The National Operations Center for Excellence or NOCoE recently named the winners of its 2025 Transportation Systems Management and Operations or TSMO Awards, given annually to help promote the value of TSMO; a set of strategies that focuses on operational improvements that maintains and restores existing transportation system performance without adding extra capacity.
[Above photo by AASHTO]
NOCoE – a partnership of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the Institute for Transportation Engineers, and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, with support from the Federal Highway Administration – named the winners of its annual TSMO awards during the annual meeting of the AASHTO Committee on Transportation System Operations, held July 28-30 in Annapolis, MD.
NOCoE’s annual TSMO awards program celebrates TSMO strategies and tools that leverage existing infrastructure to increase safety and reliability.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation received the TSMO Overall Winner Award for the work of its TSMO unit during Hurricane Helene response operations.
The NCDOT’s TSMO Unit served as a central coordination point for the agency’s hurricane field response and as the primary source of transportation intelligence that local, state, and federal partners needed for action.
Despite hundreds of road closures and the uncertainty of the road network at-large, NCDOT’s TSMO Unit assisted with maintaining mobility throughout Western North Carolina, while prioritizing travel for responders and preserving limited resources for storm victims.
Those efforts not only protected the community but also laid the foundation for more efficient, cost-effective responses in future disasters, NOCoE said.
NCDOT was among four other TSMO category winners, which includes “Best TSMO Project,” “Agency Improvement,” “Emerging Practices and Technologies,” and “Traffic Signals.” Case studies on those winning projects are posted on the NOCoE website.
Concurrently, John Hibbard – deputy chief engineer at the Georgia Department of Transportation – received the 2025 Joey Sagal TSMO Leadership Award.
Hibbard – who has over 30 years of experience in technology-focused traffic management – is a 10-year Georgia DOT veteran and currently directs the agency’s transportation operations efforts, including traffic operations and intelligent transportation system or ITS initiatives.
This award celebrates an individual for both advancing TSMO transportation system in their agency as well as for making significant contributions to advancing TSMO on a national level.
Additionally, each year, NOCoE develops case studies for each winning entry as well as for many of the other submissions, which contribute to a library of over 200 TSMO case studies.
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