REDUCING VMTS THROUGH TRANSIT-ON-DEMAND WITH GPS AND SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS

As a partial solution to the problem of increasing foreign petroleum imports, urban congestion, and air pollution from automobiles, NREL researchers have successfully demonstrated a transportation concept called Transit-On-Demand (TOD). TOD uses the global positioning system (GPS) to locate all vehicles in a fleet, two-way communications between the vehicles and a central computer-server, and advanced dispatching and routing software to control the movement of vehicles within the fleet. Reducing the vehicle-miles-travelled (VMTs) through implementing efficient transportation systems such as TOD, results in less energy being required for transportation and a decrease in the amount of required imported petroleum. Throughout the development of an advanced world wide web site and use of the new Java Internet programming language, the demonstration allows visitors to the web site to see updates of vehicle position on a map every 20 seconds, while effectively minimizing the internet bandwidth required. The project demonstrates how a fixed-route, fixed-schedule shuttle can be converted to be demand-responsive to more efficiently move people from where they are to where they want to be at the time they want to travel.

• Corporate Authors:

  National Renewable Energy Laboratory

  1617 Cole Boulevard
  Golden, CO  United States  80401
• Authors:
  • Wipke, K B
• Conference:
  • Northcon '96: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) technical applications conference (CONF-961193-1)
  • Location: Seattle, WA
  • Date: 1996-11-4 to 1996-11-6
• Publication Date: 1996-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 8p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality management; Demand responsive transportation; Energy conservation; Traffic congestion; Vehicle miles of travel
• Uncontrolled Terms: Congestion
• Old TRIS Terms: Transit-on-demand
• Subject Areas: Energy; Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00737762
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: NREL-CP-540-21613
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 24 1997 12:00AM