Radio Frequency Identification System to Measure Crossing and Wait Times of Commercial Vehicles at U.S. Border Crossings

Abstract

The design and deployment processes described in this study were used for deployment of a system based on radio frequency identification technology at the Pharr–Reynosa International Bridge in Pharr, Texas. The overall goal of this deployment was to implement a system that would automatically and reliably collect, archive, and disseminate wait times and crossing times of U.S.-bound commercial vehicles at international land border crossings and thereby monitor the performance of these crossings. Such performance measures provide stakeholder agencies and users with information to assist in various travel-related decisions, establish a common denominator to estimate the effect of improvements and modifications in operation, and establish indices that can be easily communicated to a nontechnical audience and still remain relevant. Results are also described from the initial analysis of wait and crossing times of U.S.-bound commercial vehicles at the border crossing. Researchers believe that the study will greatly benefit stakeholder agencies at the border that want to implement similar systems to measure border crossing performance. At the same time, the research community can benefit from the real-time and archived data, and it is expected that new research opportunities focused on performance measurement and monitoring of international border crossings will be generated.

Exploring the potential of market-available connected vehicle data in border crossing time estimation

“…For a considerable time, the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been the primary provider of crossing times at the US POEs, which is estimated through three main solutions: unaided visual observation, camera snapshots, and driver surveys (Villa et al, 2017). However, these estimates require a significant amount of human input and are unreliable with limited samples (Rajbhandari and Villa, 2012). Recently, new techniques have been adopted to monitor crossing times at POEs.…”

“…Recently, new techniques have been adopted to monitor crossing times at POEs. In general, there are three commonly used methods to estimate border crossing times: queue length detection, fixed point vehicle reidentification, and dynamic vehicle tracking (Rajbhandari et al, 2012a; The San Diego Association of Governments, 2017). Queue length detection measures the arrival and departure rates of vehicles and calibrates models to estimate queue end.…”

“…Dynamic vehicle tracking uses wireless signals emitted by devices placed in vehicles to estimate time spent at a given spot or between various locations. However, these solutions require a large installed base of sensors, which are costly to implement and maintain (Khan, 2010; Rajbhandari et al, 2012b; Ramezani and Geroliminis, 2015).…”

Smart Tracking System for School Buses Using Passive RFID Technology to Enhance Child Safety

“…RFID tags have also been used in the transportation field for different reasons. Rajbhandari and Villa designed and deployed an RFID technology based system to measure wait times, and crossing times of U.S. bound commercial vehicles at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in Pharr, Texas [8]. Araujo and Araujo designed a self-positioning system using RFID tags, smart phones and smartcards, as well as real time image and ID recognition.…”