California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority/California Department of Transportation/California Highway Patrol Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) program is the largest in the nation, operating 144 service vehicles on 40 beats covering393 center-line freeway miles in Los Angeles County. The Caltrans District 7 Transportation Management Center (TMC) exercises FSP fleet control via the California Highway Patrol Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. Each freeway service patrol truck is equipped with a Mobile Data Terminal (MDT), polled by the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system.  The system includes a Transportation Management Solutions Incorporated (TMSI, now Orbital TMSI) Geo-Position System (GPS) that can identify transponder locations to within 100 feet.  There is potential for using the GPS and/or the AVL information to determine FSP truck speeds automatically because field units are polled frequently, and GPS locations are sufficiently accurate. This research assesses the feasibility of using existing FSP trucks as probe vehicles for measuring level of service on Los Angeles freeways.  If the information FSP trucks provide in Los Angeles is of sufficient quality and quantity to measure level of service on the network, then FSP trucks (or other similarly-equipped fleets) would also be useful for measuring LOS in other Caltrans Districts, especially those with relatively fewer loop detectors than Caltrans District 7.