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Berkeley Highway Lab (BHL)
The Berkeley Highway Laboratory (BHL) is a test site covering two miles of I-80
immediately east of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Sponsored by Caltrans and maintained by CCIT, BHL is used by transportation researchers to conduct investigations and test technology in a real-traffic environment.
 Applications of BHL include micro-traffic studies, simulation calibration and validation, and field-testing of detection equipment and other hardware. Because of its extensive traffic monitoring capabilities, the BHL is useful for testing pilot projects.
This year, CCIT overhauled the BHL website and placed it under its own domain (http://bhl.calccit.org). Site visitors can find a running archive of one week’s worth
of one-frame-per-second video. The site now provides a simplified interface and user-friendly content.
CCIT has used the BHL to set up and test a WiMAX network that connects various field elements at BHL. A promising wireless standard, WiMAX, or a close cousin, may soon become an attractive option for public transportation agencies to provide data backhaul for field elements. CCIT is deploying and evaluating a WiMAX network to demonstrate that potential and improve operations at BHL.
The BHL includes eight cameras, sixteen directional dual-inductive-loop-detector stations sampling at 60Hz, and an array of Sensys wireless magneto-resistive detectors, all dedicated to monitoring traffic for research purposes.
During the 2006-2007 fiscal year, BHL hosted several Caltrans and academic research projects, including the following:
• A joint effort between Cal State East Bay and Ohio State University to explore the possibility of using vehicle re-identification algorithms to provide loop-diagnostics and travel times using the existing loop detectors’ infrastructure.
• Ph.D. candidate Nawaporn Wisitpongphan of Carnegie Mellon University used
BHL data to find headway distributions in calibrating a traffic model to help test
a vehicle communications protocol.
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