Educational Preparation

(1) Degree Preparation

Ph.D. Transportation Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1996.
M.S. Transportation Planning, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1973.
B.S. Electrical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1969.

(2) Non-Degree Preparation

 Licensed Professional Engineer in New York State.
 MIT Summer Professional Course in Modeling and Simulation of Dynamic Traffic Management Systems, August 3-7,1998.
 Polytechnic Institute of New York - Graduate courses in Transportation Planning and Operations Research, 1974-1975.
 USDOT Sponsored Professional Courses:
 Using the ITS National Architecture, 1999
 ITS Telecommunications Analysis, 1998
 Public/Private Partnerships Awareness, 1998
 Deploying Integrated ITS, 1998
 Urban Travel Demand Forecasting, 1997
 CORFLO Demonstration Training Course, 1994
 Other Professional Courses/Training:
 PARAMICS Training, 1999
 Video for Traffic Management, Pelco Institute of CCTV, 1997

Academic Honors

National Highway Institute Eisenhower Fellowship for doctoral degree in transportation engineering.
Eno Fellow, Eno Center for Transportation Leadership Development.
Urban Mass Transportation Administration scholarship for master's degree in transportation planning.
Phi Eta Sigma, National Honorary Society.

Professional Experience

Senior Civil Engineer, New York State Department of Transportation, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603 (1996 - ).
Eisenhower Fellow, Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Civil  Engineering Department, Troy, NY 12180 (1993-1996).
Senior Civil Engineer, Associate Capital Program Analyst, Transportation Analyst, New York State  Department of Transportation, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603  (1981-1993).
Mathematics Instructor, The Dulac School, NYC (1980-1981).
Transportation Engineer, Parsons Brinkerhoff, NYC (1978-1979).
Transportation Planning Engineer, Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, NYC (1975-1977).
Systems Engineer, Computran Systems Corporation, Hackensack, NJ (1973-1975).
Graduate Student, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ (1972-1973).
Electrical Engineer-in-Training, Colgate Palmolive, Jersey City, NJ (1969-1971).

Professional Summary

I have experience in transportation engineering and planning that includes Advanced Traffic Management and Information Systems research and development, incorporating programming and analysis of a dynamic traffic assignment model with a multiple objective routing algorithm; programming and analysis of cellular automata models of pedestrians and traffic; deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technology;  neural network time series analysis; Petri-net modeling of  real-time traffic signal control; analysis of air quality and delay for regional mobility and capacity projects; congestion management systems; geographic information systems; travel demand forecasting; travel demand management, transportation systems management, highway capacity project development; design and simulation of High Occupancy Vehicle lanes (HOV); tunnel and corridor traffic surveillance and control system design; critical path method and computer-aided management system use in capital program management; development of transportation improvement programs, work programs, and long range plans; and design of electrical control systems for automated processes.

These diverse transportation activities have spanned 25 years. At Computran I was involved in real-time traffic control for Colorado Springs and Miami, traffic surveillance and control system design for the West Side Highway Corridor in NYC, and a study of Route 3 in New Jersey that involved simulation modeling of HOV lanes (FREQ). At the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission (NY/NJ/CT) I wrote reports on and participated in regional intermodal planning, transportation systems management project development, and regional transportation improvement program (TIP) production.  At Parsons Brinkerhoff I did a system design of traffic surveillance and control for the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore.   At NYSDOT, prior to educational leave (1993-1996), I had several assignments including highway project development; port development; liaison with three Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) for TIPs, work programs, and long range plans; and project and program management using critical path method software (PACII) for a 5-year $750M regional program.

Beginning with my doctoral studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, funded by an Eisenhower Fellowship, I moved into various research activities (see the list of publications, presentations, and reports and in the summary of research interests).  Over the past few years I have been busy expanding my horizons at NYSDOT to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and traffic flow theory.  At Rensselaer I had a 3.93 GPA and completed a doctoral thesis.  The thesis involved creating a traffic simulation model and a multiple-objective shortest path algorithm to analyze various routing strategies for in-vehicle route guidance systems (IVRGS).  Several presentations and publications based on various aspects of the thesis were made at the Transportation Research Board and ITS-America Annual Meetings.  In addition to publication in the Transportation Research Record, my ideas on artificial intelligence for IVRGS have been published in Transportation Research-C.

These efforts in simulation modeling have extended to pedestrians - a formerly intractable problem.  The Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics Committee of the Transportation Research Board has encouraged this effort with three publications to date.  Publications have resulted from this seminal work in cellular automata simulation of pedestrians in the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Proceedings, the Transportation Research Record, Transportation Research-B, the 14th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Flow Theory and the Artificial Life VII Conference.  Research and several papers on ITS and pedestrian modeling are in production.

Currently, in the NYSDOT Mid-Hudson Valley Regional office that consists of seven counties just north of New York City, I am involved in the capital programming, development, and deployment of the Lower Hudson Valley ITS. I have worked closely on NYDDOT's deployment of  TRANSCOM's TRANSMIT project. I have been working with the MIT transportation group on applying high speed analytical dynamic traffic assignment models and the MITSIM and DynaMIT models in deploying ITS in the Lower Hudson Valley.  This collaboration between NYSDOT and MIT is underway with two projects that I head at NYSDOT.

Teaching and Workshops

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Spring 1993, Strength of Materials (20.2530), Teaching Assistant.
School of Environmental and Vocational Arts, 1988-1998, Instructor of workshops on Environmental Sustainability, Photovoltaics and Wind Energy Use.
The Dulac School, Fall 1980-Spring 1981, Mathematics Instructor.

Publications, Presentations, and Reports

Academic Theses

A Multiple-Perspective and Multiple-Objective Approach to Real-Time Dynamic Traffic Assignment for Advanced Traffic Management and Information Systems, Doctoral thesis, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1996.

Feasibility of Park-and-Ride for Trans-Hudson Bus Passengers to the Manhattan CBD. Master's thesis, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1973.

Refereed Journal Articles

Emergent Pedestrian Streams and Cellular Automata Microsimulation, with J.L. Adler, submitted for presentation and publication to Transportation Research Board 80th Annual Meeting 2001 (in review).

Principled Negotiation and Multiagent Transportation Management and Information Systems, with J.L. Adler, submitted for presentation and publication to Transportation Research Board 80th Annual Meeting 2001 (in review).

Intelligent Path Evaluation for Dynamic Route Guidance Systems, with J.L. Adler and J. Casello, Transportation Research Journal Part C (in review).

Modeling Driver Needs and Assessing Network Effects for Real-Time In-Vehicle Route Guidance, with J.L. Adler and T.L. Wu, Transportation Research Journal Part C (in review).

Modeling Four Directional Pedestrian Flows, with J.L. Adler, accepted for publication by Transportation Research Board 79th Annual Meeting 2000, in Transportation Research Record, Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

Cellular Automata Microsimulation for Modeling Bi-Directional Pedestrian Walkways, with J.L. Adler, Transportation Research Journal Part B (in publication).

Cellular Automata Microsimulation of Bi-Directional Pedestrian Flows, with J.L. Adler, Transportation Research Record 1678, Journal of the Transportation Research Board, pp. 135-141, 1999.

Toward the Design of Intelligent Traveler Information Systems, with J.L. Adler, Transportation Research Journal, Vol 6C, No. 3, pp. 157-172, 1998.

Emergent Fundamental Pedestrian Flows from Cellular Automata Microsimulation, with J.L. Adler, Transportation Research Record 1644, pp. 29-36, 1998.

Real-Time Multiple Objective Path Search for In-Vehicle Route Guidance Systems, with J.L. Adler and G.F. List, Transportation Research Record 1588, pp. 10-17, 1997.

Contributing Author to Edited Compilation

Cellular Automata Model of Emergent Collective Bi-Directional Pedestrian Dynamics, with J.L. Adler, in Artificial Life VII: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Artificial Life, eds. M.A. Bedau, J.S. McCaskill, N.H. Packard, and S. Rasmussen, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 437-445, Portland Oregon, August 1-6, 2000.

Bi-Directional Fundamental Flows from Cellular Automata Microsimulation, with J.L. Adler, in Transportation and Traffic Theory, Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (14th ISTTT Conference), ed. A. Ceder, Pergamon Press, Amsterdam, pp. 235-254, Jerusalem, Israel, July 20-23,1999.

Neural Net Freeway Travel Time Estimation, with M.J. Embrechts and G.F. List. Intelligent Engineering Systems Through Artificial Neural Networks, Vol. 4, Proceedings of the Artificial Neural Networks in Engineering (ANNIE '94) Conference, eds. C.H. Dagli, B.R. Fernandez, J. Ghosh, and R.T.S. Kumara, ASME Press, pp. 1135-1140, St. Louis, November 13-16,1994.

Refereed Proceedings

Vision for TMC Application of Dynamic Traffic Assignment, Proceedings of ITS America Tenth Annual Meeting 2000, Boston, MA.

Assessing ATMS/ATIS Performance Using Stochastic DTA Modeling or TMC Field Data, with G.F. List and J.L. Adler, Proceedings of ITS America Seventh Annual Meeting 1997, Washington, D.C.

Professional and Public Lectures

DynaMIT for Westchester County Dynamic Routing, with Moshe Ben-Akiva,  Transportation Research Board 80th Annual Meeting, 2001(panelist).

Emergent Pedestrian Streams and Cellular Automata Microsimulation, with J.L. Adler, Transportation Research Board 80th Annual Meeting 2001.

Principled Negotiation and Multiagent Transportation Management and Information Systems, with J.L. Adler, Transportation Research Board 80th Annual Meeting 2001.

Cellular Automata Model of Emergent Collective Bi-Directional Pedestrian Dynamics, with J.L. Adler, Artificial Life 7 Conference, Portland Oregon, August 1-6, 2000.

Applications of Analytical Dynamic Traffic Assignment Models, with I. Chabini, submitted to INFORMS Meeting, Salt Lake City, Spring 2000.

Emergent Collective Behavior of Cellular Automata Microsimulation of Pedestrians, presented at the Center for Transportation Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 7, 2000.

Modeling Four Directional Pedestrian Flows, with J.L. Adler, presented at Transportation Research Board 79th Annual Meeting, 2000.

Bi-Directional Fundamental Flows from Cellular Automata Microsimulation, with J.L. Adler, presented at the 14th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (14th ISTTT Conference), Jerusalem, Israel, 1999.

Assessing Network and Driver Benefits from Bi-Objective In-Vehicle Route Guidance, with J.L. Adler and T.L. Wu, presented at Transportation Research Board 78th Annual Meeting, 1999.

Cellular Automata Microsimulation of Bi-Directional Pedestrian Flows, with J.L. Adler, presented at Transportation Research Board 78th Annual Meeting, 1999.

ITS in the Hudson Valley, presented at the Center for Transportation Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Luncheon Seminar Series, December 4, 1998.

Multiple-Objective Thoughts on Dynamic Traffic Assignment, with J.L. Adler and T.L. Wu, presented at INFORMS Meeting, Montreal, Spring 1998.

Emergent Fundamental Pedestrian Flows from Cellular Automata Microsimulation, with J.L. Adler, presented at Transportation Research Board 77th Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1998.

Cellular Automata Microsimulation of Pedestrian Movements, with M.J. Embrechts and J.L. Adler, presented at IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Orlando, Florida, October, 1997.

Assessing ATMS/ATIS Performance Using Stochastic DTA Modeling or TMC Field Data, with G.F. List and J.L. Adler, presented at ITS America Seventh Annual Meeting, 1997.

A Multiple Perspective and Multiple Objective Approach to Real-Time Dynamic Traffic Assignment for Advanced Traffic Management and Information Systems, presented in the Seminar on Doctoral Student Research at the Transportation Research Board 76th Annual Meeting, 1997.

Real-Time Multiple Objective Path Search for In-Vehicle Route Guidance Systems, with G.F. List and J.L. Adler, presented at Transportation Research Board 76th Annual Meeting, 1997.

Flow Control and Routing Strategies for Advanced Transportation Management and Information Systems, with G.F. List and J.L. Adler, presented at Transportation Research Board 76th Annual Meeting, 1997.

Toward the Design of a Machine Intelligent Routing Assistant, with J.L. Adler, presented at Transportation Research Board 76th Annual Meeting, 1997.

Real-Time Flow Control Strategies for DTA, with G.F. List and J.L. Adler, presented at Bi-Annual INFORMS Meeting, Washington, D.C., Spring 1996.

A Cellular Automata Model of Vehicular Self-Organization and Nonlinear Speed Transitions, with F. Bonetto and M.J. Embrechts, presented at Transportation Research Board 75th Annual Meeting, 1996.

A Decentralized Approach to Dynamic Traffic Assignment, presented at the ITS-NY 2nd Annual Fall Research Conference, October 1995.

Neural Net Freeway Travel Time Estimation, with M.J. Embrechts and G.F. List. Artificial Neural Networks in Engineering (ANNIE '94) Conference, St. Louis, MO, November 13-16, 1994.

Simulation Modeling of IVHS-Based Dynamic Routing, presented at the Fourth Annual Transportation and Planning Symposium, Albany, NY, November 1994.

Reports and Other Publications

Hudson Valley ITS Business Plan and Development Concept, with W.D. Fitzpatrick, NYSDOT, May 2000.

A Prototype Real-Time Control System for Signalized Networks, Task 2, Market Assessment Report, with G.F. List and F. DiCesare. NYSERDA report, 1994.

A Prototype Real-Time Control System for Signalized Networks, Task 1, State of the Art Report, with G.F. List and F. DiCesare. NYSERDA report, 1993.

New York State Department of Transportation Region 8 Comprehensive Project Report. Monthly, 1987-1991.

Mid-Hudson South Transportation Improvement Program 1985, with R. Robbins, 1985.

Poughkeepsie-Dutchess County Transportation Improvement Program 1985, with R. Robbins, 1985.

Newburgh-Orange County Transportation Improvement Program 1985, with R. Robbins, 1985.

Traffic Control System, Fort McHenry Tunnel, 1978. Parsons Brinkerhoff report.

Tri-State Regional Planning Commission Transportation Improvement Program 1977, with B. Adler and R. Bilbey, Tri-State Regional Planning Commission report, 1977.

Urban Corridor Demonstration Program, Corridor Evaluation, with B. Adler. FHWA Urban Corridor Demonstration Program, Tri-State Regional Planning Commission report, NTIS DOT-FH-11-7778-TS-7940, 1977.

Urban Corridor Demonstration Program, Manhattan CBD - North Jersey Corridor - Evaluation of Fringe Parking, FHWA Urban Corridor Demonstration Program, Tri-State Regional Planning Commission report, NTIS DOT-FH-11-7778-TS-7910, 1976.

Feasibility of an Exclusive Bus and Car Pool Lane on New Jersey Route 3, with B. Adler and D. Parietti, Computran Systems Corp. report, NTIS FH-11-8312, 1975.

Traffic Surveillance and Control in the Westside Highway Corridor, with N. Yagoda, B. Adler, and D. Parietti, Computran Systems Corp. report, 1974.

Reviews of Manuscripts

Transportation Research Record (1996-present, 10 manuscripts)
IEEE (2000, 3 manuscripts)
Transportation Research B (2000, 1 manuscript)

Computer Skills

Languages:    C/C++, JAVA, SIMAN/ARENA
Traffic Models:   HCS, CORFLO, NETSIM, TRANSYT7F, TEXAS, PASSER, FREQ, INTEGRATION, DynaMIT
Network Flows:   LINDO, NETSOLVE
Artificial Intelligence:  METANEURAL
Petri-nets:    SIMNET
Internet:    NETSCAPE COMPOSER, HTML
Statistics:     STATGRAPHICS
GIS:     ARCVIEW
Capital Programming: PACII
Operating Systems:  DOS, WINDOWS95, UNIX
Word Processing:  WORD PERFECT, MS WORD
Spreadsheets:   QUATTRO PRO, EXCEL, LOTUS 123
Drawing/Presentations: WP PRESENTATIONS, HARVARD GRAPHICS, POWERPOINT

Professional Societies

Institute of Transportation Engineers
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

Community Service

SEVA Foundation (School of Environmental and Vocational Arts), President and Board Member, 1992-present.

Other Licenses

Amateur Radio General Class License N2WZH.

Research Interests

My doctoral research focused on a stochastic multiple-objective network flow problem under dynamic demand with an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) application.  The work investigated driver behavior as a multiple objective path search problem as well as the network effects of various dynamic routing schemes.  For the thesis I coded and constructed a mesoscopic traffic simulator to test the ITS concepts under investigation.  There is considerable need to better understand network flow problems and driver behavior as operation of transportation systems becomes increasingly important. Most recently, I have been working with the MIT transportation group to apply Ismail Chabini's high speed analytical dynamic traffic assignment models and Moshe Ben-Akiva's MITSIM and DynaMIT models in deploying ITS in the Lower Hudson Valley.  This collaboration between NYSDOT and MIT is underway in two studies of DTA application at NYSDOT.

I also have an interest in artificial intelligence (AI) applications to transportation problems.  My AI-related research includes a neural network time series analysis of freeway speeds and  AI concepts in Advanced Traveler Information Systems for in-vehicle navigation systems. The work on AI concepts in Advanced Traveler Information Systems for in-vehicle navigation systems can be expanded in many ways.

My efforts in simulation modeling and AI have extended to pedestrians - a formerly intractable problem. I have applied cellular automata modeling to directional pedestrian flows and have produced a network model as well (see http://www.ulster.net/~vjblue for an on-line demonstration).  The success of this seminal work is encouraging for intermodal models and planning and design for pedestrians.

I am interested in using game theory and cellular automata of auto traffic to better understand the relationships between road, mode, and land use.  I postulate that it is possible to develop an artificial social model that will capture the emergent properties of social self-organization with respect to road, mode, and land use.  Also, given the success of game theory with problems such as the Prisoner's Dilemma, it seems a natural extension to investigate as a non-cooperative spatial game such interrelated concepts as dynamic routing, driver behavior, and delays from inter-vehicular dynamics.  This research would be of use in transportation planning models and dynamic traffic assignment for ITS.