IBTTA Summit Pivots in Step with Emerging Technologies

When hundreds of IBTTA members gather in Orlando, FL, March 31-April 2, for the association’s Annual Technology Summit, they’ll notice major changes in a conference that has helped drive the tolling industry’s embrace of new systems, services, and concepts in transportation technology.

The massive wave of innovation sweeping the industry and the sector explains why the annual event previously devoted to all-electronic tolling (AET), interoperability, and managed lanes is now updating and broadening its focus. More and more IBTTA member agencies are treating AET as the default option for new tolling operations. Interoperability has cleared major hurdles in North America. And, agencies are beginning to look beyond one-off managed lanes to tap the strategic advantages of integrated managed lane networks.

“Anyone who works closely with technology knows that the only way to keep up is to stay ahead,” says IBTTA Executive Director and CEO Pat Jones. “That’s doubly true in tolling, where technology has driven every major innovation we’ve seen for as long as anyone on our board can remember—whether it’s been on the roadway, in the back office, or in the executive suite.”

The constantly-accelerating pace of change is what makes the annual technology summit such an essential part of IBTTA’s annual conference schedule, Jones adds. “We know that yesterday’s most exciting new releases are today’s business as usual, and today’s biggest tech breakthroughs will be the basic building blocks for tomorrow’s.”

The Future Begins Today

The Annual Technology Summit is shaping up as a lightning tour through a menu of new services and options that are quickly taking over the industry’s technology dialogue—even if some of them were scarcely imaginable five years ago.

• Mobility-as-a-Service (Maas) is pointing toward new approaches to moving people and freight within a coordinated, convenient system that no longer focuses on just the vehicle, and it will be essential for tolling agencies to understand their fit in the broader mobility equation.
• Big data and business intelligence, delivered through online platforms like IBTTA’s TollMiner™ data visualization tool, are creating an opportunity and a challenge: they give toll operators the ability to draw insights from the avalanche of customer and usage data they have in hand, while increasingly creating a business imperative for them to do just that.

The Annual Technology Summit will feature four tracks—technology, managed lanes, MaaS, and the return of the ever-popular Innovation “Tech" Talks series. You’ll get a chance to participate in four specialty roundtables—a session for chief technology and chief information officers, a discussion of global urban mobility solutions hosted by IBTTA and PIARC, a continuation of last year’s successful procurement roundtable, and a Tolling 101 panel for industry newcomers.

It will also be an unparalleled opportunity for networking and peer learning, building on IBTTA’s partnerships with ITS International MaaS Market, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees on managed lanes and congestion pricing, the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI), and TEAMFL. Factor in the IBTTA Foundation Golf Tournament, technical tours to the Cape Canaveral Spaceport and the highly anticipated SunTrax, a packed exhibition hall, and closing roundtables by ATI and TEAMFL, and it all adds up to four great days of learning, networking and possibilities.

A Parade of New Technologies

From beginning to end, the Annual Technology Summit will give you an essential update on technologies that are already at the center of your organization’s strategic planning—or if they aren’t yet, soon will be. Program highlights include:

• From managed lanes to connected networks: More and more transportation agencies are looking at ways of connecting adjacent managed lane facilities, with IBTTA members at the forefront. The experience so far points to the need to carefully address key aspects of policy, planning, design, tolling, operations, and construction that determine the success of any project.
• From infrastructure to service: Mobility as a Service is quickly emerging as a bottom-line expectation for the growing population of Millennials who have little or no interest in acquiring a driver’s license. Annual Technology Summit panelists will explore whether MaaS is a threat or an opportunity for the industry (most likely answer: YES!), and open a dialogue with participants on the paradigm shift it represents.
• From internal combustion to ‘smart’ cars and cities: CASE stands for Connected, Automated, Shared, and Electric vehicles that are shifting the way we live, work, and travel. From infrastructure planning to Smart City design, information technology systems to multimodal systems, revenue collection to violation enforcement, panelists in Orlando will explore the implications.
• From cars with technology to mobile computers: Technology companies are bringing a mind-boggling explosion of new services and technologies, opportunities and questions to vehicle design, surface transportation, and tolling. A feature panel at the Annual Technology Summit will bring together representatives of technology firms, automakers, wireless operators, and Smart Cities developers to share their views of the future—and the present.
• From roadside to back office: Technology is reshaping all the standard elements that are essential to a tolling agency’s day-to-day operations, from the roadway to the back office. The Annual Technology Summit will take an in-depth look at both sides of the modern tolling operation.

“This conference always covers an incredible range of material, because there is always so much new and exciting information to share and discuss,” Jones notes. “With new technology deployments rolling out every week, the Annual Technology Summit is the place to find the peer and vendor networks that will help you bring the latest, most relevant information back to your organization.”

Register today for IBTTA’s Annual Technology Summit, March 31-April 2 in Orlando, Florida.