Government Technology - September 2008 - (Page 19)

“We can actually look at the entire state and say which roads are clear, which roads have snow and ice, and which roads we would consider dangerous.” Spencer Wood, deputy director, Division of Information Technology, Ohio Department of Transportation ture. ITS is a smart investment of taxpayers’ dollars. It offers the ability to make our existing transportation infrastructure more efficient,” he said. the state. Launched last October, Buckeyetraffic .org is built on the Virtual Earth platform, giving users a detailed and easily navigable Ohio map. On the Web site, a driver can examine a route and its potential traffic problems. In addition, the state’s 250 traffic cameras are linked directly to the map, giving users a real-time view of what’s transpiring. “Let’s say I want to check my commute home,” said Spencer Wood, deputy director of the Ohio Department of Transportation’s Division of Information Technology. “I can go zoom into the Columbus area, it can show me all roadway activity for Columbus, and it’s going to pull up all the roadway construction. It’s going to show me any roadway closures or restrictions due to debris, disabled vehicles, flooding, roadwork, ice, and even what we call ‘other’ — basically other events that we couldn’t account for [in] a specific category, whether it be a gas leak, a fire that’s closed down a road or something like that. So [users] get all that information, but also if you know this is a route you go home on every day, you can also select ‘My Cameras,’ and look at all the cameras in Columbus.” Traffic and weather sensors across the state are linked to the site and layered onto Virtual Earth as an administrator chooses. Weather data is updated every five minutes, and in a place like Ohio, the information can be invaluable during brutal winters and unpredictable summers. For example, this summer the Midwest suffered through significant flooding from the swollen Mississippi River. Along with physical Map Quest It will be some time before the Mobile Century experiment becomes reality. The project partners still have many tests to conduct. Plans are being drawn up for an experiment involving thousands of cars and volunteers spread across a much larger area. In the meantime, there are ITS solutions ready to be deployed that could have an impact on traffic congestion. In Ohio, the state department of transportation uses Microsoft Virtual Earth to help drivers and transportation officials better manage traffic. Visitors to www.buckeyetraffic.org find a wealth of traffic information for traveling through There’s a lot more to traffic management than day-to-day annoyances like debris in the roadway. Whether it’s flooding in the Midwest or hurricanes in the South, Web sites like Buckeyetrafﬁc.org can be vital when people are trying to avoid — or escape — a natural disaster. Such information can also aid public safety personnel trying to reach the scene of an emergency. 19 http://www.buckeyetraffic.org http://www.buckeyetraffic.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - September 2008

Government Technology - September 2008 Contents Point of View On the Scene Big Picture Four Questions for... Up Close Fork in the Road On Time and On Target On the Record, Off the Charts Government’s Greatest Asset? Easy Access Finding the Money Security in the Wireless World The Case for Mobility Spectrum Products Two Cents signal:noise Digital Communities Contents A New Government Paradigm News is Now Transformation Web 2.0 Style Protecting Community Media Thinking Regionally Government at La-Z-Boy Speed

Government Technology - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.