INRIX, a transportation technology company, is working with departments of transportation in Ohio and Pennsylvania to make its data available and usable across a variety of state systems.
In Ohio, officials know just how effective winter road treatment programs are when they see speeds return to normal after a snow or ice event, Stephanie Marik, a systems engineer with the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), said.
ODOT uses multiple INRIX data points to inform its Traffic Operation Assessment Systems Tool (TOAST), used by Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) applications to rank major corridors, Marik said. The TOAST information, which includes speed, travel times and other areas such as crash data, is used to guide transportation management and operations platforms.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) also uses INRIX real-time speed data as part of its “queue protection system” on 23 corridors covering approximately 1,150 miles of roads across the state, Jennifer Kuntch, PennDOT deputy communications director, said. Its system is able to send messages to drivers about slowdowns, via dynamic signage.
“Speed data is one of the primary inputs when configuring the design for the queue protection corridor,” Kuntch said in an email, indicating PennDOT runs a speed analysis on a corridor using the historical speed data during the design phase “to establish appropriate slow and stopped conditions for each road.”
“When those predefined speed thresholds are crossed in the real-time INRIX speed data, dynamic real-time queue protection messages are posted on changeable message signs,” she said. “The driving distance to the queue updates every minute to adjust for changing conditions.”
These roadside warnings have reduced crashes by 11 percent overall, and fatal truck crashes by 46 percent, according to INRIX.
Elsewhere, the state of Arizona is turning to broadband infrastructure along its heavily traveled interstate highways to serve as the foundational technology for delivering real-time intelligent transportation information to drivers, supporting traffic cameras and even enabling wrong-way detection sensors.
