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Issue 1

Our current issue assesses the impact of Obama's stimulus plan and takes a look at freight rail's continuing economic importance.

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Where our team of guest writers discuss what they think about the current trends and issues.

Yonah Freemark
Writer, The Transport Politic

2010: The Year of Intelligent Infrastructure

What will 2010 bring for American infrastructure?
13 Jan 2010

Make Better Decisions with Intergraph’s Transportation Solution

Intergraph | www.intergraph.com


The situation is critical. Our nation’s highway infrastructure system is literally at the crossroads. Thousands of miles of aging and deficient roads and bridges need major overhauls.


“Intergraph has more than 40 years' experience solving complex government and transportation asset data management challenges through geospatial technologies and data integration best practices, regardless of your existing geographic information system (GIS) or database technologies in use today”
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The federal economic stimulus package - the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) - will help transportation agencies begin the process of rebuilding our highway infrastructure. As your own organization makes plans on how to get the most from federal stimulus funding, consider how Intergraph®'s geospatially powered Roadway Information Management Solution can help.


President Eisenhower championed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which resulted in a network of nearly 47,000 miles of limited-access interstate highways. When you figure in thousands of miles of city and county roads, our nation's transportation network is a complex operation vital to most every facet of our daily lives. However, highways and bridges wear out. There are multiple examples of roadway infrastructure problems across the country. Some create major safety hazards, while others bring traffic to a standstill.

As commuters crowd into overburdened transportation systems in record numbers, the maintenance and preservation of our infrastructure has created a very large backlog of critical repairs and construction needs. The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, created by Congress, last year recommended spending $225 billion to $340 billion annually on the nation's transportation system.

President Obama and Congress have made public works central to their $787 billion economic stimulus plan. During the next 18 months, the government expects to spend nearly $30 billion to overhaul the nation's highway infrastructure. Approved in February 2009, the ARRA will have an immediate effect on transportation agencies across the country. According to AASHTO, more than 3,000 highway and bridge projects - worth $18 billion - could begin within the next three months. The funding will provide a significant jumpstart toward rebuilding our nation's highway infrastructure, which will influence our entire national economy.

Transportation Renaissance
The economic stimulus package will channel more funds than ever before into the upkeep of existing highway and the development of new roads. Repairing and rebuilding the transportation network, however, requires more than just throwing additional money at the problem.

Transportation agencies must determine the best way to spend stimulus money. States must make spending obligations by March 2010, or the money will be redistributed to other states. Some agencies may choose to spend their funds on many important smaller projects. Others may focus on one or two primary highway issues. Whether the money is spent on improving roads, expanding public transportation, implementing rail projects, or making streets safer for walking and biking, planning is a crucial step to maximize job creation and economic growth. In addition, the federal government will require agencies to show accountability on how they use stimulus funds.

While the intent of the stimulus package is to get money for projects that can begin immediately, agencies need to consider investing in technology that will improve their ability to plan for the future, help them make better decisions, and create new reports to meet government mandates for accountability.

It's vital that transportation agencies have a system in place to manage their infrastructure, and one that is capable of integrating all of the information required to show transparency and accountability. New reporting requirements will require financial information, as well as comprehensive data on road conditions, project work, and status across the network. Transportation agencies can leverage the captured data as a tool for better decision making, asset management, and long-term planning.

Intergraph's Roadway Information Management Solution enables transportation agencies to track and monitor the location, condition, and other important information about roadway assets, which include bridges, pavement, guardrails, signals, and more. The solution combines asset data with traffic statistics, crash data, maintenance costs, and other vital details, which empowers agencies to make key decisions about work priorities and budget allocations. Intergraph also enables transportation agencies to easily provide asset data reports to the Federal Highway Administration to maintain federal funding, the largest source of their revenue.

Accountability and Performance Measurement
Intergraph has more than 40 years' experience solving complex government and transportation asset data management challenges through geospatial technologies and data integration best practices, regardless of your existing geographic information system (GIS) or database technologies in use today.

Intergraph's Roadway Information Management Solution is a technology tool that enables the integration of multiple systems so you can create the reports needed to prove your accountability. Our software provides interoperability, and can easily integrate with your current GIS. Our solution responds to all of your information technology needs - whether it's providing an executive dashboard or completing analytical functions more efficiently.

Intergraph's solution is Web-enabled, which makes implementation easier. Users across your enterprise can access integrated data from a centralized database without having to worry about where data resides. With Intergraph, you can:

  • Build and maintain complex multilevel linear referencing systems (MLRS).
  • Perform analysis easier and more efficiently with executive dashboards.
  • Integrate your business data into a single geospatially enabled warehouse, which can include information on pavement conditions, maintenance, bridges, traffic statistics, safety, and more.
  • Generate accountability and performance reports, such as the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) or State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), faster and more effectively because the data is integrated and readily available. These reports have a direct impact on the amount of funding an agency receives.
  • Deploy geospatially enabled applications for automated oversized/overweight vehicle routing, straight line diagrams, and enterprise image management.
  • Establish a well-maintained collection of geospatial datasets with spatial data infrastructure (SDI) technology, published via standard Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) compliant Web services. Agencies are not forced into a single technology vendor solution.
  • Remotely update and maintain datasets with standards-based transactional workflows.

Most importantly, Intergraph's Roadway Information Management Solution provides transportation agencies with a system that maintains an accurate representation of their roadway inventory. Users across the agency can conduct analyses using pavement, traffic, safety, and other criteria in order to make better, more informed choices about budgets, planning, and maintenance. We help you do more with less as many tasks are automated. This can include modifying the inventory due to road modifications, new construction, pavement maintenance, and bridge maintenance. Executives and engineers alike are a few mouse clicks away from viewing actual roadway pictures as opposed to several hours of driving to a specific segment of pavement.

The collection and processing of this geospatial data, and its availability through the SDI  will allow transportation agencies at all levels access to a powerful tool capable of quickly marshalling its business/mission data within a spatio-temporal context that facilitates rapid, accurate decision making.

An SDI approach brings together all key national datasets to support action - whether this action is emergency management, disaster response, homeland security, environmental protection, green infrastructure development, natural resource management, disease control, or simply the effective and efficient provision of everyday transportation services. Once completed, it will be a priceless resource and an indispensable tool across organizations

Meeting All Your Transportation Needs
Transportation agencies must maintain thousands of miles of roadway, including all roadway assets, such as bridges, structures, and signage. Agencies collect massive amounts of information to effectively maintain these assets. The ability to collect, maintain, analyze, and report on roadway infrastructure is a steep challenge and a top priority now with the economic stimulus package. Intergraph delivers a better way to manage roadway assets with a combination of software and services, which enable you to standardize workflows and solve common problems. Traffic engineers can get the latest counts at a specific interstate location. A pavement engineer can determine how much pavement along a highway is in need of repair. Or, a safety engineer can find out the number of crashes that occurred on a given night at a particular intersection.

Several transportation agencies benefit from Intergraph's proven solutions. The Tennessee Department of Transportation (DOT) uses Intergraph's Roadway Information Management Solution to maintain their inventory of more than 88,000 miles of roadways and 20,000 bridges. T-DOT uses Intergraph software to collect data for its roadway characteristics database, including lane counts, shoulder width, paving conditions, and more. All of the data are tied to a video log, which allows personnel to virtually view a section of the road as if they were driving on it. This gives T-DOT access to a graphical interface where they can enter and analyze data in the roadway database. T-DOT can analyze data based on linear location. For example, it can study pavement quality index ratings for a particular stretch of highway, tie that data in with their capital improvement program, and then prioritize which roads require investments for repair and maintenance. For HPMS reporting, T-DOT can accumulate data from roads in the system and send it to the federal government for budget approval - an important tool to leverage infrastructure improvements through the ARRA.

The Nevada DOT selected Intergraph's transportation solutions to develop its Safety Management System (SMS), which geographically displays information about roadway areas with high incidence of vehicle crashes to better research underlying causes. N-DOT uses Intergraph's MLRS as a location reference tool to manage its underlying network. Every component in the network - medians, guard rails, signs, and more - has a location reference that gives N-DOT easy access to data related to maintenance and other information. For example, N-DOT can get a traffic count from specific areas to determine which highway sections are overused. Most importantly, the reference datum never changes, making it easier to manage multiple location data methods, provide event location stability, and temporal data management. Intergraph's application provides transportation agencies with a simple way to analyze roadway history. An NCHRP 20-27 compliant model, MLRS integrates data with Intergraph's Roadway Information Management Solution to enhance data analysis and improve the decision-making process.

The South Carolina DOT uses an Intergraph application to determine a safe route for oversized and overweight (OS/OW) vehicles. Maintaining a safe route for commercial vehicles is important for safety concerns, as well as to prevent damage to structures. When a company submits a permit application, DOT agents can quickly analyze multiple factors and determine the safest route for a vehicle. These factors include load weight, size of vehicle, turn radius, network obstructions and height of structures. This speeds up the application process, keeps goods and services moving safely through the network, and protects the value of highway infrastructure. The automated system assists in preventing a loss of institutional knowledge due to employee turnover.  This is critical in timely processing of permit applications.

Intergraph focuses on providing geospatially powered solutions to help transportation agencies solve asset management and reporting problems. Our solution:

  • Offers out-of-the-box capabilities to build and maintain complex MLRS models
  • Minimizes data conversion
  • Addresses the problems of multiple linear referencing models, event location stability, multiple geometric representations, and temporal data management
  • Lowers maintenance and development costs
  • Increases productivity through integrated data access
  • Requires less staffing to maintain and report asset data

You're on the Right Road with Intergraph 
As transportation agencies prepare for the one-time infusion of cash through the economic stimulus package, it's important for you to determine the best way your agency can spend that money for short- and long-term benefits. Our nation's roadway system currently has a backlog of repair and maintenance issues that have been neglected or underfunded for decades. According to AASHTO, one-quarter of major urban roadways are in poor condition, and one out of four bridges either needs significant repair or is too narrow to handle today's traffic.

Intergraph can help keep you on the right road. Our Roadway Information Management Solution for the transportation industry ensures dissemination of accurate and timely information. We deliver products, processes, and experienced transportation professionals to help you understand and implement the best solutions for every aspect of data collection, management, analysis, and reporting. From collecting information in the field to visualizing roadway assets and congestion on a screen, map, or via the Web, Intergraph's solutions help hundreds of state, provincial, and national governments solve their asset visualization, management, and reporting problems. We are dedicated to helping you keep people and products moving safely and efficiently.