With this background, I would like to credit the following to Secretary Peters as she helps to keep us apprised of the goings-on and trends in Washington.  Secretary Peters provided us with a copy of a summary presentation on the House Surface Transportation Bill, and offered the following insight:

The bill is a five-year, $260 billion initiative partially funded by royalties from an expansion of oil and gas drilling on public lands and in federal waters. It is rumored that approval of the Keystone pipeline project will be added to the bill as well. Both of these provisions will be very controversial, but I expect the House will pass the bill with the provisions intact.

The bill is scheduled for markups this week: the House Natural Resources Committee begins deliberations today, Transportation and Infrastructure tomorrow, Ways and Means Committee Friday and Energy and Commerce on February 8.

The good news is that the Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality (CMAQ) program is continued even with the significant program consolidation, as well as significantly streamlining the process for obtaining project approval. As discussed at last week’s board meeting, the Sec. 402 funds allocated by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) are continued, however they are grouped together with other state safety grant programs, with more flexibility as to how the funds are used.

The Senate Environment & Public Works Committee passed their two-year reauthorization proposal in December. The Banking Committee is expected to markup transit provisions on Thursday, but the Finance Committee markup on funding offsets remains uncertain. The Finance Committee is said to be looking at six revenue options totaling $17 billion, including changing the tax structure of black liquor, a tax on petroleum claimed from tar sands, a transfer of $3 billion from the Leaking Underground Storage Fund, a tax on foreign workers with visas, canceling passports of U.S. tax exiles and proceeds from anti-dumping penalties on China. These proposals, like those on the House side, are expected to be controversial.

That said, I expect that both chambers will pass their respective bills pretty much intact, which will set up a conference committee. I don’t think the conference committee will reach consensus before the current extension of SAFETEA-LU expires at the end of March, so another short-term extension will likely be required.

Given the very low (13%) approval ratings of Congress, leadership on both sides of the political aisle want to demonstrate that they can accomplish something, and a highway bill may be the vehicle that makes it before things get really locked down leading into the respective party conventions and Presidential election.

Relating this back to GridSmart…More with less, Reduced Congestion,  Improved Air Quality,  Cost Savings – these are all common threads between GridSmart and the coming legislation.

Thanks again to Secretary Peters for sharing.

Why read my boring blog when you can watch the story?

Larry Ehl, of Transportation Issues Daily, does an excellent job of summarizing the three political challenges to enacting new legislation – how long, how big, and where from. Since I couldn’t say it any better myself, read the story here.

In addition to Ms. Jones traffic experience, she has spent the past seven years as an Adjunct Professor for Barry University, teaching management and marketing courses for the Sports Management degreed program.  Ms. Jones also volunteers as a Junior Achievement instructor for business and economics and was awarded the 2002 Junior Achievement Volunteer of the Year.

Dr. William Sowell, Executive Vice President for Aldis, states, “We are very pleased to have a proven traffic professional such as Andrea join our talented team.  Andrea’s knowledge and experience of the industry will serve our customers well and help to establish GridSmart as a de facto solution for modern traffic management.”

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So, how does GridSmart help?  I’ll ask you to watch this short video and notice a few things:

• We are providing both stopbar and advance detection from a single camera!  The advance detection can extend the green phase and avoid dilemma zone issues, particularly on high speed approaches.
• Notice the curves in these intersections.  Because of the ultra-wide-angle lens, our visibility is not limited…we see the entire intersection and provide detection, curves and all!
• We provide detection regardless of ambient light.  At night, we track vehicles based on headlights…and do so very accurately I will add.

Headquartered in Tennessee, Aldis is engineered and manufactured in the United States, satisfying any Buy American provisions that may be requirements for certain projects.

Save American jobs and buy GridSmart!

This is a job for GridSmart.  It reminds me of a success story of ours in Sevierville, TN – an extremely congested intersection undergoing a federally funded road-widening project.  In this project of frequent lane shifts and re-routing of traffic, why not use a detection technology that never has to move, and never requires aiming or focusing?  Why not use a technology in which stop bar zones can be moved with a few mouse clicks?

Sevierville used GridSmart for this purpose as they were tearing up the loops in the pavement, leaving their intersections without detection.  Police were working overtime to control the intersections.  Traditional video detection would NOT have worked due to the frequent lane shifts and the need to re-aim and re-focus.  Then came GridSmart.

Read the Sevierville Case Study to see how it was implemented to provide detection during the construction, and how it remains in place today after the project without any movement of the camera.  Cost savings in hardware, installation, and maintenance are estimated to be at least $125,000 and police overtime was reduced by 80%!

Now available within GridSmart 3.1, for those customers with the optional GridSmart Data Module, integrated reporting is a reality!  Turning Movement Volumes and Vehicle Classification by Length are available within a few simple clicks.  Would you like a demonstration via webinar?  Contact us.

You can apply this to many parts of your life, so why is this on the GridSmart blog?…because I talk to many that like what they see in GridSmart, and talk about how they need to make a change from their current detection solution, but then they do nothing about it.

Are you tired of cutting pavement, tired of problems with shadows, tired of limited visibility, tired of lengthy and expensive installations, tired of hardware oriented solutions with limited functionality?  Don’t wait, take action…get GridSmart.  Take the first step and call us today to learn more.