AASHTO Journal - NOCoE Annual Report Highlights TSMO Support

The 2020 annual report from the National Operations Center of Excellence highlights some of the many ways the organization continues to raise awareness regarding the benefits of transportation systems management and operations or TSMO across the country.

As part of its ongoing outreach efforts, NOCoE – a partnership of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, with support from the Federal Highway Administration – published 38 TSMO-focused case studies in 2020.

Those studies included 16 different state departments of transportation TSMO projects as well as those of 10 different city, county, and regional transportation agencies.

The group’s annual report also launched a fellowship initiative in 2020 to help bolster interest in the TSMO discipline by providing non-technical support to entry to mid-level transportation professionals that included media training, writing skills that serves a broader audience beyond technical analysis, presentation skills, and networking.

NOCoE also highlighted the success of its technology tournament in encouraging student interest in TSMO-related careers in its annual report. That competition – now entering its fourth year – is co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s ITS Joint Program Office’s Professional Capacity Building Program and held during the ITE’s annual meeting.

That contest aims to expand the skills of the future transportation workforce by giving them the opportunity to solve real-world TSMO problems, NOCoE noted in its annual report.