Dynamic Vehicle to Infrastructure TCIP Communications Laboratory Proof of Concept

Transit agencies in the US use four primary communications mechanisms to dispatch, monitor and manage the operations of their mobile assets: private radio systems, Wi-Fi communications, cellular communications, and track circuits and signaling. Most data communications in the transit industry today are still based on vendor proprietary communications protocols and messaging.

This limits agency choices when procuring new systems and often leads to agencies experiencing vendor lock-in where an incumbent vendor has significant control over the agency’s ability to procure new systems. This limits agency choices when procuring new systems and often leads to agencies experiencing vendor lock-in where an incumbent vendor has significant control over the agency’s ability to procure new systems.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Transit IDEA Final Report 89: Dynamic Vehicle to Infrastructure TCIP Communications Laboratory Proof of Concept brings together the capabilities of two long-running industry and government initiatives to bring benefits to the transportation industry: Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and TCIP. Upon completion, this project will integrate TCIP messaging over DSRC and cellular communications with the ability to switch between the two communication mechanisms.