Government Technology - September 2008 - (Page 20)

damage the flooding caused, it also wreaked havoc on residents’ ability to travel. “We’ve been seeing millions of [Web site] hits, especially during bad weather times,” Wood said. “We can also look at wind speed direction, and it’s also a dashboard for us from a management point of view. 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.” Since Buckeyetraffic.org was built on the Virtual Earth platform, Ohio Department of Transportation engineers avoided the expense of building the application themselves. Wood estimated that so far the application has cost $60,000 — far less than it would’ve cost to build the software internally. What’s more, Buckeyetraffic.org takes a step toward crossing the digital divide. Many U.S. citizens can’t afford devices such as in-car GPS. Because it’s free, comprehensive and easy to use, Buckeyetraffic.org makes real-time, statewide traffic data available to people who may otherwise Back in 1977, be unable to access it. And it’s a 40-page, UC much easier for developers to Berkeley study work with than standard GIS on the impact of ITS on bus driver systems, according to Kevin effectiveness Adler, Microsoft geospatial solufound “the most tions specialist. visible beneﬁts “One way we can work with were seen in the transportation is we can allow automatic the people who are responsible processing of information related for collecting and then disseminating the data to easily publish to transferring that data onto Virtual Earth, passengers and meaning you do not need to use in the increasedthe traditional ESRI tools that speed with which emergency and five years ago were the only game maintenance calls in town for pushing out data on a can be handled.” map,” Adler explained. “Virtual Earth is designed for the typical developer to throw data on it and publish it. That eliminates the resources requirements of using that ESRI analyst. Your standard Web developer can do this. You’re giving them an easy tool to use to create a platform for dissemination of data.” Bus drivers for the Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority in Ohio use rugged laptops to wirelessly transmit routine information to the agency’s central ofﬁce. ITS Goes Public Bringing ITS to public transit is another piece in the transportation puzzle. In Portage County, SEPT_08 Ohio, the regional transit service helps many citizens get where they need to go. Many of the riders, like the elderly and disabled, couldn’t otherwise reach their destinations. The Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority (PARTA) has served less-fortunate citizens for years, providing low-cost transportation within the county and surrounding areas. Like most other transportation authorities, PARTA relies on buses to do the brunt of its people-moving work. Some of PARTA’s buses do door-to-door routes to pick up those who can’t reach bus stops on their own. In the past, those routes’ bus drivers had to fill out paper manifests with all sorts of data — travel time and mileage, addresses, passenger numbers and pickup times. The data was then relayed via radio to a central office, where it was taken down and entered again for billing purposes. The paperwork and radio traffic was becoming increasingly unmanageable. PARTA Business Development Manager Bryan Smith discovered a surprising solution: rugged laptops. “The [Panasonic] Toughbook is really designed for the mobile environment,” Smith said. “I use the computer every day at my desk and thought, ‘How hard would it be to take the smaller version of this — any kind of laptop — and move it into a vehicle?’” But the answer is it’s tough to do, he said, because it’s often hot humid, cold and dusty inside a diesel bus and standard computer components don’t stand up to those conditions. Smith said the Toughbook is perfect for his drivers because it features a touchscreen instead of a keyboard and can transmit all the mundane manifest data wirelessly. It also serves as a GPS device, which lets PARTA continually enhance routes, improve travel times and increase fuel efficiency. In addition, the Toughbooks work like an emergency beacon, which given the temperamental Midwest weather, can suddenly be very important. “We can pinpoint the location and find out what’s wrong,” Smith said. “One example that happened soon after we installed these was that one of our routes goes into downtown. There was snow on the roads, there was a snowplow coming down the freeway and it flung a chunk of ice through the windshield of a bus. The driver got hit in the face with glass, really couldn’t see all that well, but he was able to hit his emergency button and dispatch was able to say, ‘He’s right there on the highway.’” Smith and PARTA are working on other ITS solutions that go beyond buses. A traffic management coordination center is in the works that will feature interactive voice response, online trip planning and Web-based trip requests. Projects like PARTA, Buckeyetraffic.org and Mobile Century, aren’t the solution to the current and future traffic issues people face every day. But innovations like them may one day add up to a sum greater than its parts. And maybe, just maybe, ITS will eventually make it easier to share the road. 20 http://Buckeyetraffic.org http://Buckeyetraffic.org http://Buckeyetraffic.org http://Buckeyetraffic.org http://www.govtech.com

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

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