The Baltimore City Department of Transportation debuted today a new traffic management center (TMC) that features Siemen’s advanced i2 and NextEdit software products.

Siemens, leveraging the design and construction expertise of project partners Jacobs Engineering Group, Plexus Communications Group, SK Design and Activu Corporation, upgraded the city’s outdated UTCS main frame traffic control system to a state-of-the-art traffic management system that offers flexible control devices and advanced communication and surveillance technologies.

The new traffic management system supports more than 1200 traffic signal controllers in a mixed vendor environment using industry standard NTCIP protocols. The system was seamlessly integrated using the city’s existing communications infrastructure and new higher speed modems while maintaining operations transparency between the new and old system during the transition period.

Baltimore's new TMC featuring workstations and video wall.

“The use of an open architecture and standard protocols allows the city to easily expand and upgrade their traffic control systems into the future,“ said Diederick VanDillen Siemens Senior Project Manager, “Siemens has been able to incorporate some of their own traffic signal controllers along the City light rail corridor intermixed with other third party controllers – something that would not have been possible under the old system. Ultimately this flexibility provides the City options and saves them money in the long run.”

Operators will use the new, centrally-managed software to monitor traffic signal operations, override normal time-of-day plans with centrally-commanded response plans for special events such as Ravens football and Orioles baseball games, manage incidents, remotely- manage traffic signal controller timing and perform traffic signal timing optimization.

The center will also function as the City’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during inclement weather, catastrophic or other major traffic impacting events by coordinating responses with other city and regional partner agencies including the Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA), Maryland Transit Admin (MTA), Maryland Port Administration (MPA) and Maryland Department of Homeland Security MHA (MHA).