(electronic swoosh sounds)
- [Narrator] When wetter conditions cause
unsafe travel on our roadways,
it's important that the Texas Department
of Transportation has real time,
proven, and effective management
and maintenance strategies in place.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin's
Center for Transportation Research have developed
and tested technologies that will improve the efficiency
and management of snow and ice removal from Texas roads.
This translates to reductions in weather
related vehicle crashes and travel delays
as well as environmental benefits.
- Texas has quite a bit of extreme weather.
But also unknown to a lot of folks in North Texas,
they really do get snow storms.
They get severe ice.
So TexDOT has always been interested in being able
to effectively treat roadways so that they're safe
for travelers in all kinds of different extreme weather.
TexDOT wants to have the tools available to be able
to effectively know what's happening on the roadways
so that they can be able to optimize treatment
and provide better service to travelers.
- Searchers put this technology, this equipment on the,
the dump trucks and snowplows.
They put monitoring equipment on that
and then it goes into a system that then can be,
that data is all dumped into,
and then the district can monitor that system
and see where the equipment's at and what it's doing.
Giving the ability for the folks back at the district
or at the EOC to be able to see what's
going on out in the field in real time.
They're getting that information immediately and directly.
They're not having to wait for a radio call,
a telephone call,
or that sit rep that may not come in till the next day.
They're, they can get a snapshot
of what's going on real time.
- We also looked at low cost sensors
that can help folks who are in the Traffic Operations Center
know what the conditions are like.
So in the Abilene District,
we deployed a series of, I'd say prosumer weather stations
and also a couple other types of sensors.
A couple of them that mount to vehicles
that assess what the surface of the roadway is like.
We also found ways of tapping into the current system
that TexDOT has which keeps track of the GPS locations
of all the vehicles so that we have a couple extra signals
that basically tell when is the plow up and down
and when is spraying or brine happening on the roadway,
and when is spreading of grit happening onto the roadway.
Not only does the labor of those who
are driving the vehicles have to be reduced
but also not having to rely upon third party's
proprietary technologies that require annual subscriptions
in the millions of dollars.
How can this be done with equipment
that TexDOT already has with the simplest possible equipment
and how to free the drivers from having
to interact with that equipment,
to have that equipment completely passive
so that the recording of winter operations
happens in a transparent way.
- And it got some side benefit out
of it that we didn't even,
this wasn't even part of the project, wasn't scope of it,
but the herbicide application is something
that kind of came up in some of the conversations
with some of the districts that this was reviewed by.
And they said, well,
why can't we use this on a herbicide rig?
So I think that's one of the things
where we're seeing there's a,
there's a broader, it's not just winter weather,
and then combining it with the track
of plow project with the cameras.
We're seeing some benefit there where we can,
we can get a both a visual plus what the crew
is actually doing out there.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publication for this project,
please visit the TexDOT research library
at the link shown below.