Introduction

The VII California testbed effort is groundbreaking. It is a large-scale testbed extending approximately 60 miles of roadway (freeways and arterials), and is a significant collaborative effort with “can do” teammates, public sector, private companies – to include a host of automotive companies – and academia. This “can do” attitude has resulted already in noteworthy lessons learned for Northern California and other U.S. regions alike. The VII California testbed expanding, with a network of DSRC roadside units (with 12 at this writing and plans form up to 40), applications with on-board equipment (on light duty and transit vehicles), and a leveraged, established backhaul network (with heterogeneous backlinks, T1 wireline, 3G modem and coming online, WiMax).

Recent and present work includes:

• Establishment of a “sniffer” working with a 170-type controller (and conceivably with any controller), combined with a message set, that provides wireless (DSRC) signal state information to approaching, equipped cars (Page Mill Rd and SR 82, El Camino Real)
  
• A 2070-type controller interface to provide signal state information via DSRC link directly from controller-to-computer-to-radio roadside equipment, in support of the Federal Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems - Violation project (5th Av and SR 82)
  
• In an OEM-academia collaboration, development of curve overspeed warning system with an accident-prone, tight on- and off-ramp (US 101 and Marsh Rd.)
  
• Scalable channel switching experiments by saturating an intersection with DSRC transceivers
  
• Integrated probe (with light duty passenger vehicles traveling on arterials), 511 (from the existing 511.org ETC-based probe data), in-vehicle signage, transit signal priority and signal sniffing experiment to a bus platform.
  
• Use of emerging SAE J2739 standard for large scale probe simulations.
• Plans for real-world VII tolling and probe vehicle applications, leveraging infrastructure in the SF Bay Area.

What is our future? Because all participants are voluntary co-owners of the testbed and this is fits squarely into state, regional and private – and national – needs, VII California will continue up to and through deployment, should research results point toward that. This effort is dynamic and ongoing, as partners and applications are being sought, with research results and, ultimately, a deployment framework are being developed. We anticipate a bright, sustained future.