California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

This report summarizes a comprehensive research project directed toward the development and implementation of an Advanced Transportation Management and Information System (ATMIS) as part of the Caltrans Advanced ATMIS Testbed Program at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Irvine. The primary goal of this project was to implement this prototype ATMIS, designated TRICEPS (Testbed Realtime Integrated Control and Evaluation Prototype System), in the Irvine sub-area of the Advanced Testbed network. This sub-area represents a well-defined freeway corridor with a parallel major arterial alternative where traffic demand is predominantly along the corridor. This area, previously selected as the site for the federally-funded Irvine Field Operational Test to evaluate a centrally-controlled freeway/arterial corridor, thus provided an ideal environment in which to conduct the enhancements to and implementation of TRICEPS. The TRICEPS architecture allows for the introduction of a wide range of control and management capabilities; however, the focus of the initial implementation is the development and implementation of CARTESIUS, a real-time, multi-agent decision support system which integrates real-time control and simulation elements. The report provides background information on the genesis of TRICEPS, an overview of each of its major components and of the system architecture, the results of a system evaluation study, and a sample application of the model system.