Skip to main content

MDOT recognised for ITS technology leadership

Two high-tech projects championed by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) have been recognised by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) with ITS America's Best of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Awards. MDOT earned an award in the Best New Innovative Practice-Partnership Deployment category for its automatic vehicle location (AVL) and maintenance decision support system (MDSS) project and was a finalist in another category, Best New Innovative Practice-Susta
September 18, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Two high-tech projects championed by the 1688 Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) have been recognised by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (560 ITS America) with ITS America's Best of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Awards.

MDOT earned an award in the Best New Innovative Practice-Partnership Deployment category for its automatic vehicle location (AVL) and maintenance decision support system (MDSS) project and was a finalist in another category, Best New Innovative Practice-Sustainability in Transportation, for its I-94 truck parking information and management system (TPIMS) project. In addition, the department won a Best Technical Paper award for a white paper it submitted on the TPIMS project. The recognition was bestowed upon MDOT at the 6456 ITS World Congress held in Detroit Sept. 7-11.

"I'm thrilled that MDOT employees, long national leaders in innovation, are being recognized for finding efficiencies through leveraging technology," said State Transportation director Kirk T. Steudle. "I'm confident MDOT employees' passion for doing things safer, smarter, faster and cheaper will lead to even more breakthroughs in intelligent transportation."

AVL uses GPS (Global Positioning System) to enable MDOT to remotely track the location of its vehicle fleet through a web interface and allows MDOT to efficiently and effectively deploy snowploughs and track winter maintenance activities. MDSS is an automated decision-support tool for road maintenance supervisors. It is a multi-layered, information system that provides forecasts, predictions, reports on observed weather and road conditions, serves as a training tool, and serves as a management support system that MDOT uses year-round.

MDOT's TPIMS project was unveiled earlier this month to assess truck parking availability along the I-94 corridor in southwest Michigan and deliver real-time parking availability information to truck drivers. MDOT is using a number of high-tech methods to share parking availability information, including dynamic roadside truck parking signs, website and smartphone applications, and a fleet of pilot trucks equipped with on-board connected vehicle equipment.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • San Francisco bans facial recognition
    July 23, 2019
    San Francisco has become the first US city to ban facial recognition software – and it is a move which has implications for transit agencies as well as police forces worldwide Big Brother is watching you’, goes the famous saying. Well, not in San Francisco he isn’t. Legislators in the Californian city – home to the tech gold rush and embracers of all things forward-looking – have decided that, after all, there should be limits to technology’s hold over us. By a margin of eight votes to one, the city’s
  • Detection analysis technology successfully predicts traffic flows
    February 3, 2012
    David Crawford investigates new detection analysis technology from IBM. Locations on both the East and West Coasts of the US are scheduled for early deployments of IBM's new Traffic Prediction Tool (TPT) statistical analysis model for the fine-time resolution and near-term prediction of road flow conditions. Developed by IBM's Watson Research Laboratories, TPT is designed to analyse data from the the key detection indicators - average vehicle volumes and speeds passing a location in a given time interval -
  • Vehicular networking architecture for local road weather services
    August 19, 2015
    The Finnish Meteorological Institute is currently testing two-way delivery of local weather data as Timo Sukuvaara explains. Road weather information is one of the key ways in which ITS can help reduce traffic accidents and fatalities – which is why the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has long provided road weather services. Now, the CoMoSeF (Cooperative Mobility Services of the Future) project has been developing communication methodologies to deliver road weather services directly to vehicles and g
  • Xerox wins $14.5 million contract with Calgary Transit
    March 22, 2012
    Bus schedules in the Canadian city of Calgary will be more accurate and predictable as Xerox installs a new intelligent transportation system made up of computer-aided dispatch and vehicle location technologies. As part of a two and a half year, US$14.5 million contract, the computer-aided dispatch and automatic vehicle location (CAD/AVL) system will help Calgary Transit improve fleet management and on-time arrivals. Xerox will install the new system so Calgary Transit can track and dispatch all 986 buses a