Maintenance and Roadway Operations Workshop Accents Safety, Incident Management

Get ready for a deep look into bridge and roadway safety service patrols, effective incident management, the basics of asset management, and emerging technologies for roadway refurbishment when IBTTA hosts its annual Maintenance & Roadway Operations (MRO) Workshop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, June 24-26.

“This Workshop, see full agenda here, is where the rubber literally hits the road for anyone who wants to operate a world-class toll facility,” said IBTTA Executive Director and CEO Patrick Jones. “We spend a lot of our time talking about highway finance, data capture, cybersecurity, and all the other elements that make tolling a cutting-edge solution. But none of that would be possible if our maintenance and roadway operators weren’t out there making us look good, every hour of every day.”

Safety First

You can’t spend more than a few minutes with IBTTA’s maintenance and roadway operations professionals without picking up a single, key message: the safety of our customers, staff, and facilities is paramount. That priority comes through loud and clear in the design of this year’s program.

The Workshop begins with an in-depth look into last year’s emergency repair of the Delaware River Turnpike Bridge between the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Turnpikes, chaired by HNTB Vice President Kary Witt. “In recent years, we have seen exciting advances in the design, construction and preservation of bridges,” states Witt, former Bridge Manager of the Golden Gate Bridge. “Unfortunately, we have also seen outright failures of bridges, so as our bridges age, preventive maintenance and rehabilitation become even more critical.” In the session, public and private sector executives will look back on an urgent, high-stakes overhaul that was completed ahead of schedule, after a full-depth truss chord fracture was detected on the Delaware River Turnpike Bridge.

Technical sessions on the first day of the Workshop will deal with preventive maintenance and preservation for bridges, evolving practices in roadway design and safety, methods of speeding up and optimizing traffic incident management and the challenge of recruiting and retaining facility operations work force.

Day two, the attention will turn to front-line uses of emerging technologies, collaborative approaches to emergency management and the latest innovations in roadway construction, repair, and maintenance. You will not want to miss a special presentation on The Ray, an 18-mile stretch of Interstate 85 in West Georgia named for breakthrough entrepreneur Ray Anderson that has been designated a test bed for new ideas and innovations in surface transportation infrastructure.

Seeing is Believing

The Maintenance and Operations Workshop is also a great opportunity for IBTTA members to get hands-on experience with the things that matter most—on the road, and in the community.

On Sunday, June 24, the workshop program features a technical tour of the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s Traffic Operations Center and its Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) test beds.

On Tuesday, June 26, at 3:30 pm, a special training course will be held. This course is the new SHRP2 National Traffic Incident Management Training course that is geared towards planners and emergency responders. This training will teach about highway survival, unified command and the importance of great communications. It includes a tabletop exercise that will go over various roadway emergency scenarios. The training will be led by Todd Leiss, Traffic Incident Management Coordinator, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

And sign up now to participate in this year’s Annual  Foundation Service Project at Milk & Honey Farms, a private non-profit that supplies fresh fruit and vegetables for people at risk of hunger in South Central Pennsylvania.Army veteran Tim Wallace opened the farm in 2017 and has since donated 3,000 pounds of produce to the Military Share Program of the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, the Bethesda Mission, and other local food banks. The to-do list for the community service project includes expanding and paving the entrance driveway, building a storage shed for tractors and farm equipment, clearing downed trees, cutting and stacking firewood, moving and stacking rocks to stop erosion along a fish pond, and a variety of other small projects.

Register today for IBTTA’s Maintenance & Roadway Operations Workshop, June 24-26, 2018 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.