Skip to main content

Local DOTs hold court

The heads of the Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia departments of transportation met with a group of technology and transportation professionals at the ITS America annual meeting in National Harbor to discuss local challenges and up-coming projects in the area.
May 21, 2012 Read time: 1 min
Putting heads together: Terry Bellamy, Director of DDOT, Beverley Swain-Staley, Secretary Maryland DOT and Sean Connaughton, Virginia DOT Secretary of Transportation who partcipated at the transportation leaders breakfast.
The heads of the Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia departments of transportation met with a group of technology and transportation professionals at the 560 ITS America annual meeting in National Harbor to discuss local challenges and up-coming projects in the area.

Citing a need to coordinate their state’s transportation priorities to meet the needs of D.C. motorists, the officials called on the industry to continue the integration push and create solutions that will help them manage traffic across state borders.

“We need to be ready for the next century, and we cannot build our way out. We have to look at technology to pave the way,” said Director of the 2134 District Department of Transportation Terry Bellamy.

Sean Connaughton, the Secretary of the 1747 Virginia Department of Transportation, went on to say that the industry is good at collecting traffic data and disseminating that information to drivers, but more work needs to be done to turn traffic information into suggested courses of action.

The discussion was moderated by Mort Downey, a senior advisor with 4983 Parsons Brinckerhoff, and sponsored by 81 Kapsch.

Related Content

  • Governments must look beyond short-term spending of public funds
    February 2, 2012
    Phil Pettitt, Chief Executive of innovITS, the UK's ITS Centre of Excellence, argues that governments need to look beyond the short-term when looking to pump-prime economic recovery with public funds. It seems, in the current economic climate, that a 'good' day is one in which no company is announcing job cuts or going into administration. Consumer demand is down and businesses are retrenching, cutting costs and fretting over the consequences of shrinking opportunities and order books. It has not been this
  • Progress of ICT transport research projects
    February 3, 2012
    Juhani Jääskeläinen, head of the ICT for Transport Unit, DG Information Society and Media, European Commission, details the results of Call 4 for research projects in ICT for transport. Since the closure of the call and evaluation process during the summer of last year the European Commission (EC) has been negotiating and signing contracts with projects which were selected from proposals submitted to Call 4 of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) fo
  • WTS International: Attract, Connect, Sustain, Advance
    December 7, 2022
    WTS International exists to connect transportation professionals, and to help prepare the next generation of the mobility workforce. But it takes everyone to create change, says Lindsay Shelton-Gross
  • Florida’s Altamonte Springs uses Uber pilot program with Uber to expand transportation coverage
    April 5, 2017
    To Uber or Not to Uber, that is the question cities must answer as they consider the pros and cons of inviting private transportation service providers to fill transportation gaps. Back in 1999, Frank Martz, city manager of Altamonte Springs, Florida, had an idea to expand transportation services to areas not covered by the local bus company.