This report defines the transit service needs that can be met by use of lane assistance systems and the requirements that these systems must meet in order to be useful and safe. The work is based on review of the existing literature and research on the subject of lane assistance, combined with case studies of several transit properties that could potentially benefit from use of lane assist systems. The project team has conducted workshops involving participation by a broad mix of people representing the transit properties in order to learn about the needs that they perceive, as well as both benefits and risks that they perceive associated with use of lane assist technology. Because these transit properties are significantly different from each other, their needs are also diverse.

This final report describes the development and the initial field test of an automated snowblower, focusing on one of the more difficult snow removal operations: blowing snow off the freeway along side a guardrail without touching the guardrail. The objective is to minimize damage to the snowblower, guardrail, and other elements of the infrastructure by deploying highly accurate and robust automated steering. The automatic steering is accomplished by following magnets embedded under the roadway. The development process includes transforming this real-world automated highway winter maintenance operation into a control problem, modeling snowblower, designing control algorithms, devising human machine interface, instrumenting a 20-ton snowblower, and conducting demonstration and field tests. The modified snowblower was equipped with add-on sensors, actuator, computer and driver interfaces; the test site includes eightguardrail sections between Kingvale and Soda Springs on the shoulders of Interstate-80 in the Sierra Mountain region near Donner Summit in California, USA. The ride-alongand test data demonstrated that the prototype system achieved all initial performance goals, and very positive feedback was received from various stakeholders as well as the operators who tried it.

This report documents the development of a preliminary specification for a transit bus frontal collision warning system, based on a system engineering approach. The research efforts included: 1) a literature review, 2) detailed analyses of the five-year safety records of a group of California transit properties to identify the causes of their safety problems, 3) an in-depth data collection and analysis from instrumented buses serving San Mateo County, CA, and 4) development and testing of three generations of transit bus frontal collision warning systems, incorporating enhancements to meet the needs identified by the bus drivers using the prototype systems. The analyses of the safety records and the combination of video and engineering data from the instrumented buses provide a uniquely rich pool of data for diagnosing transit bus safety challenges. The prototype warning systems incorporated innovations in signal processing to ensure that warnings are issued with high reliability and low rates of false alerts. Finally, the results of this work led to the definition of a preliminary specification for a frontal collision warning system for subsequent field testing.

Based on the foundation of the frontal and side collision warning systems, the Frontal Collision Warning System (FCWS) and Side Collision Warning System (SCWS) teams joined efforts to improve the collision warning algorithms. The objective of the ICWS Program is to study how frontal and side collision warning system might interface with each other, and to develop prototype ICWS systems on two buses, one at Samtrans and the other at PAT. The prototype ICWS buses have been in revenue operation in the Bay Area and Pittsburgh to collect field operational data and driver responses. The results of the ICWS design, build, and integration efforts as well as an analysis of early data collections to evolve the warning algorithms are documented in this final technical report. Evaluation and performance analysis are currently being finalized and will be issued in a separate report.