TOLLROADGIS
by Jack Roper
AT YOUR
FINGERTIPS
HOW A NEW GIS IS ENABLING MORE
EFFICIENT TOLL ROAD OPERATION
Pennsylvania Turnpike has a reputation for innovation. Its current
technological centrepiece is the award-winning CAAR (Catch it early,
Act, Analyze and Review) GIS (geographic information system) for traffic
management, which can even be accessed via a giant touchscreen
32 TOLLTRANS 2020
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Hailed as America’s
First Superhighway, the
Pennsylvania Turnpike was
born from the hardship of
the Great Depression. By the 1930s,
mass-produced automobiles demanded
new paved highways and President
Roosevelt established a series of
federally-funded New Deal projects to
remedy high unemployment, including
a new Pennsylvania toll-road. The
Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission
(PTC) was founded in 1937 and the first
166-mile stretch from Irwin to Carlisle
opened just after midnight on October 1,
1940. Today, the 552-mile Turnpike spans
the state east-west from Pittsburgh to
Philadelphia, carrying 550,000 vehicles
daily. The historic road has become
a testbed for state-of-the-art innovation,
with PTC winning two International
Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association
(IBTTA) Technology Awards in three
years and securing the coveted
President’s Award in 2019 with its CAAR
data platform. This record of success has
been built on valuing failure.
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