Transit Safety Retrofit Package (TRP): Leveraging DSRC for Transit Safety – Fielding Results and Lessons Learned

A team led by Battelle, on behalf of the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, Federal Highway Administration, and Federal Transit Administration, deployed five collision avoidance applications on University of Michigan transit buses, including two new applications—one for pedestrian crosswalks and one for vehicles turning in front of transit buses at bus stops—identified as high-priority concerns by transit agencies. This system, called the Transit Safety Retrofit Package (TRP), was part of the USDOT’s Safety Pilot Model Deployment—a large-scale field demonstration of the potential benefits of 5.9GHz Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) wireless technology that is supporting related decisions by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This article provides a summary of results, “fresh from the field”, pertaining to the transit safety applications, as well as the underlying project, system, and technologies.