project activity.

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Pilot Testing of SHRP 2 Reliability Analytical Products
Conferences
Publications
Webinars
Videos

Pilot Testing of SHRP 2 Reliability Analytical Products

Supporting Information for Project L38, Pilot Testing of SHRP 2 Reliability Analytical Products
Posted October 23, 2012

Proposals for project L38, Pilot Testing of SHRP 2 Reliability Analytical Products, were due on October 23. This project sought teams consisting of public agencies either alone or in combinations with universities or consulting firms to test the analytical products developed by SHRP 2 Reliability that are concerned with (1) gathering and analyzing data to understand the variability of travel time and diagnose the causes of nonrecurring congestion; (2) identifying and analyzing actions for mitigating the unreliability of travel time; and (3) demonstrating how such data and analysis can be used to sort out the best actions of a plan (such as a long range plan or corridor plan) or set funding priorities of a subprogram or subset of a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP).

This page contains supporting information for project L38; feel free to review the material included in it. If you have any questions, contact Stephen Andrle, Deputy Director of SHRP 2, at sandrle@nas.edu or 202-334-2810.

Conferences

The Value of Travel Time Reliability, Meeting Session, July 12, 2011
Posted March 14, 2012

This session at the 2011 TRB Annual Summer Meeting in Boston featured three presentations on valuing travel time reliability. One concerns brief findings based on studies in numerous countries. Another concerns how various factors, reflected in travel models, affect travel demand, including the influence of reliability and its value relative to the value of travel time. The third concerns the value of rail freight reliability. The agenda and presentations are available on the following page.

Presentations: Travel Time Reliability—World View and SHRP 2
International Meeting, Jointly Organized by the International Transport Forum's Research Centre and SHRP 2
Posted May 20, 2011

In January 2011, SHRP 2 and the Joint Transportation Research Centre (JTRC) of the International Transport Forum (ITF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) cosponsored an international meeting on travel time reliability. This meeting was designed to bring together researchers and decision makers to examine recent research results both internationally and in the SHRP 2 Reliability focus area. The meeting began with the presentation of basic concepts of reliability, including definitions and performance measures. Sessions addressed both passenger and freight reliability, provided examples and case studies from countries around the world, described the progress that has been made in imputing economic value to travel time reliability and incorporating such values in the benefit–cost analysis, and compared and contrasted the methods of interim and final findings from the SHRP 2 Reliability research program and the JTRC’s study on reliability of surface transportation networks. The agenda and presentations from this meeting are available on the following page.

Presentations from Value of Travel Time Reliability and Cost-Benefit Analysis Conference
October 15–16, 2009, Vancouver, Canada
Posted February 24, 2011

In October 2009, SHRP 2 and the Joint Transport Research Centre co-hosted an international meeting: Value of Travel Time Reliability and Cost-Benefit Analysis. The meeting brought together researchers and decision makers to examine recent research results and experiences on reliability measurement, valuation, and, in particular, to explore successful practices in integrating reliability into cost-benefit analysis. The meeting focused on identifying methodologies for incorporating reliability into transportation project evaluation and explored the pitfalls that need to be avoided. Presentations from the meeting can be found on the following page.

Posters from 2009 TRB Annual Meeting
Posted February 26, 2009

If you missed the SHRP 2 Reliability poster session at the 2009 TRB Annual Meeting or would simply like another look, you can now find the posters online in PDF format, accompanied by a brief explanation of each poster. Posters were presented by SHRP 2 staff and contractors for active projects.

Publications

Train-the-Trainer Pilot Courses for Incident Responders and Managers (*SHRP 2 Prepublication Report)
Posted May 14, 2013

Traffic incidents account for up to 25% of all congestion and 40% of nonrecurring congestion. Improving traffic incident management (TIM) practices offers regions a highly cost-effective and sustainable opportunity to improve the reliability of their roadways. SHRP 2 Project L12 (Improving Traffic Incident Scene Management) developed one of the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, peer-validated national incident responder training curricula and materials for use by TIM programs in jurisdictions large and small across the country. To build on this research, SHRP 2 Project L32A (Train-the-Trainer Pilot Courses for Incident Responders and Managers) validated and improved the national TIM training program by training nearly 200 new TIM responders in four states. The final report for project L32A documents these activities.

* To make research available as early as possible, SHRP 2 is temporarily posting final reports that have been submitted by the research team, reviewed according to the relevant National Academy of Sciences procedures, and accepted for publication. These prepublication drafts, which have not been edited or formatted for publication, will be replaced by the final versions as they complete the editorial process.

Technical Summaries Collection for SHRP 2 Reliability Products
Posted November 16, 2012

Our 4-8 page Project Briefs summarize the issues addressed in a research project, describe the approach to meeting the research objective, and introduce the resulting products. These technical summaries will be published for every SHRP 2 project as the final reports are accepted for publication. The four existing Project Briefs for SHRP 2 Reliability research have been collected in the following PDF. Project Briefs are available on the Publications page of the SHRP 2 website.

Older publications are available on the SHRP 2 Publications page.

Webinars

Recorded webinars are available on the SHRP 2 Webinar page.

Videos

Video: Demonstration of Automatic Crowd-Metrics Measurement Technology at the Sakura Matsuri 2012 Festival
Posted January 23, 2013

Travel time reliability—which is increasingly important to highways, arterials, transit, and air travel—is also important to pedestrians. When managing large crowds, performance measures relating to volume, density, and trajectory of pedestrians (crowd metrics) are essential. PRISM (PRoximity Information System for Mobility), which was developed in SHRP 2 Reliability IDEA Project L15B (Proximity Information Resources for Special Events), gives event organizers the ability to automatically measure crowd metrics. PRISM uses detectors that sense Bluetooth devices, such as cell phones, to identify the location of pedestrians. Software is then used to aggregate this data with data from Twitter and FlickR, and display the size, movement, directionality, and density of crowds in near real time. The potential uses for these crowd metrics include emergency management and deployment of event staff. This video showcases a demonstration of PRISM at the Sakura Matsuri 2012 Festival in Washington, D.C., which was conducted in cooperation with event organizer, the Japan-American Society.

Older videos are available on the SHRP 2 in Motion page.