Implementation of the Urban/Rural Intelligent Corridor Application (URICA) Architecture for The City of Albuquerque's Transit Department

Dwight L. Fuqua, Linda Dowling

Abstract:	Many municipalities are now exploring the potential of employing high technology systems to improve operations. A national program, the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) (formerly the IHVS) has been implemented whose objectives include provision of a strategic plan for a national architecture. Program goals and objectives are described in the National ITS Program Plan, dated March 1995 (Figure 1). The City of Albuquerque has been active in ITS and has defined a local ITS implementation architecture called the Urban/Rural Intelligent Corridor Application (URICA), shown in Figure 2. The City of Albuquerque’s Transit Department is a primary participant in this local implementation program; the Transit Department’s effort is called the SunTransit On-board Location and Reporting (SOLAR) system. The transit program objectives include flexible routing, real-time vehicle location and tracking, automated reservations, and scheduling for the City’s paratransit vans. During the period 25 January - 30 September 1996. the City of Albuquerque’s Transit Department and Dimensions International, Inc. @I) conducted a joint city-industry experiment. This effort resulted in design and construction of a prototype automatic vehicle location (AVL) system, using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software, that was subsequently used to explore the potential utility of the information provided by the AVL to operators, managers, and maintainers. The AVL effort was performed concurrently with other SunTran ITS-related activities: information from this effort is being used to augment other sources of data. The program phases and objectives are discussed herein. Phase I is described herein. Phase II: SOLAR Component Definition and Implementation, is currently in-progress. Phase III will be deployment of AVL technologies on over 150 buses. paratransit vans: and administrative support vehicles. Phase IV will be an independent evaluation of the SOLAR system.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1997 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 14 - 16, 1997 Loews Santa Monica Hotel Santa Monica, CA
Pages:	737 - 745
Cite this article:	Fuqua, Dwight L., Dowling, Linda, "Implementation of the Urban/Rural Intelligent Corridor Application (URICA) Architecture for The City of Albuquerque's Transit Department," Proceedings of the 1997 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Santa Monica, CA, January 1997, pp. 737-745.
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