Everyday challenges will be presented to the participants of this year’s Program on Games, Decisions, Risk and Reliability (GDRR) to explore solutions. The presentation will highlight the trends, potential contributing factors, and impacts due to the lack of reliability of the nation’s transportation system. The discussion will touch on multiple transportation modes and from the perspectives of both moving people and goods. Other than capacity constraint and unanticipated events (e.g., crashes or inclement and extreme weather), the reliance of future transportation on automation and IoT would undoubtedly further impact system reliability in an unprecedented manner. An open dialogue on how GDRR can help ensure a reliable transportation system will conclude the presentation.

1. Transportation System Reliability:
Challenges and Opportunities
Presented at
2019 SAMSI Program on Games, Decisions, Risk, and Reliability
Patricia Hu, Director
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
U.S. Department of Transportation
August 5, 2019

2. Presentation Outline
Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) overview
Everyday challenges in travelling
o Trends
o Potential contributing factors
o Impacts – the “so what?”
BTS Initiatives
How can SAMSI and BTS collaborate?
2

3. Overview
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
3
■In 1991, the Intermodal Surface Transportation
Efficiency Act (ISTEA) created BTS to:
□ administer transportation data collection, analysis,
and reporting; and
□ ensure the most cost-effective use of resources to
monitor
□ Transportation’s contributions to the economy
□ Extent, condition and performance of
transportation system
□ Transportation’s implications, e.g., safety,
environment
■BTS is one of the 14 Principal Federal Statistical Agencies
□ Policy-neutral, objective broker of information
□ Special abilities to protect data confidentiality

4. Our Nation’s transportation
infrastructure is massive
Including: roads & highways, airports & airways, rail,
urban transit, ports & waterways, and pipeline
Is enormous
• 4+ million miles of roads
• 614,000 road bridges
• 138,000 miles of rail lines
• 12,000 miles of navigable inland waterways
• 2 million miles of oil and gas pipelines
• 11,000 miles of transit rail
4

5. It enables economic growth and
moves people and goods by
 Providing mobility to destinations for
• 333 million U.S. residents, of whom 25 million do not own a
vehicle
• 76 million visitors and tourists
• 7.6 million businesses
 Moving an average of 55 tons of freight per year for every
man, woman, and child in the United States
 Accounting for nearly 9 percent of U. S. GDP
 Doing so to encourage economic vitality and with little
consequences on safety, environment, and energy.
5

6. The U.S. transportation system moved 55 tons of
freight per year for every man, woman and child
6
Freight Analysis
Framework, a database
based on:
• Commodity Flow
Survey
• Integration with
multiple other data
• Geospatial data
• Network assignment
model
Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U. S. Department of Transportation

7. Using visual to characterize passenger
connectivity in Boston, MA vicinity
7
Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U. S. Department of Transportation

8. 8
Reliability in transportation
 Reliability refers to “the consistency or
dependability in travel times, as measured day-
to-day and/or across different times of day.”
(FHWA)
 Travel time reliability is a critical factor, impacting
a traveler’s decision about when and how to
travel, and a business’ decision about logistics
planning.
 Travel time reliability oftentimes is measured as
the variability in travel time.

9. 9
Potential factors contributing to
the lack of reliability
Recurrent congestion
• Demand greater than supply
Disruptions to the system due to:
• Incidents/accidents, weather, work zones, special
events, IT outrages…
• Non-recurrent phenomena
Lack of system resilience

10. 10
Example impacts of lack of reliability
 According to Texas Transportation Institute, an average
commuter
• wasted 19 gallons of fuel in 2014 (≈ a week’s worth of fuel for
the average U.S. driver), up from 8 gallons in 1982;
• experienced an average yearly delay of 42 hours in 2014; and
• budgeted for approximately 2.4 times (freeway only) as much
travel time as would be needed in congest free conditions
 An recent INRIX report, Los Angeles drivers lead the way,
spending an average of 102 hours sitting in traffic every year.

11. In 2017, 2% flights were delayed for more than
2 hours, but impacting 10+ million passengers
11Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U. S. Department of Transportation
39.2% 38.8% 38.1% 37.3%
31.3% 30.6% 30.0% 30.1%
12.8% 12.8% 13.0% 13.1%
6.6% 6.9% 7.0%
7.1%
10.0% 10.9% 12.0% 12.3%
7.4
8.2
9.4 10.1
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
2014 2015 2016 2017
Passengerimpactedby>120minutedelay(Millions)
FlightsDelayedbyMinutes
15-29 30-59 60-89 90-119 > 120 Passengers Impacted

12. Reliable IT system is crucial to safely
operate 87,000+ flights per day
 A 4-hour software outage in 2017 prevented landing and
taking off at an airport, resulting in 135 flights delayed and 21
cancelled.
 Localized incidents resulted in major impacts at specific
airports, with cascading effects throughout the aviation
system.
 Risks associated with cyber attacks could result in massive
disruption to the Nation’s aviation system.
12Source: GAO -19-514. Airport IT Outrages.

13. 13
Three examples of BTS Initiatives to
Address Transportation Reliability

14. Transportation Disruption and
Disaster Statistics Program
(TDADS):
 Is a system that contains data, statistics,
dashboards, tools, interactive maps and
visualizations
 Focuses on system disruptions at
interstate and inter-regional level
 Allows comparison by mode, geography,
corridor, city pair, facility, and time
period
 Reports disruption statistics on a
monthly or quarterly basis
4
Leverage multiple, almost real-time data
sources to diagnose system disruptions
Bottlenecks
40%
Incidents
25%
Work Zones
10%Bad Weather
15%
Poor Signal Timing
5%
Special Events
5%
1

15. TDADS diagnoses potential causes for system
disruption in Delaware, December 2018
15

16. 16
TDADS enables small-area diagnosis
I-495 Outer Loop at Georgia Avenue, March 2018

17. Solving for Safety
Visualization Challenge
 Select an ANALYTICAL VISUALIZATION TOOL to develop:
• Discover insights
• Scenario analysis via simulation tool(s)
 Address one or more of the priority SAFETY FOCUS AREAS:
• Conflict Points Impacts
• High Risk Factors
• Vulnerable System Users
 Design for one or more USERS:
• Policy makers and influencers
• Providers/Operators
• Public
2

18. 5
University of Central Florida
Real-Time Crash Risk Visualization
Tools for Traffic Safety Mgmt.
provides real-time crash risk
visualizations using integrated tools for
traffic safety mgmt.
Ford
RoadCode helps users make smarter
safety choices by unlocking driver
behavior codes hidden in near misses
and perceptions.
Finalists2
Semi-
finalists
54 Ideas
Arity
City Data Platform incorporates Arity’s
safety-related driving behavior data
with other contextual sources to help
transportation planners and providers.
Uber
USDOT Safety with Uber’s Kepler.gl
combines Kepler.gl, Uber’s historical
speed data, and publicly available crash
data to visualize traffic safety insights.
VHB
My Street is an evidence-based tool
that helps decision-makers “see”
safety improvements from a
pedestrian’s perspective.
Challenge Status
UCF, Ford, Arity, Uber, VHB

19. Can crowd-sourced data estimate a rapid
indicator of traffic accidents?
 Currently, there is a significant lag between a crash
occurrence and upload to official system
 Time lag hampers timely and proactive management to
avoid traffic disruption due to incidents
19
Integrated Waze
data and other
transportation data
sources
Estimates validated
by ground-truth data
(Electronic Data
Transfer)
3

20. Emerging Challenges and Opportunities
New transportation Options, such as
• E-scooters
• Package delivery drones
Connected/Autonomous Vehicles
20
Democratization of manufacturing
via 3D Printing
• Manufacture products at the point of
consumption
Photo credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

21. Emerging Travel Options
84 million trips on shared micromobility in 2018
21Source: National Conference of State Legislators, 2017.
38.5 M trips
9 M trips
36.5 M trips

22. 22
Scooter Safety Issues
 Infrastructure
• Bike lanes vs. sidewalks vs. travel
lanes
• Surface conditions
 Conflicts with motor vehicles and
pedestrians
 User inexperience
 Scooter mechanical issues (e.g., brake
failures)
 Speed
 Alcohol use
 Lack of helmet use
Photo credit: Sansone & Lauber

23. Reliability of Future, Automated Transportation
would be Driven by Risk of a Cyber Security Attack
23Source: National Conference of State Legislators, 2017.
 A 5-day GPS disruption on the UK transportation system
was estimated to cost the economy $2.5B, or $500M a
day.
• No study on the impact on U.S. transportation system.
 A recent NIST study estimated the loss of GPS service
would have a $1 billion per-day impact on US economy.
 During the transition to automation of the entire vehicle
population, could GDRR play a significant role?

24. Influence Shaping Future Transportation:
Technology acceleration
24Source: National Conference of State Legislators, 2017.
In 2018, 26
states and DC
enacted
automated
vehicle related
legislation

25. How can SAMSI and BTS collaborate?
 Can solutions be developed based on game theory,
adversarial risk analysis, and complex decision theory to
address:
 Today’s transportation system reliability issues,
 Tomorrow’s automation and IoT?
 Can solutions be developed that reach an “equilibrium”
among individual decision-making, group decision-
making, policy and public well-being?
25

26. More about BTS: www.bts.gov
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