Organizing for TSMO
Case Study 8: Training for TSMO

Chapter 2 - Best Practice Examples

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), AZTech, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), and the Florida Department of Transportation District 5 (FDOT D5) participated in the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) capability maturity model (CMM) workshops that helped the agencies understand transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) and how it can be applied to their work. The following subsections highlight several successful initiatives that each agency accomplished, specifically regarding training for TSMO.

California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)

Caltrans supports the diverse transportation needs in the State of California through 12 regional districts. Caltrans manages more than 50,000 miles of highway and freeway lanes, provides rail services, and permits more than 400 public-use airports and special-use hospital heliports for over 30 million residents in the State.

Mobility Academy

Caltrans offers Mobility Academy workshops that are primarily intended for traffic operations but are useful for anyone analyzing data to determine system performance, such as delay and reliability. Caltrans has used these workshops for several years but only recently introduced TSMO into the training program through strategic partnerships as part of the Consortium for Innovative Transportation Education (CITE) program. This has resulted in Caltrans aligning its vision of TSMO with that of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The amount of TSMO training available to Caltrans staff is steadily increasing as resources are added.

Caltrans partnered with the University of Maryland and WSDOT to create a centralized training program. This approach involved the University of Maryland creating an online TSMO training course and Caltrans using that content to incorporate a TSMO training module into their existing Mobility Academy workshops. The course, developed as part of the CITE program, is designed to contain general information that teaches the fundamentals of TSMO to people at any level. It is intended to be used by anyone, not just staff in a transportation department. Caltrans staff use the TSMO training module as a precursor to their Mobility Workshops.

Training Resources

Another medium that Caltrans uses for training and collaboration is the Regional Operations Forum. In these forums, a representative from each district in the State was trained on the basics of TSMO using FHWA publications and reviewing Caltrans' findings in their initial assessment. Figure 2 displays a graphic developed by Caltrans that displays their umbrella philosophy on TSMO. This graphic is used to support training and discussions on TSMO activities.

The umbrella graphic helps Caltrans communicate how TSMO is the overarching philosophy of systems management and operations. It helped with outreach to different departments across Caltrans by showing the different areas that TSMO impacts. One of the lessons learned is that performing background research on your audience helps determine the right way to create excitement and immediacy about TSMO and maximize the effectiveness of training. Maximizing training is achieved by focusing on methods that promote the best results for specific departments and content that ties TSMO to their applicable areas. These efforts go a long way in preparing people to generally support TSMO philosophies and were evident during a recent Regional Operations Forum facilitated through the Highway Safety Improvement Plan. During this outreach event, local Native American tribes received training on how to fund their TSMO program. Caltrans' familiarity with the needs of the audience enabled them to communicate the process effectively and the forum was successful.

AZTech

AZTech is a regional traffic management partnership in the Phoenix metropolitan area that guides application of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies for managing regional traffic. Six groups make up the partnership, including the executive committee, strategic steering committee, operations committee, Traffic Incident Management (TIM) coalition, Traffic Management Center (TMC) operators working group, and the media communications task force.

Traffic Incident Management Coalition

After creating an action plan from the CMM evaluation, one of the action items was the need for collaborating with first responders to streamline TIM. Prior to implementing the action plan, collaboration with the TIM Coalition was limited to the Department of Public Safety, Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), and Maricopa County Department of Transportation participation. As part of the action plan, local police, fire, and towing companies were encouraged to attend the sessions. At first, the coalition was not achieving the level of collaboration they wanted, so they implemented tabletop sessions. The tabletop sessions involved incident responders, TMC operators, signal system operators, and occasionally, public information officers. By increasing the number of tabletop sessions, collaboration between the various departments greatly improved.

Through training, the various agencies and departments realized the benefit of collaboration and how each agency/department can impact the performance of emergency response. The arterial incident response team now assists with non-arterial incidents. The team coordinates with the ADOT Transportation Operations Center, Arizona Local Emergency Response Team (the ADOT incident response team), local traffic agencies, Department of Public Safety, and TMC operators when responding to incidents. TMC operators are able to change signal timing on alternate routes and display information on portable dynamic message signs to maximize capacity and minimize the time needed to clear an incident.

New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT)

The State of New Jersey is divided into three geographical regions - North, Central, and South. NJDOT supports the State's transportation needs. These regions develop, operate, and maintain more than 2,300 miles of public roadways. The Transportation Mobility section of each region is responsible for traffic control during design, construction, operation and maintenance of ITS, emergency response, and more.

Training Website

NJDOT prefers to think of TSMO training as an outreach activity. With this approach, the focus is on getting people to understand TSMO, why it is being adopted, and the benefits of employing TSMO. NJDOT has been engaging with many different groups as a result of their outreach, including colleges and universities, first responders, consulting firms, and metropolitan planning organizations (MPO).

Through FHWA's Every Day Counts initiative, and in partnership with the New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJDOT was able to develop a TIM training website, www.njtim.org. This website is a nationally recognized tool where safety personnel, emergency responders, and others can register for training classes throughout the State. The site has proven to be a very valuable resource as over 30 percent of first responders in the State have used the website for training. Since website users must register online, the website has also been a valuable resource for sending information and communications.

NJDOT's Incident Management program includes a memorandum of understanding with the NJ State Police to provide seven sergeants and one lieutenant to support the NJDOT TIM program. The troopers assigned to the NJ State Police Incident Management Unit are dedicated to assist NJDOT with TIM training, outreach, and incident management response. When these troopers respond to large scale incidents with the NJDOT, other first responders are able to observe the relationship and benefits it has brought to both departments. Because of this, TSMO is spreading fast and other agencies and first responders are coming to the NJDOT for the training.

In addition, TSMO and TIM training are being incorporated into the State and local police programs and fire training programs. The goal of this training is to make TIM a standard and planned practice rather than an ad-hoc activity.

Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)

WSDOT supports the State of Washington transportation needs through six regional districts. WSDOT operates and maintains more than 18,600 miles of highway lanes, nearly 3,300 bridge structures, and runs a ferry system that moves 24.2 million passengers and 10 million vehicles per year.

Workforce Development

One of the big successes WSDOT had in solidifying TSMO within the agency was the creation of a dedicated TSMO position titled Workforce Development and Traffic Operations Engineer. The Workforce Development and Traffic Operations Engineer is responsible for providing training for staff and elevating TSMO throughout WSDOT.

WSDOT capitalized on this dedicated TSMO position by using a broader definition of TSMO to include multimodal planning and public transportation, as shown in Figure 4. Under this expanded definition, coordination for TSMO involves more organizations and agencies than the standard definition. With the dedicated position, bringing forth these efforts was not only possible but successful.

Although external training has always been present in WSDOT, there was no process for deciding which staff members went to different events. This was especially true with the Operations Academy. The Operations Academy is designed to train staff on TSMO and includes two parts: an initial pre-study program followed by a two-week total immersion program. The total immersion program uses a mix of classroom instruction, speakers, workshops, and analysis of existing systems to ensure retention of the principles being presented³. To maximize this opportunity, a process was put in place for each region in the State to submit candidates for training; candidates are then selected by headquarters. WSDOT recognizes the value of national conferences and has started encouraging attendance of staff. They support this by performing some of the necessary administrative work to attend as well as contributing financially to the costs of attendance. A requirement of attending is for staff to present what they have learned in the form of a presentation, webinar, etc. upon their return. This benefits all staff as the knowledge is shared and can be applied by everyone within the attendee's local working group.

Florida Department of Transportation District 5 (FDOT D5)

FDOT D5 supports the transportation needs of a nine-county area in Florida, which includes Brevard, Flagler, Lake, Marion, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Sumter, and Volusia Counties. FDOT D5 also includes seven transit authorities, one passenger rail line, one deep-water port, and 25 public-use and 133 private-use airports. FDOT has a decentralized agency structure.

Technical Training Program

One issue FDOT D5 experienced was that a number of staff were moving into management roles without receiving the optimum level of technical training. As a result, FDOT D5 developed training as part of SHRP2 to meet this need, including material that was requested by partner agencies and MPOs. To make logistics easier, the new training sessions were held immediately after regularly scheduled consortium meetings, eliminating the need for extra travel by staff.

CMM helped FDOT D5 determine the training needs of each agency and department. FDOT D5 engaged with these partner agencies and departments though regular meetings to prioritize needs and content and sent staff to partner agencies to participate in one-on-one and small group training sessions.

Information Technology Training Documentation

Due to high turnover, particularly in information technology positions, FDOT D5 realized that there was heavy reliance on people's memories of their systems and processes without sufficient training or documentation to promote stability after staff departures. To combat this, FDOT D5 began an effort to document their current systems to determine what they needed as well as documenting system upgrades to ensure that all systems were built and maintained properly.

The process for developing documentation involved asking the expert to organize all the necessary information. After this, the expert would bring the documentation to another department and see if a non-expert could correctly interpret the documentation and perform some of the described functions. If anything was unclear or misinterpreted, the documentation was edited. Through several iterations of edits with different people, a final version was created. FDOT D5 continues this iterative process whenever they have a new hire. The documentation is revised and clarified if a new hire is unable to fully understand it.

Higher Education Outreach

Another issue FDOT D5 found through its TSMO implementation was the need to have a larger pool of qualified candidates for signal technician positions. To resolve this issue, FDOT D5 reached out to local universities and trade schools, specifically Orange Technical College in Orlando. After meeting with personnel from the college, FDOT D5 found the curriculum matched their requirements but the college needed electronics for training purposes. FDOT D5 donated old controllers, cabinets, and other equipment to the college and, as a result, the placement rate for Orange Technical College grew to 75 percent.

FDOT D5 also met with the University of Central Florida (UCF) to review its curriculum and discuss future needs. UCF applied for an internal grant to hire new professors with FDOT D5's backing and won the grant. The grant helps expand UCF's future cities and transportation programs and UCF is now recruiting students from other disciplines, including data management, computer vision, and computer science, into transportation. FDOT D5's efforts and work with these schools is establishing a pipeline for qualified candidates to fill their future needs.