Abstract

In August of 2015, pier settlement of the Wildcat Creek Bridge on I-65 N in Indiana required an unplanned diversion of a 37-mile stretch of the interstate along a 62 mile detour route for approximately 31 days. This stretch of interstate usually carries an Average Annual Daily Traffic of 24,000 vehicles, including about 9,500 trucks, and is an important connector between Indianapolis and Chicago.

The detour route had little existing ITS infrastructure to assist engineers with managing operations. To fill this information need, real-time crowdsourced probe vehicle data were used to create dashboards for use by INDOT engineers and public safety officials to monitor mobility and queueing on the 62-mile detour route. INDOT constructed three temporary signals, changed the operation of one flasher, installed 59 signs, deployed 15 message boards, and retimed the signals on US-231 to prioritize the detour traffic. Strong collaboration between INDOT, Purdue University researchers, and public safety officials allowed for anticipation of potential problems such as Purdue freshman move-in days.

This presentation described how a Purdue team assembled real-time dashboards to proactively identify congestion problems, as well as measure the impact of mitigation measures. After the interstate was reopened, the data show that it took about a week for the pre-detour traffic patterns to return to usual along the diversion corridor.

Bio

Dr. Darcy Bullock is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University and serves as the director of the Joint Transportation Research Program. Dr. Bullock is a Registered Professional Engineer in Indiana and has 25 years of experience in the industry working closely with vendors, state agencies, and USDOT, and colleagues at other universities.  His teaching, research and consulting interests have been in the general area of traffic engineering.  He received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Vermont, and a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Watch Dr. Bullock's Presentation