PPMS Project

Fast Track: Allowing Bikes To Participate In A Smart-Transportation System

Principal Investigator:

Stephen Fickas, University of Oregon

Co-Investigators:

Marc Schlossberg, University of Oregon

Summary:

This project focuses on a mode of transportation that is currently left out of V2X (vehicle-to-everything) conversations: bicycling. The project demonstrates how university researchers, city traffic engineers, and signal-controller manufacturers can come together to give bicyclists the same technology appearing on modern vehicles: Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA). GLOSA allows motorist... This project focuses on a mode of transportation that is currently left out of V2X (vehicle-to-everything) conversations: bicycling. The project demonstrates how university researchers, city traffic engineers, and signal-controller manufacturers can come together to give bicyclists the same technology appearing on modern vehicles: Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA). GLOSA allows motorists to set their speed along corridors to maximize their chances of catching a “green wave” (i.e., not being forced to stop as they travel through the corridor). This project demonstrates how GLOSA can be used by bicyclists in the same way it is used by motorists on a busy car and bike corridor feeding the UO campus. The project attempts to answer two questions: (1) Can we convey GLOSA information to a phone carried by a bicyclist? (2) Can we present that information in an effective, reasonable and safe manner using the interfaces available on the phone? For the former, we discuss our approach to combining (a) information provided by the city’s traffic office in terms of signal timing-tables with that of (b) a real-time traffic feed from the McCain Transparity server. We discuss a system architecture that we developed to use the real-time feed to keep an up-to-date view of signal state (current phase and its start time). However, if the feed was lost, the system continued to operate with its last known state information, potentially obtained by signal reset by the main office. Our system architecture, and the app that employs it, uses the phone GPS and accelerometer sensors to keep an accurate view of the rider’s location, direction and speed. For our second question, we describe an app we developed and a set of trials we ran to test it. Our overall results are positive. Testing revealed that our GLOSA-based app was effective, reasonable and safe on our test site. As of July 2019, the system remains in beta testing with the goal to make it available to the public during the coming 12 months. Please contact Stephen Fickas (fickas@cs.uoregon.edu) for more information. See More

Project Details

Project Type:	Research
Project Status:	Completed
End Date:	June 30, 2019
UTC Funding:	$130,000

Downloadable Products

Project video intro (web-based) (WEBSITE)
Fast Track: Allowing Bikes to Participate in a Smart Transportation System (FINAL_REPORT)
Riding the Green Wave: Researchers Test "Green Light Optimized Speed" App for Bicyclists (PROJECT_BRIEF)