sUAS-based GeoINTEL1 for Commuter Rail Parking in Rural and Suburban Areas

Commuter rail services bring travelers from the rural and suburban fringes to the inner neighborhoods and central business districts of many large metropolitan areas in the U.S. The isolated nature of these rural and suburban commuter rail parking lots makes it difficult and expensive to secure and safely operate these transit assets.

Further, as the more than two dozen commuter rail systems in the U.S. try to avoid cash payments for fares and parking fees, they must embrace consumer-friendly options and mobile phone-based payment systems. These fare systems are not standardized and are not easily integrated into large databases for “big data” analysis. This situation makes the validation of commuter rail parking payments labor-intensive and difficult, increasing the potential for systemic fraud and abuse.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Transit IDEA Final Report 90: sUAS-based GeoINTEL1 for Commuter Rail Parking in Rural and Suburban Areas seeks to develop, and field test a prototype of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) and geospatial intelligence (GeoINTEL) technology in a “living lab” to enhance the safety, security, and validation of parking revenue at small urban and rural commuter rail parking areas.