Transportation Management Center Concepts of Operations

This communication can take place in a variety of ways.At Houston’s TranStar TMC, operations and maintenance exchange dailyspreadsheets covering the status, plans and activities, and changes of status offailed devices. Interaction also includes telephone conversations which mayrequest operations to attempt a system-initiated restart of a device, or aninvestigation of device status at the vendor-provided control unit outside of thecontrol room. This interaction is not necessarily limited to the TMC’s assets.At Long Island’s INFORM TMC, information received from many sourcesregarding the status of traffic equipment throughout the Island is received bythe TMC, and passed to the responsible agency. Thus, a report of a failedsignal or streetlight in one of the Island’s many townships may come toINFORM, who then passes the information along to a designated point ofcontact at the responsible agency. TMCs with mobile resources (such as amotorist assistance patrol) or which serve as a central transportation point ofcontact for the region (such as Georgia’s NaviGAtor or the Montgomery County,Maryland TMC) perform this service regularly.Logging Suspected and Verified FailuresBoth automated and manual logging of suspected and verified failures is criticalto improving system performance. In the short-term, the logged informationassists in isolating the fault and effecting repairs or replacement, and possibly forobtaining repairs under warranty provisions. In the intermediate term, thisinformation is quite useful in planning and budgeting for preventivemaintenance, including periodic replacement of units with limited service lives.In the longer term, the maintenance history of a device or class of devicesprovides the information which can be used to make purchase decisions for anoverall upgrade of the system, or for expansion of the system.Warranty ManagementAs mentioned above, the creation of a log of device performance is essential inmanaging warranty claims. This information should be adequate to link to theconfiguration management database (typically some unique identifier of thedevice), so that the required information on device series, model, and versionare available. This information may also be useful in:• Providing feedback to the vendor• Developing workarounds such as changes in filter material or placingprotective shielding around a device• Isolating specific conditions where standard practices such as grounding orsurge protection are not adequate4-46