Innovating in an Age of Disruption: Seven Top Takeaways to Expect from IBTTA’s Annual Meeting in Dublin

It’s hard to deliver on an innovation strategy when all the basic factors that influence your business—the technology, the demographics, customer expectations, the surrounding economy, and the infrastructure you’re responsible for managing—are in a constant state of flux.

Yet that’s the reality facing tolling agencies around the world, and the pace of change is accelerating.

IBTTA’s annual meeting is where tolling executives from around the world meet with peers, colleagues, and expert advisors to share best practices for dealing with today’s most pressing challenges—and to look around the corner at the obstacles and opportunities ahead. This year’s meeting is truly global, with panelists from as far afield as The Philippines and Tajikistan, Greece and China.

Here are seven top takeaways you can expect when you attend IBTTA’s 83^rd Annual Meeting and Exhibition, August 30-September 2 in Dublin, Ireland:

7. Project financing gives us fuel for thought: Project financing is becoming an ever-bigger challenge, with new technologies reshaping customers’ expectations for convenience and service. The business track at the Annual Meeting includes a session on calculating the economic value of projects, with a sideways glance at the international economic and banking trends that drive investment decisions.

6. It’s all about integration. Integrated corridor management is one of the keys to optimizing mobility in a way that serves economic and environmental objectives. Interoperability and value-added services create a much more integrated experience for customers. Conference sessions will draw experience and lessons learned from several jurisdictions.

5. Technology sets the pace. From interoperability to autonomous vehicles, from all-electronic tolling to customer account management, the Annual Meeting program touches on all the ways in which technology is transforming and improving the highway experience for tolling agencies and their customers.

4. The next generation is at the table: The Transportation Classroom is the title of an innovative, highly interactive session where IBTTA Leadership Academy alumni will present their energy and creativity with a panel of “spirited transportation experts.” The alumni will come up with ideas for new innovations in highway transportation, and everyone will get to learn from some of the sharpest minds in the global tolling industry.

3. Safety is still Job One. No IBTTA annual meeting would be complete without an update on highway safety strategies for tolling agencies. This meeting includes presentations on diversion route strategies, deployment of moveable median barriers, and overall efforts to maximize road safety.

2. An extended community of colleagues. The annual meeting is always an opportunity for unparalleled peer learning and networking. This year, the colleagues come from an even wider range of jurisdictions and circumstances around the world. With participants already registered from 23 countries, the ideas and inspirations you bring home will be based on the widest possible mix of front-line experience.

1. It’s all happening in Ireland. A general session on the first day of the conference will trace the evolution of Ireland’s transport network in the first decade of this century. The country built a modern roadway network by introducing open-road tolling and interoperable electronic toll collection, developing effective models for public-private partnerships, establishing cross-border enforcement agreements, and relying heavily on intelligent transportation systems. You’ll hear about all of that and more from a panel that includes the senior archaeologist with Transportation Infrastructure Ireland.

There’s still time to register for IBTTA’s 83^rd Annual Conference and Exhibition. Click here for more information.