Aerial Insights into Congestion and Safety

Traffic congestion and safety are two of the most critical issues in transportation. Traditional, ground-level data collection methods are often ineffective at capturing the severity of these problems and do not allow for accurate, trajectory-level analysis. Since 2016, Quality Counts has taken the lead exploring use cases for both free-flying and tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or ‘drones’, including conflict and safety analysis, driver behavior, queue, delay, parking, and a variety of other unique survey types.

Our team has made great strides in developing collection protocols for drones that offer a verifiable, bird’s eye recording of field conditions and traffic behavior while complying with strict FAA regulations, proper UAV flight practices, and detailed safety protocols.

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PROJECT HIGHLIGHT: TOPSAIL SCHOOL OPERATIONS STUDY

TOPSAIL, NORTH CAROLINA

Right off of US 17, only 15 minutes away from Surf City and Topsail Island, are the joint campuses of Topsail Elementary, Middle, and High Schools. With limited access points and two schools operating on the same bell schedule, parents often find themselves queued in long lines waiting to pick up and drop off students.

QC was tasked with collecting aerial footage to better understand the severity of the congestion and how the schools manage traffic flow. Our team kicked off this effort by meeting with faculty to discuss their traffic management plans and collecting samples of expected queue areas and conflict points. Starting early the following day, our pilots completed the observation tasks by strategically positioning a tethered drone 200 feet in the air to record drop off and pick up patterns. Collection spanned two days for two continuous hours in the mornings and afternoons to cover the bell schedules of all three schools. As the tethered drone observed smaller areas of known congestion, an additional free-flying drone was stationed 400 feet above ground with a campus-wide view. These shorter flights took place during the twenty minutes before each school’s morning bell and twenty minutes following their afternoon release.

The end result of these observations was over nine hours of video clearly showing not only the severity of campus congestion, but also the variety of flow patterns used by the schools, queueing along US 17, and some unexpected pedestrian movements among campuses. QC’s aerial services delivered a clear, holistic behavioral snapshot that will allow engineers to develop a better solution to accommodate every parent, student, and teacher in Topsail.

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OTHER COMPLETED AERIAL PROJECTS

• Multi-Lane Roundabout Studies - OH, IN
• FHWA Bottleneck Trajectories– CA, VA, MD
• Fixed-Wing Aircraft Parking Studies – NC, VA
• NCDOT Queue and Delay Studies– NC
• Post-Construction Marketing Videos– VA

For more information on the use of UAVs contact Mark Shields mshields@qualitycounts.net

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