Overview
On September 14th, 2017 the National Operations center of excellence hosted a peer exchange session at the AASHTO Subcommittee meeting on TSMO in Rapid City, South Dakota. In this peer exchange the State DOTs discussed and shared the successes and challenges of advancing TSMO strategies. The peer exchange consisted of three parts:
- Town Hall discussion with an Operations Chief who is leading the way in becoming a TSMO focused DOT
- Overview of key resources and services available for TSMO professionals
- State DOT technology roundtable on signal phase and timing (SPaT), Traffic Incident Management, and predictive analytics tools
The town hall discussion was kicked off with a quick intro from Denise Inda, the Chief Traffic Operations Engineer who is leading Nevada DOT’s way into becoming a TSMO focused DOT. Denis Inda’s description of Nevada DOT’s experience with TSMO led the discussion into a fruitful and engaging peer exchange with other DOT agencies. In the first part of the discussion, different states went over their different approaches regarding the Institutionalization of TSMO. While some states such as Tennessee and Nevada have a structured TSMO group, others have a champion-based TSMO program where the TSMO-related tasks are distributed among non-TSMO groups and staff (i.e. Maryland, and North Carolina). Another topic of discussion was integration of TSMO with other groups such as long range planning. Integrating TSMO concepts into the brick and mortar aspects of the organization has helped agencies with funding the TSMO program. Additionally, different collaboration strategies were discussed for promoting TSMO including multi-agency collaboration, internal collaboration with other non-TSMO departments, and getting support for real world application of TSMO.
In the SPaT Challenge part of discussion, Pennsylvania DOT and Utah DOT shared their experience with Signal Phasing and Timing implementation. Pennsylvania’s deployment of Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) helped with pushing the connected vehicles initiatives within the department of transportation and the legislators. In Pittsburgh, a total of 24 signalized intersections are operational. Carnegie Mellon was the lead in deploying these with assistance from the city, MPO, and Penn DOT. Salt Lake City, Utah has four signalized intersections that have been equipped with DSRC in late 2016. An additional 25 intersections are planned for deployment shortly. The intent of Utah’s project is to deploy MMITSS (Multi-Modal Intelligent Traffic Signal Systems), a V2I application built to manage traffic signal priorities. In this deployment, buses that are behind schedule will be given consideration for signal priority.
Check out the proceeding document on our website for more details on this peer exchange session.