ITS Heartland wins NOCoE award at Transportation Research Board Meeting in Washgington D.C.

By Tom Hein, Public Affairs Manager for Sedgwick County

At the 98^th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington D.C. this week, the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE) presented the ITS Heartland chapter with an award in the category of Improving Agency TSMO Capabilities. TSMO is a Federal Highway Administration toolbox for Transportation Systems Management and Operations.

According to the ITS Heartland’s website, TSMO focuses on actively managing the multi-modal transportation network to deliver improved safety and mobility outcomes. Its philosophy is managing our valuable transportation system in a way that preserves what we have already built by using investments wisely on projects that improve operations.

 

Presenting the award is NOCoE managing director Patrick Son (left) and accepting is Randy Johnson, KC Scout manager and ITS Heartland president, Tom Hein, WICHway manager and project administrator, and consultant project manager Matt Volz.

Kansas DOT is the lead state for the ITS Heartland project. The chapter is a five-state Intelligent Transportation Systems coalition that also includes Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma DOTs, transportation industry consultants and product suppliers.

ITS Heartland’s mission is to improve the quality of life for those transportation uses who live and invest in America’s Heartland, though advanced transportation technologies and communications.

 

The TSMO University Education program created a series of archived webinars and live training sessions. 

The winning project was the ITS Heartland TSMO University Education Program, which created a series of archived webinars and hosted live training sessions on traffic incident management, highlights intelligent transportation technologies that increase roadway safety and improve traffic information sharing. The webinars encourage cross-jurisdictional agency cooperation and provide continuing traffic operations and management outreach to transportation administrators, planners, designers, maintenance crews, first responders and other transportation professionals.

NOCoE received more than 60 entries in four award categories. Other winners were the Arizona DOT for best TSMO project, North Carolina DOT for their response to a major incident or special event (Hurricane Florence), and in the public communication category, Oregon Traffic Incident Management responders for their use of social media.

For more information visit the NOCoE website at www.transportationops.org.

Learn more about the ITS Heartland TSMO program at www.itsheartland.org/tsmo-trainings/.

Traffic Incident Manager saves countless lives through training of first responders

Rusty James, right, received recognition from ITS Heartland earlier this year for his dedicated work training thousands of emergency repsonders with the TIM program in the KC metro area. 

Traffic Incident Response Week, Nov. 13 – 19, was created to raise awareness of the dangers emergency responders are exposed to when they work at a traffic incident.

Rusty James, provides training to law enforcement officials,
emergency responders, and highway workers

Training emergency responders across the nation using the Federal Highway Administration’s Traffic Incident Management (TIM) program creates a coordinated response to clear traffic incidents efficiently with less risk to emergency responders, those involved in crashes and drivers that pass through an incident area.

As part of the Kansas City Scout traffic management center, TIM has been used in the KC metro area for many years. The manager of this effort until recently was Rusty James.

In May, Rusty was recognized by ITS Heartland, a five-state intelligent transportation systems organization, with its President’s Award in appreciation for his dedicated work training thousands of emergency responders.

There is no way to count the number of lives Rusty James saved over his many years of training law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMTs, tow operators, DOT maintenance workers and other first responders. But there is no doubt the he is responsible for many people going home after an incident because of the training he provided. Thank you Rusty!