Skip to main content

Project of the year win for TransCore Silicon Valley project

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s (VTA) State Route (SR) 237 Express Lanes, for which TransCore serves as lead integrator, received the 2012 Transportation Project of the Year Award from the San Francisco Bay Area Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). VTA is implementing the Silicon Valley Express Lanes Program to provide congestion relief in one of its major Bay Area commuter corridors. As part of the program, the SR 237, US 101, SR 85 and parts of I-680 corridor will convert the existin
February 27, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
1791 Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s (VTA) State Route (SR) 237 Express Lanes, for which 139 Transcore serves as lead integrator, received the 2012 Transportation Project of the Year Award from the San Francisco Bay Area 5667 Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).

VTA is implementing the Silicon Valley Express Lanes Program to provide congestion relief in one of its major Bay Area commuter corridors. As part of the program, the SR 237, US 101, SR 85 and parts of I-680 corridor will convert the existing HOV lanes to express lanes.

Since the opening of the 237 Express Lanes, commuters are saving between five and twenty minutes compared to those driving in the general purpose lanes during peak commute periods. The travel time for commuters in the general purpose lanes has also improved by upwards of seven minutes.

The project received top honours for being a key benefit to the public by providing commuters with an additional travel option, making better use of the existing roadway and improving operations in the corridor.

Converting high occupancy vehicle (HOV) to high occupancy toll (HOT) or express lanes has become a popular approach to better utilise capacity on existing roadways in major urban areas across the country. The project demonstrates the ability to use roadway pricing as an effective travel demand management tool by controlling the demand through dynamic pricing, which changes the toll rate as the level of congestion changes. Today, over 10,000 solo drivers a week are choosing to use the express lanes for travel time reliability.

“The results from the SR237 Express Lanes demonstrate the benefits provided to the traveling public from systems of this nature,” said Michael Mauritz, TransCore managing director for the Western Region and project manager. “TransCore was honored by the opportunity to lead the design and deployment of this program and is pleased VTA earned this deserved recognition.”

This project utilises TransCore’s unique combination of traffic management and toll systems expertise. The company’s work as system integrator included the development of the system software that includes the dynamic pricing algorithm as well as design and installation of AVI equipment, dynamic message signs, traffic monitoring detectors and CCTV cameras.

Related Content

  • Flexibility, interoperability is key to future traffic management
    February 3, 2012
    Jon Taylor of Faber Maunsell and Tabatha Bailey of Transport for London describe how an unusual mix of traffic practitioners, researchers and industry are working together to build new tools for the future. As we face higher expectations for managing congestion from both citizens and politicians, and as more and more data is becoming available from new sources, our traffic management challenge is changing.
  • Widest bridge in the world Port Mann open in Vancouver
    April 25, 2013
    Port Mann Bridge, designed to growing regional congestion and improve the movement of people, goods and transit throughout greater Vancouver, is now open for business. The widest bridge in the world, the Port Mann Bridge located in the metro Vancouver area, in British Columbia, Canada, features an Open Road Tolling (ORT) system, also called All Electronic Tolling (AET), which will ultimately cross all 10 lanes of traffic.
  • Optibus makes GTFS Manager available in Europe
    March 1, 2024
    First stop for General Transit Feed Specification is partnership with Geoactio in Spain
  • Reauthorization 2012: the facts laid bare
    September 12, 2012
    A reauthorization bill for transportation came into law in July 2012, rubber stamping federal funding increases through the 2014 financial year, among other things. The new bill presents the good, the bad and the ugly of transportation infrastructure in the US, writes Pat Jones On June 29 this year, the US House of Representatives and Senate both approved the conference report on the ‘Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act’ or MAP-21. President Obama signed this legislation into law on July 6.