Safety, Operations, and Traffic Engineering Team

About the team:

The Safety, Operations, and Traffic Engineering (SOTE) Team works to enhance the safety and efficiency of travel on Virginia’s roadways. Its program spans highway safety, traffic engineering, intelligent transportation systems, and connected and automated vehicles. Much of the research focuses on improving safety and traffic flow through better management of existing infrastructure, rather than building new capacity.

Typical research topics include:

Safety

• Advanced methods for identifying crash hotspots

• Guidance for diagnosis and countermeasure selection

• Pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements

• Development of safety performance functions

• Analysis and creation of crash modification factors for new treatments

• Roadway lighting strategies

• Safety impacts of connected and automated vehicles

Traffic Engineering

• Evaluation of new traffic control devices (signs/markings) and their influence on driver behavior

• Work zone operations and safety

• Visibility and legibility of traffic controls

• Speed control strategies and policy development

• Traffic monitoring techniques

Operations

• Congestion management strategies

• Intelligent transportation systems

• Traffic signal operations and optimization

• Operational impacts of connected and automated vehicles

• Managed lane strategies

• Incident and emergency management

• Enhancing traveler information methods

• Traffic operations center (TOC) management

• Performance monitoring and reporting

• Use of emerging operations data sets, including crowdsourced big data

• Data collection, analysis, and application

This team is supported by the Traffic Operations and Safety Research Advisory Committee (TOSRAC).  TOSRAC identifies and sets research needs in the areas of traffic engineering, highway safety, traffic operations, intelligent transportation systems, and connected and automated vehicles (CAVs).  TOSRAC is supported by 4 subcommittees:

• The Safety and Traffic Control Devices subcommittee focuses on research in the areas of highway safety and traditional traffic control devices, such as signs and pavement markings.
• The Corridor Management subcommittee focuses on research related to the safe and efficient flow along arterial and freeway corridors, including research on traffic signal operations, traveler information, and intelligent transportation systems.
• The Incident Management and Traffic Operations Center Operations subcommittee focuses on research related to improving incident management and emergency response as well as items related to TOC control room operations and effectiveness.
• The Data, Performance Management, Simulation, and CAV subcommittee focuses on research related to emerging technologies such as connected and automated vehicles, simulation, emerging data sources, and analyses that can be performed using these data sources.

Current Safety, Operations, and Traffic Engineering Projects

Team Leader

Team Members