Brief descriptions of recent/ongoing major projects involving the 570 miles of tolled and un-tolled superhighway and 524 miles of navigable inland waterway that comprise the NYS Thruway Authority and Canal Corporation (Authority) include:

 SLiDER -  The Authority is nearing completion of a Straight Line Diagram Environment for Reporting (SLiDER).  SLiDER will display numerous types of highway and bridge related descriptive, condition and capital planning data at once along a “straight line” diagram of the New York State Thruway.  The user can literally “slide” the diagram along the 570 miles of superhighway that run through the center of New York State from Buffalo to New York City and comprise the New York State Thruway.  Additional selection criteria allow the user to expand or shrink the milepost range to view data regarding infrastructure types, condition ratings and measurements, accidents counts and accident rates, past and planned construction and maintenance activity, and daily usage rates.  The resulting side-by-side layering of data readily identifies interrelationships that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to discern. As compared to other alternatives, NYSTA personnel can readily modify the ASP.NET 2011 and Microsoft Silverlight technology of SLiDER to depict almost any linear relationship of infrastructure and related data.  For example, NYSTA additionally plans to apply SLiDER to the 524 miles of navigable inland waterway that comprise the York State Canal System.

 Thruway Financial Package (TFP) – The Authority recently replaced its previous legacy Financial Management System (FMS) and aging accounts payable, purchasing, inventory, fixed assets, and fleet management programs with an integrated system that allows far greater control, more timely reporting and less redundancy. 

 Trns–port – The Authority recently replaced its aging construction contract letting and award systems with the preconstruction modules of a suite of software products marketed by AASHTO.  Specifically, the Authority implemented  Trns•port Estimator, Expedite, PES and LAS.  In addition, the Authority evaluation licensed and then dropped Trns•port SiteManager and DSS (SAS based Decision Support System) due to its limited requirements as compared to the cost of licensing and maintaining these systems.  Instead, the Authority plans to continue using a custom built MS Access application to manage its field offices and progress payments and has developed custom processes to aggregate and analyze progress payment and final quantity data at the item level. 

 BidX and Paperless Processing – The Authority is currently attempting to implement fully electronic Internet based bidding via a secure electronic “lock box” maintained by a neutral third party (www.BidX.com).  In addition, the Authority plans to migrate from its current paper-based processing of preconstruction data to solely selling contract plans and specification on compact disk and distributing contract amendments via its Internet site by November of 2010.

 Automated Traffic Management and Highway Advisory Systems – This Authority recently  completed and is currently progressing numerous projects to expand and/or enhance its ability to manage traffic via a variety of highway advisory and variable messaging and systems and social networks. 

 Highway and Higher Speed EZ-Pass and Toll System Upgrades – The Authority recently completed numerous projects to implement higher speed (i.e.: 20 mph) and highway speed EZ-Pass toll collection and automated vehicle classification systems at many of its toll plazas and barriers.  In addition, the Authority is currently partnering with 24 highway agencies spanning 14 States to develop the “next generation” of the EZ-Pass electronic toll collection system that the Authority was largely responsible for initially developing in the early 1990’s.   This Interagency Group (http://www.e-zpassiag.com) recently selected Kapsch TrafficCom IVHS Inc. to provide an estimated 40 million 915 mhz transponders over the next decade that will largely mirror the capabilities of the current EZ-Pass transponder with a similar, but smaller and much less expensive unit  (http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/5394).  

 Wi-Fi (Wireless Internet) – The Authority recently installed wireless internet connections in the interior customer seating and dining areas of all twenty seven of its Travel Plazas.

 gINT, CADD and ProjectWise – The Authority  recently began requiring submission of subsurface exploration/geotechnical data (i.e.: depiction of soil borings) via use of a reporting and data management tool named gINT.  The Authority is currently working with Bentley, which markets gINT, to smooth its implementation and use of this system and would be keenly interested in expanding use of gINT to track similar data such as pavement cores.  In addition, the Authority has worked extensively with Bentley over the past few years to upgrade its ProjectWise and CADD systems. 

 

Permits Plus – The Authority continued to expand use of a highly customizable commercial-off-the-shelf system named Permits Plus to manage a wide range of revenue and non-revenue based permits.  Applications include managing the Authority’s issue of Work, Occupancy, Building, Utility, Advertising Device and Logo Sign permits as well as tracking of Environmental permits received by the Authority and real estate leases and abandonments.  The Authority eventually plans to consider upgrading to Accela Automation, which is the next generation of Permits Plus.

 ARMS -  The Authority recently implemented a browser-based Accident Reporting Management System (ARMS).  This application extracts data from police accident reports that occur along the Thruway, allows an analyst to review the report add additional data as/if necessary and then updates a centralized database with data that can be readily accessed and further analyzed.  

Windows 7 Upgrade – The Authority is currently testing all of its applications under Windows 7 in an effort to facilitate a system wide upgrade from Windows XP sometime during the first quarter of 2012.

 Capital Planning – The Authority recently enhanced its Capital Planning and Construction-related Internet portal to present Capital Planning Management System related data in a much more detailed and transparent format.  The Authority is also keenly interested in learning more about options for developing bridge and pavement management systems.

 ITS JTrac – The authority recently used a no-cost open-source application development system named JTrac to develop a “help desk” like system for tracking the current operational status and long term maintenance of its Intelligent Transportation Systems a (ITS) and related ITS assets. 

 DataViewer -  The Authority similarly recently developed a “DataViewer” using similar low cost technology as an alternative to further expanding its use of relatively complex and costly commercial reporting tools to facilitate ad-hoc end-user driven reporting against a wide range of databases.