EVALUATION PROCEDURE FOR OPERATIONAL TEST BENEFITS

This paper describes the development of an independent evaluation procedure and benefits identified from two ITS operational tests currently underway by the Minnesota Department of Transportation. The evaluation procedures focus on the individual test plan format which builds upon MITRE and FHWA procedures formatted through Booz-Allen-Hamilton, Inc. The operational test evaluation examples are: 1) the Integrated Corridor Traffic Management (ICTM) project which implements an interactive traffic signal/ramp meter control system, Sidney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS), and motorist information technologies to improve traffic flow during both normal and incident impacted traffic conditions within a study segment of the I-494 corridor; and 2) the TRILOGY motorist information project involves the test of in-vehicle real-time information devices, both audio and visual, using ITIS protocol with RBDS and high speed communication technology by commercial and private citizen commuters. Preliminary results from the individual test plans developed for each project based on quantitative and qualitative measures of effectiveness and documentation of legal/institutional issues and test costs are summarized in the paper.