A two week program has been designed (10 working days). The program would be preceded by the equivalent of 40 hours of self study. The self study will ensure that all students are at the same level of knowledge prior to beginning the Academy training, to minimize the cost and other problems associated with more than two weeks away from home.
All students will be housed at the training facilities. Working days will include evening homework and on-line assignments. Students may return home on the one weekend, or optionally, remain at the training facility. Local site-seeing type outings will be available to those who remain at the facility.
The program design is based on a review of similar “total immersion” training offered in other fields. In all cases, training includes a mix of presentations, workshops and hands on experience.
The program design includes the following mix of activities:
1) Preliminary self-study (40 hours) Exams must be completed to verify successful completion
2) Formal training including exams 48 hours
a) Classroom – 40 hours
b) E-learning (evenings – 8 hours or approximately 1 hours per weekday evening)
3) Workshops 20 hours
4) Hands-on 20 hours
1. Preliminary Self Study
The following topics would be required for all students to review and take exams prior to the two week training.
a) Traffic Operations Analysis
• Traffic flow concepts- volume, density, speed, queue
• Road user characteristics
• Freeway Operations
• Intersections
• Transportation System Management Techniques, Access Management Tools
• Travel Demand Management
b) Traffic Safety
• Integration of various transportation modes
• Elements of Safety Improvement Program
• Crash Records System
• Road Safety Audits
• Non-Crash Indicators, i.e. crash rate, crash frequency, equivalent property damage only rate
• Understanding Crash Patterns
• Potential Countermeasures & Evaluation
• Liability, Negligence
• Effective Traffic Safety Program
c) Social, Environmental and Institutional Issues
• Types Federal, State and Local Regulations that affect transportation decisions; growth management policies, funding, environmental, vehicle weight and size limitations, etc
• Planning issues: State, Regional and Local Transportation Plans, Transportation Improvement Programs
• Strategies for implementation and evaluation (performance measures)
• Public Interaction and Involvement
• Transportation Planning Models, i.e. 4-Step Process
• Environmental Impact Analysis Process
d) ITS Awareness
• Describing ITS
• Integrating Systems
• Stakeholders and Partnerships
e) ITS Devices
• Surveillance Technologies
• Dynamic Message Signs
• DMS Applications
• Highway Advisory Radio
• Information Displays
• Traffic Signal Controllers
f) Introduction to Telecommunications
• Telecommunications fundamentals (signals, frequencies, voice and data, wireline and wireless)
• Networks
• Local Area Networks
• Wide Area Networks
• Data Communications Protocols
• Standards
• Applications
• Architecture and Communications
g) ITS National Architecture
• Introduction to the National Architecture
• Basic Concepts of Systems Engineering
• Systems Engineering Processes
• What is Architecture?
• Regional Applications
• Planning a Regional System
• Standards
• User Service Requirements
• Logical Architecture
2. Formal Training
This training would include the following modules:
• Operations training (both freeway and arterial) – This would include incident management, emergency response planning, TMC operation, ATIS, signal operations, and integrated freeway/arterial operation. Note that some of this material would already have been covered with the self study. (1 day)
• Project management – Includes project management for ITS, financial aspects of project management, procurement, performance measures and asset management (2 days)
• Systems engineering – Includes the PCB courses of systems engineering, advanced systems engineering, and configuration management. Note that some of this material will already have been covered during the self study. (1 day classroom plus 8 hours on-line)
• Advanced Social, environmental and Institutional Issues – including planning for operations, regionalism, public/private partnerships, outsourcing, funding sources (1 day)
3. Workshop
Groups of 4-5 students would be formed for the workshop problem. Groups would be made up of students specializing in traffic engineering, planning and systems engineering. They would be presented with the following problem which may look difficult, but 4 students x 20 hours per student is equivalent to 80 person-hours of available labor.
• Network: An idealized, congested corridor approximately 15 miles long consisting of parallel freeway and arterial roadways with three interconnecting links. The freeway has three interchanges (one for each interconnecting link). The arterial has 6 cross streets including the three interconnecting links
• Resources
o Data including:
- Benefit data from similar projects
- Cost data from similar projects
- Traffic characteristics for the project
o Problem details:
- Agencies involved
- Legacy systems
- Incident characteristics
- Anticipated traffic growth
- Funding sources and availability
- Potential opportunities and obstacles including industry’s interest in participation, agency’s outsourcing policies, contracting policies
• The problem:
o Management-level analysis
- Identify alternative technical approaches, and determine the costs and benefits of each
- Examine the feasibility of alternative approaches for project implementation including outsourcing, public-private partnerships, contracting (include consideration of legal, financial, and policy issues)
- Prepare presentation material for senior level management with project justification
o Systems engineering/project management determine systems requirements for satisfying the traffic engineering needs
- Prepare a regional architecture
- Prepare a concept of operations including both transportation and first responders
- Develop requirements
- Prepare contracting plan, project management plan and systems engineering plan
o Output – Reports and presentations along with competition for the best/most effective solutions.
• Grades would be given based on a pre-defined grading system that is shared with the students in advance of the workshop
4. Hands-On Training
This training would be provided with the cooperation of the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA). It would include one day each of the following:
• Riding with a freeway service patrol unit
• Ride-along with ITS maintenance personnel (signals, detectors, DMS, CCTV, etc.)
• Working in a traffic management center (note there are at least three TMC’s within easy travel of the training facility)
• One day to critique these operations, make suggestions for improvements and document the experience.
Costs and Facilities
This training would be performed at the Maritime Institute (March 12-23, 2007), a facility located within one mile of BWI airport, and within five miles (10 minutes) of the SHA facilities. The Maritime Institute is frequently used by the Technology Transfer Center for training and large scale workshops. It has extensive conference facilities, training/breakout rooms, an auditorium and a cafeteria (with good food). Perhaps most important, they also have living quarters. |