Austrian transportation technology giant Kapsch TrafficCom has upgraded the Traveler Information System in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area of Texas and is integrating it into the region’s traffic management software platform.
Kapsch has completed the successful next-generation system for the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The new platform is powered by Kapsch’s EcoTrafiX traffic management software, with the company acting as the lead systems integrator on the project.
The fully integrated system allows multiple agencies in the region to share information, optimize operations, and balance traffic flow while simultaneously providing travelers with personalized, real-time traffic and transit information that enables them to make better decisions about how they travel in the region. Kapsch will maintain the new system for NCTCOG for a two-year period, and will continue to enhance it based on new data sources and customer feedback when applicable.
The Dallas Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) project initially comprised the US 75 corridor and used an Information Exchange Network to provide regional agencies with real-time data about roadway conditions, which were shareable with the public via the ‘511 system’.
Under the leadership of NCTCOG, the project scope increased to include more than 19 agencies in 12 counties and more than 5,900 miles (9,500km) of regional roads. The new system provides a platform of integrated applications including a bilingual (English-Spanish) public website and a phone system, subscription-based XML web services, and a new performance measurement dashboard that analyzes road network conditions.
As part of the system upgrade, the mobile app, interactive voice response (IVR) and web services were enhanced. Crowdsourced Waze data was also introduced to facilitate incident detection capabilities and enhance the richness of traffic data collected in the system. These new features meet the increased demand of regional users, while offering enhanced situational awareness and coordination for all the participating agencies.
The integrated platform is powered by Kapsch’s EcoTrafiX software, which provides regional transportation agencies with an integrated, multimodal platform for managing their transportation network and sharing real-time information with both each other and the traveling public. The EcoTrafiX software system boosts the efficiency of transportation operators by providing a fully map-based situational awareness of the entire intersections and arterials network, accelerating collaboration between stakeholders, optimizing safety and response plans via automatic incident detection, and forecasting future traffic conditions.
“North America is one of the fast-growing markets for urban mobility solutions,” said Georg Kapsch, CEO of Kapsch TrafficCom. “Projects like these in Dallas show how both travelers and transportation agencies can directly benefit from having an integrated transportation platform that optimizes traffic management and information sharing.”
