Impacts of Technology Advancements on Transportation Management Center Operations

Overview

Directed by the Traffic Management Center (TMC) Pooled Fund Study, this report provides guidance to TMCs and transportation management agencies on how to better position themselves operationally in anticipation of future technology changes and advancements. Eight top trends of TMC operations are identified, including those that come from both within and outside the transportation community. Social media is one of these eight (page 3-11) and is also identified as one of the three most transformative technologies (proliferation of wireless communication and involvement of third parties are the other two) for its use in traveler information and crowdsourcing. Individual strategies—80 in total—are presented to assist TMC managers with addressing the trends. The strategy descriptions include successful practice examples and key references as applicable. Eleven strategies pertaining to social media begin on page 4-46. A comprehensive summary table of all trends and strategies begins on page 4-61 (Table 2). Finally, recognizing the potential difficulties in successfully implementing individual strategies, the report also presents tools for building a framework for the technology and mindset developments focusing on tools that cover internal TMC processes and technologies (e.g. TMC architecture, TMC staff KSAs, training program, business plan, regional coordination and implementation efforts, and communicating success).