From Dec. 5 to Dec. 7 there will be five public forums, one in each parish expected to be affected by the loop: East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Livingston, Ascension and Iberville. ABMB is one of the lead firms on the BR loop project.
The Baton Rouge Loop is moving forward, and soon area residents will be invited to offer their input about the proposed 85-mile express highway circling the capital area.
Progress by the Capital Area Expressway Authority, which is the legal entity set up to pursue the loop, continues desspite the widespread loss of support for the $4.5 billion project among outlying parish leaders.
From Dec. 5 to Dec. 7 there will be five public forums, one in each parish expected to be affected by the loop: East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Livingston, Ascension and Iberville.
The public hearings are one of the final requirements of the project’s environmental impact statement, which is a cumbersome, multi-year application process submitted to the Federal Highway Administration for approval.
Approval from the FHA means the expressway authority will receive a “Record of Decision,” which is essentially a legal permit, or “green light to move forward with the project,” said Mike Bruce, managing principal of ABMB Engineers Inc., one of the lead firms on the loop.
Once the loop receives an OK from the federal government, private investors are more likely to get involved in the project, backers have said. The Record of Decision also means there could be federal dollars allocated toward the project.
Comments from the public made during the forums will be recorded in the impact statement submitted to the FHA and could influence the project’s approval, Bruce said.
“The federal government will weigh these comments along with all the other factors,” Bruce said. “Historically, there have been projects that have been stopped because of overwhelming public disapproval.”
The environmental impact study also includes information about social, economic and transportation patterns in the region which the FHA will consider, Bruce said.
After the public hearings, Bruce said, the impact statement will be submitted to the FHA within about 90 days. But he didn’t know how long the approval process would take.
Despite the project just continuing to trudge along, some parish presidents are calling the loop a lost cause.
In April 2010, three of the five parish presidents serving on the expressway authority’s board of directors resigned over possible route alignments, opposition from residents and questions about economic feasibility.
“It’s just politics and dreaming at this point,” said Iberville Parish President J. Mitchell Ourso. “Show me the money and all the people that are happy about this going through. Make a believer out of me.”
Tommy Martinez, Ascension Parish president, said he doesn’t believe the southern part of the loop is feasible.
“The loop concept is not a bad concept,” Martinez said. “My objection is not that we don’t need a project to alleviate traffic. My objection is that I don’t know if there will ever be money to dothis project.”
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden, who chairs the expressway authority, and West Baton Rouge Parish President Riley “Peewee” Berthelot, the only other remaining parish president on the board, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Bruce said the loss of support from the parish presidents would also be documented in the impact study.
The loop is also running out of funding needed to get the project off the ground.
In 2009, the state Legislature allocated about $4.5 million toward the planning and engineering work for the loop.
As of September, $3.8 million had been expended.
Bruce said the remaining funds will last long enough to submit the impact study.
In July 2010, Gov. Bobby Jindal used a line-item veto to reject $5 million Baton Rouge legislators inserted into a spending bill to move the loop project along.
Bruce said that money would have been used to begin searching for private partners, which the expressway authority ultimately expects would fund the project.
People who cannot attend the public hearings can contribute feedback by going to http:www.BRLoop.com and printing out the form and mailing it in before Jan. 9.
The multibillion-dollar Baton Rouge Loop project, for which ABMB is a lead firm, is on track and moving forward.
The multibillion-dollar Baton Rouge Loop project is on track and moving forward, Mayor-President Kip Holden said Monday after a meeting of the Capital Area Expressway Authority.
“This project is not dead by any stretch of the imagination,” Holden said. “We’re still on track for what we had originally proposed.”
The loop is a proposed 85-mile toll road surrounding Baton Rouge that supporters say will alleviate traffic problems.
Last year, the loop project took multiple blows when three of the five parish presidents serving on the authority’s board of directors — Ascension’s Tommy Martinez, Livingston’s Mike Grimmer and Iberville’s J. Mitchell Ourso Jr. — resigned.
A few months later, Gov. Bobby Jindal used his line-item veto to delete $5 million of state spending.
Mike Bruce, managing principal of ABMB Engineers which is one of the lead firms on the loop project, said it’s unclear if the loss of state money affected the timeline.
He said the authority is still in the process of obtaining a “Record of Decision,” or permit, from the Federal Highway Administration to move forward.
A lack of available funding prevented the authority from being able to expedite the process this summer, but Bruce said he is hopeful the permit will be issued before year’s end.
At that point, the authority will attempt to sign a private partner for the project.
“Once you have the Record of Decision, private partners know that this can be a reality so they’ll be ready to step forward,” said Bryan Harmon, deputy public works director.
Bruce said in the short term, the authority is looking for a private partner for the first phase of the project which is the 25-mile northern bypass costing $750 million.
He said there has already been some investment interest from international firms.
Bruce said there may be public perception the project is dead because of slow progress.
“It’s a long process and there’s been some vocal opposition that puts it in a light that it’s not moving forward,” he said.
But Bruce said “if everything goes well,” the project could prepare to break ground within three years.
ABMB is on the team that developed the new FutureBR comprehensive master plan for East Baton Rouge Parish.
FutureBR, the two-year-in the-making master plan for East Baton Rouge Parish, was officially approved by the Metro Council on Wednesday.
The vote ends a comprehensive process that included dozens of public meetings with the business community, developers and civic associations and collected feedback from about 3,500 residents — all of whom helped shape the final product, FutureBR officials said.
Mayor-President Kip Holden applauded the council for moving forward with a plan that will help the parish “build the kind of quality of life we want for all of our families rather than simply letting circumstances dictate our future.”
The $1.9 million overhaul of the city-parish’s former Horizon Plan focuses on land use, urban design, neighborhood revitalization, transit and transportation goals, parks and recreation, environment and conservation, housing and infrastructure and economic development.
Several business leaders in the parish, who urged council support, roundly supported the 20-year plan Wednesday.
Adam Knapp, of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, applauded the process used to develop the plan.
“It’s government at it’s best,” he said. “Bringing people into the process and bringing business leaders to the table.”
Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas, president of the Center for Planning Excellence, said the plan meets the “wishes and desires” of parish residents.
“It sets a vision, it recognizes who we are as a community and where we want to go,” she said. “It’s a blueprint, a road map. It’s all the things we hoped it would be.”
The Metro Council was mostly complimentary of the plan, except for some concerns about the inclusion of the northern part of the Baton Rouge loop project.
The loop is a proposed 85-mile toll road surrounding Baton Rouge intended to alleviate traffic.
The project has lost support the past year from residents in surrounding parishes as well as state funding. But a 25-mile northern stretch of the loop was included in the FutureBR plan.
“It’s one of the routes that, really, most people were against,” said Councilman Scott Wilson. “That’s the only thing I can’t support.”
Wilson made a motion to delete the loop from the plan, but the motion died for lack of a second.
John Fregonese, the project’s Oregon-based planning consultant, said the northern part of the loop was included because it’s in the statewide plan, and is intended to acknowledge traffic problems in those areas.
But he said the loop, like other projects in the plan, are conceptual and not a guarantee something will be built.
Councilman Ulysses “Bones” Addison moved that the council accept the FutureBR land use plan, with the provision that Fregonese make a modification clarifying the loop was conceptual.
The council unanimously approved the plan, with only Ronnie Edwards absent.
Fregonese said in the next few weeks a strategic plan will be released to guide implementation of the new master plan. It will include updating zoning codes and picking areas and neighborhoods for improvement projects.
Nw study shows that navigation systems in which vehicles collect and share traffic information with each other can decrease the average travel time of all vehicles in a traffic network.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Traffic congestion is not only annoying, it’s expensive. In 2005, traffic congestion cost an estimated $78.2 billion in 437 urban areas in the US, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2007 Urban Mobility Report. The cost is measured by the travel time index, which is the ratio of travel time in rush hours to travel time at quiet periods, and has increased from 1.09 in 1982 to 1.26 in 2005. In addition to the use of public transportation and bicycle commuting to address this problem, some researchers have been developing intelligent transportation systems in which vehicles use near-real-time traffic data to choose the fastest route and decrease congestion throughout the network.
However, there has been some debate on whether or not these high-tech systems actually work – that is, whether or not they minimize the overall average travel time of all vehicles in a traffic network. Some studies during the past several decades have shown that even having perfect traffic information does not guarantee lower congestion. In one model, a traffic network in which every vehicle had full information of the roads had the same overall performance as a traffic network with no information feedback.
Now a new study shows that navigation systems in which vehicles collect and share traffic information with each other can decrease the average travel time of all vehicles in a traffic network. In contrast to some of the previous studies that found the opposite result, this study dealt with a fully decentralized, crowd-sourced system rather than sensors located at specific road locations, and also tested the system using real-life experiments and simulations of more complex, realistic traffic flows compared with the simpler models in previous studies.
The researchers, Ilias Leontiadis from the University of Cambridge and coauthors from there, the University of Bologna, and the University of California, Los Angeles, will have their study published in an upcoming issue of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
First, the researchers designed a smart navigation system called CATE (Computer-Assisted Traveling Environment). In CATE, every vehicle acts as a traffic sensor by sending traffic data every time it exits a road segment, which is typically at an intersection. The data, which includes the intersection, the time the vehicle entered the road segment, and the time the vehicle exited the road segment, gets sent to other vehicles via a wireless network. As demonstrated by experiments at UCLA’s Campus Vehicular Testbed (C-VeT), the low data rates that the technology requires can easily be supported by the bandwidth used by personal wireless devices, such as GPS systems or smart phones.
Next the researchers compared different algorithms that these devices might use to choose the best route based on the traffic information they receive. Using computer simulations as well as traffic data collected in downtown Portland, Oregon, the researchers found that, with the best algorithms, 64% of vehicles reduced their travel time by more than 10%. Of the rest, 23% had trip times within 10% of their times without the information (and so were considered to not really be affected), and the remaining 13% required more time than without the information. The researchers attribute the increased time to the fact that some traffic was being diverted into relatively open roads that consequently became busier than before.Still, the overall average trip time was significantly reduced when the CATE navigation system was used. The researchers also found that, when just 34% of the vehicles used CATE, the performance of the entire traffic network was comparable to the performance when up to 100% of the vehicles used the system.
“The results show that crowd-sourced information can be used to estimate traffic conditions,” Leontiadis told PhysOrg.com. “Since traffic measurements are subjected to a lot of noise (e.g., some vehicles might be caught in traffic lights, some not, etc.), we showed that this information is still valuable when the appropriate algorithm is used in order to correlate information from multiple vehicles.”
Part of the reason for the positive results of the evaluation is due to the way that CATE works compared with other navigation systems, such as video cameras or induction loops that monitor select street locations. With these latter systems, all vehicles can instantly access the same information using cellular networks or FM radio stations. However, not all streets are monitored, which can cause unknown congestion in these areas. In contrast, all streets with vehicles that use CATE are monitored, so vehicles do not congest streets due to lack of information. Also, all vehicles have a slightly different perspective of the traffic conditions, which may lead to more individualized routes. Leontiadis explained that one of the surprising results was how quickly and effectively information could spread among vehicles.
“Although the information spreads quite quickly, we still receive information based on past observations,” he said. “We expected a phenomenon that in computer science (networks) is called ‘route flapping.’ This happens when traffic constantly moves (flaps) from one route to another due to delay of information. For example, imagine that there are two highways to travel between cities (A and B). If I broadcast that a highway A is currently empty while highway B is busy, then every vehicle that hears this information will select A. Highway A will then become congested as more and more vehicles will start going there and due to the fact that the information that A is now getting congested needs some time to reach incoming vehicles. When eventually this information is out, most vehicles will switch to highway B, causing problems there. This constant flapping between A and B happens on computer networks (the internet). Surprisingly we didn't observe this problem: based on our results, it seems that the speed at which the information spreads is much faster than the speed that road traffic builds up.”
By showing that a decentralized intelligent transportation system can greatly improve traffic flow, the results of the study could lead to significant economic savings. The study also opens up new research directions, such as investigating the impact of different algorithms and flow intensities on the average travel time. Other areas for improvement include better algorithms, ways to lower bandwidth, and data encryption for security issues.
More information: Ilias Leontiadis, Gustavo Marfia, David Mack, Giovanni Pau, Cecilia Mascolo, and Mario Gerla. “On the Effectiveness of an Opportunistic Traffic Management System for Vehicular Networks.” IEEE Transaction on Intelligent Transportation Systems. To be published. DOI:10.1109/TITS.2011.2161469
ABMB is the Prime Consultant, along with HNTB, on this challenging study and approval process for the addition of a traffic loop in the metro-BR area.
The multibillion-dollar Baton Rouge Loop project is on track and moving forward, Mayor-President Kip Holden said Monday after a meeting of the Capital Area Expressway Authority.
“This project is not dead by any stretch of the imagination,” Holden said. “We’re still on track for what we had originally proposed.”
The loop is a proposed 85-mile toll road surrounding Baton Rouge that supporters say will alleviate traffic problems.
Last year, the loop project took multiple blows when three of the five parish presidents serving on the authority’s board of directors — Ascension’s Tommy Martinez, Livingston’s Mike Grimmer and Iberville’s J. Mitchell Ourso Jr. — resigned.
A few months later, Gov. Bobby Jindal used his line-item veto to delete $5 million of state spending.
Mike Bruce, managing principal of ABMB Engineers which is one of the lead firms on the loop project, said it’s unclear if the loss of state money affected the timeline.
He said the authority is still in the process of obtaining a “Record of Decision,” or permit, from the Federal Highway Administration to move forward.
A lack of available funding prevented the authority from being able to expedite the process this summer, but Bruce said he is hopeful the permit will be issued before year’s end.
At that point, the authority will attempt to sign a private partner for the project.
“Once you have the Record of Decision, private partners know that this can be a reality so they’ll be ready to step forward,” said Bryan Harmon, deputy public works director.
Bruce said in the short term, the authority is looking for a private partner for the first phase of the project which is the 25-mile northern bypass costing $750 million.
He said there has already been some investment interest from international firms.
Bruce said there may be public perception the project is dead because of slow progress.
“It’s a long process and there’s been some vocal opposition that puts it in a light that it’s not moving forward,” he said.
But Bruce said “if everything goes well,” the project could prepare to break ground within three years.