TransCore helps New York survive hurricane devastation

New York’s Traffic Management Centre faced its toughest test yet when Hurricane Sandy hit the United States at the end of October last year. Power was maintained to the building in Long Island City, Queens, throughout, although backup systems were operational and ready to supply critical transportation systems if power had been lost. Support from TransCore staff included making sure the TMC networks and transportation systems were operational, including the TransSuite Traffic Control System (TCS), which had
February 28, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
TransCore staff assisted in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, helping to get over 1400 intersections back online as New York returned to its feet (Pic: David Shankbone)

New York’s Traffic Management Centre faced its toughest test yet when Hurricane Sandy hit the United States at the end of October last year.

Power was maintained to the building in Long Island City, Queens, throughout, although backup systems were operational and ready to supply critical transportation systems if power had been lost.

Support from 139 Transcore staff included making sure the TMC networks and transportation systems were operational, including the TransSuite Traffic Control System (TCS), which had 8,200 intersections online. TCS made it through the storm without failing but by Monday as the eye of the storm had passed, there were intersections off-line due to flooding, loss of power and physical damage in the field.

On the Tuesday morning, the main optical fibre cable connecting the TCS to the city-wide wireless network was cut. However, TransCore determined that TCS was operational with no problem, and the TMC networks were not compromised.

The following day, Wednesday, the fibre was repaired and TransCore assisted by troubleshooting the intersections, working with the electricians and operators for the rest of the week. Intersections that could not be put back on line numbered about 700 in the flooded lower Manhattan area and the same number in flooded areas in Brooklyn and the outer boroughs.

Since NYCDOT’s headquarters were in the flooded area in lower Manhattan, commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, her deputy Lori Ardato and their management group relocated to offices in the TMC building in Queens. They made periodic visits to the TMC, specifically to Bruce Schaller (deputy assistant commissioner in charge of the TMC), requesting reports on the status of the intersections.

Support continued into the beginning of the following week as the TMC continued its recovery efforts and as TransCore staff returned to work. The NYC TransCore office lost internet connection but never lost electricity. Most staff returned once public transportation resumed.
Detection, Monitoring & Machine Vision Networking & Communication Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Integrating ferry transport into smart ticketing
    March 1, 2013
    Transport authorities are increasingly looking to integrate ferry travel into the mix of public transport. David Crawford finds out more. The new A$370m (US$398m) Opal public transport smartcard system being installed by the Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS)-led Pearl consortium in Sydney is geographically the largest in the world to date. The consortium includes the Commonwealth Bank of Australia; Australian retail payment system provider ePay; Australian infrastructure engineering company Downer Group; a
    Read More
  • Idaho finds the right formula for winter maintenance
    August 5, 2013
    Idaho’s use of key performance indicators to determine the effectiveness of its winter maintenance programme put it on the Best of ITS America shortlist. Idaho Transportation Department’s budget for winter maintenance is more than $25m – almost half of which is spent on snowplough operations. The State’s geography ranges from desert to mountains and Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) has a 500+ strong winter maintenance fleet to undertake snowploughing and spreading salt, salt brine, magnesium chloride a
    Read More
  • Traffic sensors give cyclists green lights
    February 1, 2013
    Transport officials in Columbus, Ohio, are following in the footsteps of Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon and Berkeley, California and recalibrating their traffic signal sensors to accommodate the growing number of cyclists in the city. Nearly all the city’s 1,000 traffic lights are connected to road sensors that detect the presence of vehicles at the intersections and adjust the lights accordingly. Cycles are another story; they don’t contain enough metal to trigger the sensor. This has caused some cyclis
    Read More
  • Cooperative systems - traffic management centres of the future?
    February 1, 2012
    What will the traffic management centre of the future see and do? TNO's Frans op de Beek, who was responsible for putting together the Cooperative Mobility Demonstrations which included the Traffic Management Centre at this year's Intertraffic exhibition in Amsterdam, offers some insights. The road tours and demonstrations which took place at this year's Intertraffic to mark the conclusion of COOPERS, CVIS and SAFESPOT, the European Commission's (EC's) three major cooperative mobility projects, gave visitor
    Read More

Highlighted Content