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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).

Source Organization Location

Washington
,
DC

Operations Area of Practice

    Corridor and Arterial Traffic Management
    Active Traffic Management (ATM)
    Travel Demand Management
    Freeway Management
    Regional Traffic Signal Operations & Program Management
    Connected Vehicles
    Real Time Traveler Information
    Systems engineering
    ITS System architecture
    Interagency Agreements / Cooperation / MOUs
    Communicating Reliability Information
    Organizational Models
    Data Acquisition, Support and Hosting
    System Performance Definition, Monitoring and Reporting

Organizational Capability Element

    System Architecture / Engineering
    Traveler Information
    Vehicle Systems/Connected Vehicles
    Active Traffic Management/Travel Demand Management/Pricing
    Outreach & Marketing
    Outsourcing/PPP

Content Type

Best Practice

Role in Organization

Senior Engineer
Researcher/Academic
Principal Engineer
Manager / First Line Supervisor
Director / Program Manager
Engineer
Senior Manager
Media / PIO

Publishing Organization

FHWA

Objective

Learning
How-To
Available Tools
Prioritization

Document Downloads

Prime Contractor
Parsons Brinckerhoff
Issue Date
Publication Number
FHWA-HOP-13-008