Paper format. National Examinations, December 2017 — 16-Civ-B17
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Three-hour, open-book
examination; any non-communicating calculator is permitted. Five questions are printed and
the paper directs that all five be answered, all carrying equal weight, so
each question is worth 20 points and the paper totals 100. The printed grading scheme is
Q.1 (a) 2+8, (b) 10; Q.2 20; Q.3 20; Q.4 20; Q.5 (a) 12, (b) 8. The paper further directs
that answers be given in essay format supplemented by illustrations (such as flow
charts, process diagrams, etc.) and states that clarity and organization of the
answer are important — presentation is itself examined here, which is why every
answer below carries a purpose-built diagram. Candidates are invited to state any
assumption made where the interpretation of a question is in doubt.
Reference texts.
- U.S. Department of Transportation, National ITS Architecture, version 7.1
(January 2012) — the definitive statement of the subsystems, the interface classes,
the eight user-service bundles and the thirty-three user services. Its successor,
ARC-IT (Architecture Reference for Cooperative and Intelligent Transportation,
version 8.0, released 2017), merges the National ITS Architecture with the Connected
Vehicle Reference Implementation Architecture and re-expresses the same material as
service areas and service packages. This is the principal reference for Question 1.
- Transport Canada, ITS Architecture for Canada — the national
instantiation of the same framework, and the document a Canadian municipality's regional
architecture must conform to.
- Chowdhury, M. A. and Sadek, A. W., Fundamentals of Intelligent Transportation
Systems Planning — ITS planning process, user services, and the systems
engineering approach to deployment.
- Garber, N. J. and Hoel, L. A., Traffic and Highway Engineering, 5th ed.
— traffic-engineering studies, flow theory, intersection control and signalisation;
the underlying traffic engineering that ITS instruments and automates.
- Federal Highway Administration / NCHRP Report 812, Signal Timing Manual,
2nd ed. — signal-system objectives, performance measures, and automated traffic
signal performance measures (ATSPM).
- Transportation Research Board, Highway Capacity Manual, and TCRP Report 100,
Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual — capacity, delay, dwell
time and the quantitative basis for transit priority.
- NTCIP standards suite — NTCIP 1201 (global objects), 1202 (actuated signal
controllers), 1203 (dynamic message signs), 1204 (environmental sensor stations),
1211 (signal control and prioritization); and TMDD for centre-to-centre exchange.
- Transportation Association of Canada, Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices
for Canada (MUTCDC) and Geometric Design Guide for Canadian Roads —
Canadian device, signal and geometric practice.
Source note — the marks line in Q.1(a). The
paper prints the marks for Question 1(a) as “(2+8 = points)”: the total has dropped out in printing.
The arithmetic and the paper's own instruction that all questions carry equal weight fix
the value: 2 + 8 = 10 points for (a), 10 points for (b), 20 points for Question 1. The
answer below is proportioned accordingly.
Canadian context. Question 1(a) explicitly asks
for the U.S. National ITS Architecture, so that is what is answered there, in the
architecture's own vocabulary. Everywhere the paper does not name a jurisdiction —
Questions 2 to 5, which are set in “a Municipality” — the answer is
written in the Canadian frame: the ITS Architecture for Canada, MUTCDC devices and signal
practice, TAC geometric guidance, provincial highway and privacy legislation, and Canadian
transit examples.
