University of Michigan wins Transportation Technology Tournament

A team from the University of Michigan has won the Transportation Technology Tournament for designing a solution to reduce congestion on two interstate highways in the Detroit area. The team presented their solution, Corridor Management in the I-75/I-696 Influence Area, to a panel of judges during a tournament which took place during the Institute of Transportation Engineers annual meeting in Austin, Texas. It focused on mitigating heavy, peak hour traffic volume on I-75 between Detroit and Troy, as
July 25, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
A team from the 5594 University of Michigan has won the Transportation Technology Tournament for designing a solution to reduce congestion on two interstate highways in the Detroit area.


The team presented their solution, Corridor Management in the I-75/I-696 Influence Area, to a panel of judges during a tournament which took place during the 5667 Institute of Transportation Engineers annual meeting in Austin, Texas.

It focused on mitigating heavy, peak hour traffic volume on I-75 between Detroit and Troy, as well as on the east and westbound I-696 in the Detroit suburbs. The proposal included a supply focused solution for managing the flow of vehicles and a demand focused solution for reducing car trips by using shuttles and car-pooling to the area’s major employers, such as 948 General Motors and 1958 Chrysler.  

The annual Transportation Technology Tournament stems from a partnership between the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE) and the US Department of Transportation.

Patrick Son, NOCoE’s managing director said the students developed practical solutions to a problem that has “stalled Southeast Michigan for decades”.

“There is virtually no room to add capacity, yet the team came up with a suite of ideas that involved TSMO and Intelligent Transportation strategies to create a low cost, workable solution,” he added.

Aside from the University of Michigan, the other finalists were the Florida International University, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and two teams from the University of South Florida.

UTC

Related Content

  • July 11, 2018
    Cost benefit: Toronto retimings tame traffic trauma
    Canada’s largest city reckons that it is saving its taxpayers’ money simply by altering the way traffic lights work. David Crawford reviews Toronto’s ambitious plans to ease congestion. Toronto, Canada’s largest metropolis (and the fourth largest in North America), has saved its residents CAN$53 (US$42.4) for every CAN$1 (US$0.80) spent over a 2012-2016 traffic signal retiming programme, according to figures released by its Transportation Services Division. The programme covered 1,275 signals (the city’s to
    Read More
  • December 5, 2017
    New Mersey crossing ends Halton’s congestion misery
    Plagued by intolerable congestion but denied government funding for its solution, tiny Halton Borough Council relentlessly pursued its vision and achieved what many believed impossible. Halton may be a small local authority in north west England, but it had a big traffic problem. However, as the road, or more particularly the bridge, involved was not deemed a strategic route, central government would not commission or even fund a solution - a problem that many other local authorities will recognise.
    Read More
  • January 11, 2017
    Kapsch outlines tolling options to combat traffic congestion
    Michael Maitland from Kapsch TrafficCom looks at how the various forms of tolling can help authorities combat traffic congestion and air quality problems while simultaneously raising revenue.
    Read More
  • November 15, 2017
    TM 2.0 boost TMC data feed and driver influence
    TM 2.0 views connected vehicles and V2I as two-way communications channels, benefitting traffic management and drivers, as Alan Dron discovers. As connected vehicles are progressively rolled out there will come a point at which traffic managers and traffic management centres (TMCs) will have to gear up to cope with a rapidly-evolving road scenario. The TM 2.0 Platform (see box) is promoting a concept of new-generation traffic management (which carries the same TM 2.0 title) and is studying how future T
    Read More

Highlighted Content