Reporting traffic incident information in real-time can be like drinking from a fire hose. There are so many sources with varying levels of credibility and boiling that info stream into clear, concise, accurate bits takes an army with know-how. The WSB Traffic Team and I pride ourselves on doing this, but the hardest part is tracking construction projects. Unless we can see them on the WSB Jam Cams, being certain about any road work, especially surface street closures, is very tough. But a U.K. geo-tech company is trying to enter the American scene and launch a plan that has worked across the pond over the last ten years.
One.Network’s homepage states its mission: “To be the global technology leader in road operations planning.” They want to help shore up how our nation’s state and local agencies report and plan their road closures.
“It’s a strange idea trying to launch a business in the U.S. during a pandemic,” One.Network Chief Commercial Officer Simon Topp said. “But we came to the conclusion that COVID actually presents a set of pretty unique circumstances,” Topp said, referring to how other jurisdictions outside of Georgia are having to logisticize within rigid pandemic protocols. Some are moving quickly to expand sidewalks and bicycle lanes, for example, to give people more socially-distant options than public transportation.
Topp said One.Network tries to help road agencies with two main challenges. “One is around the coordinational collaboration with each other and the other is around the communication - helping them share that data.”
“A lot of the congestion problems we see,” Topp said of both the bad traffic on the small island of the U.K. and the vast expanses of the U.S., “come from things that are planned.” Topp means planned construction projects, which Atlantans attest can cause major delays.
“If people understand better what is going on on the roads, it makes the decision-making better around what they do,” Topp said of both motorists and the various crews doing work. “Just one road agency knowing what is going on is fine. But what about the road agency they’re next to?” He continued, “They can tell you where their works are, but they can’t tell you where, say, the City of Atlanta’s works are.”
Topp said he and his team compile data from various agencies and avail it all in one place to all the agencies, so the left hands and right hands know what the others are doing. To do this, Topp and his team have designed back end logistics programming that allows project supervisors to not simply upload long term projects, but to actually activate and deactivate lane closures as their crews work. “Because actually, the traveling public aren’t interested that there’s a four-month window that somebody might disrupt the road. They want to now, ‘Is that lane or that road blocked today, before my journey, in my journey?’”
The WSB Traffic Team plots Atlanta’s most significant construction closures on the Triple Team Traffic Alerts App. But we shy away from some smaller closures, simply because confirming them is hard. Crews block up chunks of Spring Street in Midtown all the time for road work, high rise construction, filming, and Varsity hot dog consumption (probably). But the city doesn’t have very many cameras that see Spring St. and city and state long-term road closure lists often don’t reflect what is happening moment to moment.
One.Network’s next involvement is not just providing the tools, but fostering the communication. In the U.K., the public-facing One.Network site has had over 26 million unique views over the last year and over 42,000 registered users, he said. Over 90% of British agencies are giving info on this uniform site. Achieving that number in the U.S. would be a large feat.
One.Network has begun syndicating data out to Google Maps (which owns Waze), TomTom (which powers Apple Maps), and HERE Technologies. So many GPS users reap the benefits of the coordination that One.Network fosters.
Georgia - and its 159 counties, dozens of cities, and its vast state transportation agency - will be quite the challenge to coordinate. But One.Network is in the early stages of cooperation with GDOT.
“We are currently in a two-month, no-cost trial to test the functionality of the product,” GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale explained. “They approached us in order to use our lane closure and event info.”
GDOT has been working to shore up its construction messaging to the media and to the public. The disparity between what contracts and permits list long term, what road crews say they are planning to close daily, and then what actually happens is quite large. As Topp said, the public wants to know in real-time what is blocked and then plan around that. One.Network could be a big step toward that accuracy soon.
“We are, of course, always interested in exposure to new platforms and/or tools that can help us advance traffic operations and communicate with the traveling public. If all goes well in the initial two-month trial we will pursue a longer pilot test,” Dale said.
The state recently updated its Georgia 511 app with a sleeker interface and smoother streaming of its traffic cameras. Layering in even higher quality construction information won’t just be the icing on the cake; it will be the thick, moist, decadent vanilla batter that will produce an enlightening traffic food coma. Georgia needs that. And in that spirit - enjoy your Christmas.
Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. He also hosts a traffic podcast with Smilin’ Mark McKay on wsbradio.com. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com .
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