With the arrival of Atlanta’s newest winter storm, the Georgia Department of Transportation is deploying new technology that allows the agency to see where road maintenance crews are located in real time.
The GPS-enabled software monitors where crews are in relation to salt barns and DOT maintenance facilities. The Information Technology department has also used the program to map out problem spots where freezing was most likely to recur based on the Jan. 28 winter storm and send crews to those areas faster.
“Since the last storm, we’ve been looking at options to track and dispatch vehicles more efficiently because we could not get out to the accidents,” said Jeff Hill, the chief information officer for GDOT.
GDOT was set to train employees on the new web app, called Verizon Field Force Manager, on Thursday. But after it became clear Monday that a new and more dangerous ice storm was looming, Hill expedited the rollout. Workers completed a crash training course on the program and by midday Tuesday, they had at least one phone per road maintenance crew outfitted with the new app.
There were about 75 road maintenance crews working to absorb the brunt of the storm on Wednesday, about half of them from metro Atlanta, according to Karlene Barron, a spokeswoman for GDOT. The remaining crews were brought in from southern areas of the state where ice was not expected. Each crew is comprised of a salt-and-gravel spreader truck fitted with a snow plow and a trailing pickup truck that keeps motorists at a safe distance.
The app allows GDOT to track each crew’s movements with GPS technology.
Road maintenance officials stationed at the Transportation Management Center can then access that information to dispatch trucks to the closest areas that have iced over. They can also give the crews — including those from out of town that aren’t familiar with the metro area — point-by-point directions to their destination.
GPS has been used to track HERO trucks for years, but this is the first time that state transportation officials have been able to track their road maintenance crews.
It’s difficult to determine if the technology would have made a difference in the gridlock caused by the Jan. 28 storm. Motorists all hit the roads at once that day. This week, they have by and large obeyed state officials’ instructions to avoid driving.
Dale Brantley, state maintenance engineer for GDOT, said the technology had been very helpful to supervisors because they were able see where the crews were going, where they had been and how long it had taken them to treat various roads.
The cost of the program is relatively low, at just $15 per month per phone for 200 phones ($3,000 per month), and the subscription can be turned off or reactivated when needed. Hill said GDOT had looked at some other systems that required the purchase of a GPS-enabled device as well as hardware and subscription services at a cost $3,000 or more per vehicle.
The same Verizon system can be used to help the state manage hurricane evacuations and other emergencies by cross-referencing data GDOT already collects on traffic volumes and speeds on interstates and state routes with maintenance crew locations, Hill said.
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