Researchers study ways to smooth traffic flow

The students sit at long desks, their eyes glued to big screens showing traffic-choked highways. A simulator allows them to create a traffic accident and to try to reduce the delay it causes.

Researchers at the Integrated Intelligent Transportation System Laboratory at Florida International University are working to advance traffic research, a field that has yielded technologies from optimally timed stoplights to highway ramps that measure vehicle flow.

The lab debuted last month in collaboration with the Florida Department of Transportation as part of the Lehman Center for Transportation Research at the College of Engineering.

Forty-five master's and doctoral students seeking degrees in transportation engineering use the facility. Its director, Mohammed Hadi, says South Florida, where congested roadways can spur bouts of road rage, gives students ample opportunities to put research to the test.

Cameras and motion detectors along highways track traffic or vehicle speeds and transmit the information to the DOT. Lab researchers can use the data to see how many vehicles are being diverted or whether traffic is slowing.

When ramp signals were built on Interstate 95, students participated in the research and went to see how the technology was working. The lab is also used to promote the 511 system of call-in traffic information. If the state DOT's systems ever failed, the FIU lab could fill in.

John Augustine, deputy director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems joint program office, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said researchers working in the field could develop systems to allow vehicles to communicate wirelessly and alert traffic controllers to know, for example, when a car's windshield wipers are activated.

Much traffic research can be complicated mathematical theory, but Hadi says when he presents findings at engineering seminars, attendees usually perk up. He doesn't have to worry about them questioning the research relevance.