TOLLROADGIS
TOLLTRANS 2020
www.TrafficTechnologyToday.com 35
Each year, IBTTA’s
(International Bridge,
Tunnel and Turnpike
Association) Toll Excellence
Awards recognize industryleading
innovation across
fi ve tolling categories. The
trail-blazing Pennsylvania
Turnpike Commission (PTC)
has now won the IBTTA’s
Technology Award twice in
three years, for 511PAConnect
in 2017 and CAAR in 2019.
At IBTTA’s September 2019
Annual Meeting in Halifax,
Nova Scotia, PTC also carried
off the industry’s highest
accolade: the IBTTA
President’s Award.
Catch It Early is the mantra
of Pennsylvania duty offi cers
working to maintain turnpike
traffi c fl ow and travel times.
CAAR (Catch it early, Act,
Analyze and Review) is
a geographic information
system (GIS) which unites
multiple data layers in
a single platform, providing
offi cers with a suite of visual
awareness tools. PTC
partnered with Waze,
AccuWeather, Inrix and
Verizon, who provide
real-time data feeds.
These are pooled in ‘data
lake’ of video, photo, radar,
wind, traffi c speed, traveltime
and weather information,
ready to be integrated in
CAAR’s GIS dashboard layers.
“We get crowd-sourcing
information every 30 seconds
and speed every two minutes,
but it’s not geolocated to any
linear piece of our roadway,”
explains PTC’s John Parker.
“The data lake is a table with
half-mile road segments,
which enables us to spread
the data through the CAAR
program and to see and
analyse, as quickly as
possible, any roadway
segment.”
Before CAAR, duty offi cers
had to contend with an
unwieldy combination of
systems to detect incidents,
track emergency responders
get messages out to drivers.
But now, armed with the
unrivalled situational
overview which CAAR
provides, they can monitor
all key safety variables
through a single tool,
nipping traffi c situations in
the bud and deploying the
optimum response at the
right time and location.
CAAR was developed by
PTC’s GeoAnalytics Team in
collaboration with their
Traffi c, Engineering and
Operations Department
and has already surpassed
initial objectives.
AWARD WINNER
“Strategically, we’ve worked to
establish a culture which says we’re
all in this together,” explains PTC chief
executive Mark Compton. “Often in
government, when something goes
wrong there’s an unspoken rule that you
never mention it, but we don’t see it that
way. It’s not a failure if something isn’t
great fi rst time: it’s just reset, recharge
and keep moving.”
PTC has established an Innovation
Council and Compton points to a current
crop of at least six new technology
projects: while some may fail, others
could blossom into future IBTTA Award
contenders. “I’m proud of our colleagues
for embracing disruptions to make us
a better organization,” he continues.
“Sometimes we relish the failures. If we
have a bad day, we get together and work
hard to ensure it never happens again.
That’s how 511PAConnect came about.’
IMPROVING COMMUNICATION
In January 2016, Winter Storm Jonas
raged through the state with arctic
savagery. Blizzards and record snowfall
left queued drivers trapped for hours,
20 miles from an exit on some stretches,
struggling to access reliable updates as
responders struggled to reach them.
Consequently, Pennsylvania’s Governor
challenged PTC and partner agencies to
devise an improved mechanism for
communicating with drivers before
winter returned. The resulting system,
Above: Accessing
CAAR’s aggregated
traffi c data via
touchscreen
Above left: Waze is one
of CAAR’s data sources
Below: The Turnpike
was opened in 1937
42
The number of times
511PAConnect wireless
emergency alerts have
been deployed since
December 2016
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