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

  • TikTok’s Mr Barricade speaks out
    August 27, 2021
    Civil engineer Vignesh Swaminatham (aka Mr Barricade) shares his thoughts with Adam Hill about TikTok, infrastructure, ITS, quick-build projects, bike lanes, inequality, local politics - and dancing
  • Simplifying enforcement systems type approval
    August 1, 2012
    Martyn Harriss looks at what we can do to simplify the type approval of enforcement equipment in Europe. I doubt that there are many who can remember the days when policemen hid in the bushes with stopwatches and flags to catch speeding motorists - and I'd suggest that back then there were few who were caught who would have dared question the accuracy of those watches or those who operated them. Probably, fewer still here in Europe could have dreamt that a supranational body such as the European Union (EU)
  • ULEZ: is it the best way to tackle air quality?
    August 31, 2023
    Issues of equity and economics need to considered in London's ultra-clean air zone expansion
  • Hartford’s tailors winter maintenance on Esri’s GIS platform
    August 5, 2016
    The in-house winter maintenance and vehicle tracking system built by the Public Works Department in Hartford, Connecticut, coped with record snowfalls and cut costs too. When it comes to dealing with the effects of mother nature, transport agencies can find themselves in a lose-lose situation: criticised if the roads or rail lines are disrupted by snow, ice or floods for more than a few hours and lambasted for wasting money if the equipment and stockpiles put in place for a hard winter remain unused.