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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

The National Operations Center of Excellence Announces First Annual TSMO Award Winners

Arizona, North Carolina, Oregon DOTs and the ITS Heartland Chapter won for creative and cutting-edge transportation management and operations initiatives that saved lives, time and money.

 

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 29, 2018 – The National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE), today announced the winners of the inaugural NOCoE Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Awards.

They are: the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), and the ITS Heartland Chapter/HDR.

These awards celebrate the creativity and commitment of industry practitioners in the expanding discipline of TSMO. TSMO aims to maximize roadways for efficiency and safety through management and operations ingenuity. 

The mission of NOCoE is to empower the TSMO community to succeed by building its knowledge, skills and abilities.

Patrick Son, Managing Director of NOCoE, said: “We were overwhelmed by the more than 60 submissions from across the country, far more than we'd anticipated for an inaugural contest. We believe this demonstrates the increasing importance of TSMO in getting the most out of our existing transportation system. Each entry showed creativity and highlighted the fantastic traffic management and operations work going on around the country to address everything from hurricane preparedness to connected and autonomous vehicles. Over the coming months, we plan to share as many of these ideas as possible to benefit the entire industry.”

The NOCoE TSMO Awards were open to cities, counties, MPOs (RPO, COG), state DOTs and private sector organizations. Winners in each of the four categories highlighted a successful TSMO project undertaken in the last five years that provided a clear benefit to the traveling public.

Below are the NOCoE TSMO Award categories, the winners and the runners up:

• Major incident or special event planning and response – Recognizing an agency or organization’s response to a specific incident or special event utilizing TSMO.

• Winner – North Carolina Department of Transportation - NCDOT Hurricane Florence Preparation and Response
• Runner Up – Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC), Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) and Information Logistics, Inc. (ILOG) - 511PAConnect (two-way direct emergency communication between the agency and a stranded traveler’s smartphone)

• Improving your agency’s TSMO capabilities – Recognizing an agency or organization that has successfully integrated CMM/CMF into its structure and the TSMO benefit that came from it.

• Winner – ITS Heartland Chapter of ITS America and HDR - ITS Heartland’s TSMO University Educational Program
• Runner Up – Florida Department of Transportation - Florida’s Truck Parking Availability System (TPAS)

• Best TSMO project (creative solution) – Recognizing a successful “on the ground” project that demonstrates the solution(s) of improved system management and operations compared with traditional capacity-based approaches.

• Winner – Arizona Department of Transportation - US-60 Restripe Project: ArizonaDOT Transforms Road Safety Using Full Suite of TSMO Capabilities (reducing crashes by 70% at an interstate merge)
• Runner Up – Arizona Department of Transportation - ArizonaDOT’s Wrong-Way Vehicle Detection System & State Trooper Co-Location

• Public Communications – Recognizing an agency for successfully increasing public or specific audience awareness of TSMO solutions and benefits.

• Winner – Oregon Department of Transportation - @OregonTIMResponders: Use of Social Media to Engage Oregon Responders Across Disciplines and Promote Responder Safety Laws and Practices
• Runner Up – Michigan Department of Transportation - Development and Maintenance of the MDOT TSMO Implementation and Strategic Plan

Each category winner will receive round-trip travel to attend the 2019 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting where they will be invited to present their projects to attendees and industry leaders.

Additionally, an overall winner will be selected from among the four category winners and be presented with the NOCoE TSMO Award Trophy. Also, one individual will be honored with the annual TSMO Champion Award, who will be selected by the judges for advancing TSMO and changing the way people and organizations think about transportation.

Throughout 2019, award submissions will be shared as case studies on the NOCoE website. For additional information on the winning projects, please visit: https://transportationops.org/tsmoaward.

Son said, “These awards showcase the very best in innovative thinking in the transportation industry and it’s becoming more clear every day that TSMO is the foundation for our future mobility.”

About the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE)

The mission of NOCoE is to empower the TSMO community to succeed by building its knowledge, skills and abilities. NOCoE supports practitioners who operate the nation’s transportation management systems, by connecting them with best-practices and experts to save lives, time and money. Born of a partnership of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) with support from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), we serve those in state departments of transportation, regional planning organizations, municipalities, local agencies as well as private sector organizations. For more information, please visit www.transportationops.org.

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