New National Center Will Support Better Transportation Safety and Mobility

The National Operations Center of Excellence – a new, comprehensive technical services center and website – was on Jan. 11, unveiled in Washington during the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).  The NOCoE will help transportation professionals utilize state-of-the-art, real-time proactive management techniques to improve safety and system reliability, combat congestion and better serve the traveling public.

“The TRB Annual Meeting is a fitting backdrop for the launch of this innovative new center,” said Bud Wright, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “Transportation professionals in general and our State DOT members in particular will benefit from the professional assistance, technical resources and support to be provided by the center.”

The NOCoE is a collaboration of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America with support from the Federal Highway Administration. Officials from all four agencies joined others from the transportation community at the ribbon-cutting event.

“We know that by doing an optimal job of managing and operating our highways we can dramatically improve safety and travel-time reliability,” said NOCoE Executive Director Dennis Motiani, the former assistant commissioner for transportation systems management for the New Jersey Department of Transportation. “I’m honored to be asked to lead the NOCoE effort,” said Motiani.  “It’s our goal to provide support and information about effective operations and management practices, so transportation agencies can better utilize taxpayer dollars.”

The NOCoE will offer an array of peer exchanges, webinars, assessments, on-call assistance, and training on topics such as integrated corridor management, active traffic management, traffic management centers, and incident response.

“I am very proud that AASHTO and our partners conceived, planned, funded and launched the Center in just two years” said Don Hunt executive director or the Colorado Department of transportation and chairman of the National Operations Center of Excellence Board of Directors. ”The Center will be invaluable to a range of public and private entities working to improve the operational performance of the transportation system,” said Hunt.  “The knowledge sharing benefits of the Center are critically important as we enter a period of rapid technological shifts in transportation.”

The Institute of Transportation Engineers provided specific assistance to the Center’s website which was developed through the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2).  The website includes case studies, a knowledge center, links to key sites, discussion forums, and a comprehensive calendar.

Thomas W. Brahms, ITE executive director and chief executive officer, said, “Our expectation is that the Center will provide resources to improve the transportation experience of the traveling public to enable them to get where they want to go in a timely, safe, and reliable manner. This new partnership brings together the transportation community’s different perspectives by sharing best practices, good and bad experiences to form lessons learned as well as engaging a network of peers to improve the operation of the transportation system for all users.“

ITS America also provided significant guidance in the development of the Center. “ITS America is thrilled to have been a partner from the beginning in the planning, design, and implementation of the National Operations Center of Excellence,” said Thomas E. Kern, ITS America’s interim president and chief executive officer. “It is incumbent on all of us who have a stake in the transportation systems management and operations community to support all efforts to mainstream our work and ensure that we make an effectively managed road network integral to our work.“