California has long recognized the potential of applying electronic, telecommunication and other technologies to transportation systems to address the significant mobility, environmental and economic challenges in the state and the rest of the nation. Through an aggressive Advanced Transportation Systems (ATS) Program, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are being researched, built, and tested for deployment to address today's transportation needs and those of the twenty-first century. An important element of the program is the California Advanced Transportation Management Systems (ATMS) Testbed (Testbed) located in Orange County, California.

The ATMS Testbed Program was initiated in early 1991 under research agreements between the California Department of Transportation and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly). Impetus was added to the California ATS Program with the enactment of the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1991. ISTEA established a national ITS program to develop and deploy innovative technologies with the goal of providing advances in traveler information services, transportation and fleet management, vehicle control and collision avoidance, transportation systems automation and intermodal services and facilities. The Testbed is an important element of California's strategy in accomplishing these goals. The Testbed provides:

• an instrumented, multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency transportation operations environment linked to university laboratories for real-world development, testing and evaluation of near-term technologies and applications;
• a meeting ground for practitioners and researchers to try new approaches to transportation system management;
• a site for private industry to demonstrate and evaluate their prototype technologies under live traffic conditions;
• an ongoing testing ground for California and national ITS efforts.

The Testbed is intended to:

• accelerate deployment through advanced technology research;
• demonstrate the readiness of advanced systems;
• implement and evaluate operations of an integrated multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency transportation operations system.

The Testbed is based on real-time, computer-assisted traffic management and communication. Management responsibility for the development and implementation of the Testbed is vested in the UCI Institute of Transportation Studies. The transportation operations system that forms the backbone of the Testbed is structured to provide intelligent computer-assisted decision support to traffic management personnel by integrating network-wide traffic information (both surface street and freeway) in a real-time environment. The Testbed includes transit and traffic operations centers , that provide real-time data links from area freeways, major arterials directly to dedicated Testbed research laboratories at UCI and to testing facilities at Cal Poly.

The Testbed covers two contiguous sub-areas in Orange County that include most of the major decision points for freeway travelers in the region. The City of Anaheim sub-area encompasses the City's major special event traffic generators and is centered about two of its designated "smart streets," Harbor Boulevard and Katella Avenue. This sub-area is ideal for network-wide applications of advanced technologies in traffic management. The City of Irvine sub-area provides freeway access to many business and office complexes on both sides of the 1-5 freeway and is ideal for corridor-level integration of real-time communication and control in traffic management.

A testing facility has been developed to interface both with existing system components and with new advanced traffic monitoring and control systems that were developed as part of a Testbed Baseline Surveillance and Control System. The goal has been to provide a common integrated real-time traffic database for ATMIS research conducted within the Testbed. The Testbed is built upon a wide-area communications network backbone that is described below. The network links the Cities of Anaheim and Irvine to the Caltrans District 12 TMC and to the ATMS Research Laboratories at the UCI Institute of Transportation Studies and the TMC Simulation Laboratory at Cal Poly. It is configured to permit easy future expansion to accommodate appropriate private/public sector research implementation projects that may be conducted within the Testbed.

Products of the Testbed will address and benefit many elements - not all technical - which are significant to ITS. Among these are:

• Interjurisdictional Cooperation and Institutional Issues
• Public/Private Partnerships
• System Architecture Evaluation
• System Applications to Regional Traffic Management
• National Information Infrastructure
• Field Operational Test Results
• Traffic/Transportation Management Centers
• Enhancement of Incident Management
• Communication Systems Infrastructure
• Iintermodal Traveler Information
• Sensor comparisons
• Traffic and Transportation Modeling
• System Integration
• Software Engineering

The specific products of the Testbed are envisioned to include:

• New products to capture traffic data and depict the operational status of the transportation network from diverse sources
• Tools for managing network data supplied to TMCs
• Technologies to detect and clear incidents
• Strategies to control the transportation network
• Simulators to assess control alternatives in real-time and to assess their impacts, including long-term demand projections
• Prototypes to disseminate traffic and travel information to users

These products can be developed, tested and evaluated utilizing both laboratory and field tests.