Cross-cutting Issues

Educating future transportation professionals is a critical challenge facing the transportation

community. This paper summarizes experiences and outcomes from an innovative online

magazine developed to excite and attract teenagers to transportation and details its evolution

from a static, bi-monthly publication to a dynamic, and continuously updated site with user

contributions. In about 3 years the Go! Magazine has grown steadily in its ability to attract

young readers to transportation. This paper provides an overview of the development of Go! and

future plans.

Midwest Transportation Consortium

Institute for Transportation

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

This study attempts to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS) based system utilized in identifying ramp site that can potentially benefit from ramp signaling. To achieve this, this paper first identifies and evaluates existing ramp signaling guidelines, and then establishes a set of warrants with consideration for their appropriateness and the availability of the required data. A web GIS system is developed that integrates data required for ramp signaling justification from various databases that currently exist and operate independently. The established warrants are included in the system to ease the analysis. The interface and functions of the system are described in this paper, followed by a case study from a set of ramps along a segment of I-95 in Miami-Dade County in Florida.

AECOM Technical Services, Inc.

Florida International University

Florida DOT

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

This presentation will give an overview about the differences between voluntary and compulsory use of electronic HOS logging, what technologies are available, examples from successes and failures in other parts of the world, the key success factors for an EOBR regulation, and how compulsory EOBRs will look like.

Continental Automotive

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

Public agencies are under increasing pressure to find new and innovative ways to improve efficiency in the delivery of capital projects, including intelligent transportation systems projects. Especially in light of the global recession, government project managers are also constantly being challenged to deliver more capital projects with less internal human resources. The design-build approach offers an excellent opportunity to achieve successful projects in this context. By shifting more of the design responsibility (and, thus, risk) to the DB contractor, design-build can offer many benefits to owner agencies, such as accelerated deployment, reduced costs, and innovative design.

However, fully realizing these benefits requires a government agency to shift away from many aspects of the traditional design-bid-build approach that they are familiar with. For agencies new to DB, this is a daunting prospect. ITS projects and other projects that involve technology only add to the challenge. The inclusion of an experienced owner’s engineer within the DB team can alleviate these concerns and further advance the benefits of the DB project delivery approach, both for agencies that are new to DB as well as those with an established track record of successful design-build projects.

Ministry of Transportation, Ontario

URS Corporation

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida

In 2005, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) - Highway Division, initiated a Design Build (DB) procurement for a project to deploy a fiber optic communications infrastructure and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) in Western Massachusetts. A 2008 notice to proceed was issued to G4S Technology to design and construct, along with their DB partners, a $30,761,664 ITS Project with 34 CCTV and 17 VMS, on I-91 and I-291. This Project was a first in many ways: the first DB project under new state DB legislation, the first major MassDOT ITS project since the late 1990’s, the first MassDOT project to fully apply FHWA’s ITS Systems Engineering process, and the first project to include shared resource infrastructure as part of the construction scope. Major institutional changes occurred over the Project life including replacement of agency leadership thereby allowing access to previously unavailable FOC, Legislative passage of a law integrating various state transportation agencies into a Department of Transportation, and Legislative creation of the Mass Broadband Institute – an agency charged with providing broadband access to rural un-served and underserved communities. This paper will examine how, during a period of major institutional change, MassDOT and the DB team were able to take advantage of new opportunities to redesign and build an enhanced communications system for the Commonwealth.

Massachusetts DOT

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida