NOMINATION FORM. Zip: Phone: 217/ Fax: 217/

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1 NOMINATION FORM Title of Nomination: GIS Internet Road Construction Application Project/System Manager: Dennis Jones Job Title: Management Systems Manager Agency: Illinois Department of Transpiration Department: Bureau of Information Processing Address: 2300 South Dirksen Parkway, Room 107 City: Springfield State: IL Zip: Phone: 217/ Fax: 217/ Category for judging: Innovative Use of Technology Person nominating: Mary Barber Reynolds, Chief Technology Officer Governor s Office, State of Illinois Phone: (217) Fax: (217) mailto:mary_reynolds@gov.state.il.us

2 Illinois Department Of Transportation GIS Internet Road Construction Application Executive Summary The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) is using GIS technology to publish an interactive map of the IDOT road construction zones on the Internet. This service provides Illinois residents and out-of-state motorists the ability to better plan their routes around and through the State of Illinois. Commercial drivers can benefit by minimizing travel times and distances. This application was designed to be customer-centric to better serve the public and minimize any disruption caused by IDOT road construction zones. Before this application, hardcopy maps were produced each month and made available to the public. If someone wanted a map, they had to visit one of the IDOT offices or have their name added to a mailing list. A link directly to Road Construction is provided on the main State of the Illinois homepage or from the IDOT home page From the map of the entire state of Illinois, the Internet user can then select an area of interest by any of the following methods: Clicking on the map will zoom into that area Selecting one of the ten metropolitan areas Selecting one of the 102 counties Selecting one of the 1,290 cities in Illinois Additional tools are available for the user to move the visible area of the map display or to zoom into the desired location. Once the user has located an area of interest, they can obtain detailed information about the construction zone. This detailed information includes: Project location with start and ending dates Direction of travel affected by the construction and the number of lanes closed An impact on travel statement and suggestions to motorists A link to additional web sites with additional information about that zone A project map showing the surrounding area A link is included on the Road Construction page that provides a detailed listing of all construction zones, along with links to: Chicago Expressway Travel Times Illinois State Map Illinois Tollway Information Interstate Rest Area Map Other IDOT Construction Truck roadway Restriction Lists Road Closures In Illinois Missouri DOT Construction In addition to the web site, this application produces reports for IDOT's toll free road information line (800/ ). Also produced are images of the road construction that are loaded on Data Transmission Network (DTN) weather devices available at the Illinois rest areas.

3 Description The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) is using GIS technology to publish an interactive map of road construction zones on the Internet. On April 9, 2001, this service became available to the general public. For the month of April, there were at least 6,500 different visitors using this web site. Currently, there are 2,600 visitors per week and the number increases weekly. Over 15% of the visitors have become regular users of the web site. Construction zone information is entered using an ESRI ArcView GIS interface on a Microsoft Windows NT workstation. The following processes are performed: 1. A text file of all current construction zones information is created for archive. 2. A report in HTML format is created for the Road Construction Zone web site. 3. Two text reports are created for the Communications Center staff to read into the toll free Touch Tone and Rotary phone systems. 4. A text report for the Road Construction Zone web site is created. 5. North and South views of Illinois are exported and converted to.tif image files using ArcPress. 6. Communications Center reports and the archive file are copied to the Operations file server. 7. Web reports in HTML and text format, the Construction Zone shapefiles and two image files are transmitted to the ArcIMS map server via FTP. The Road Construction web site was developed as an ArcIMS map service using HTML pages. Components of the web pages related to the ArcIMS map service use customized Java scripts, and most of the complex tools provided by ArcIMS were modified or removed. The web site was developed to make it easier to navigate an interactive GIS map of road construction zones on state maintained roads in Illinois. This application allows users to access road construction information at their home or office at a time that is convenient for them. From the State homepage or the IDOT home page the Internet user selects the Road Construction link. If the Internet user's browser is not compatible with the web site and the browser is not able to view the site due to incompatibilities in the scripting code, the Internet user is redirected to a text only report of all construction zone information. Before this application, hardcopy maps were produced each month and made available to the public. If someone wanted a map, they had to visit one of the IDOT offices or have their name added to a mailing list. In less than two months, the number of users accessing the road construction information on this web site has more than doubled compared to the number of users of the old paper maps. This number will continue to increase, as more people become aware of the service.

4 The Road Construction main page

5 An Example of the Project Details Page

6 Significance The significance of this application is that the general public now has information available to them that was difficult to get in the past. This application replaces an older application that produced hardcopy maps of the road construction projects. Time and money are being saved with the new application. The manual effort to put the information on a paper map has been replaced by entering the information into a GIS system. What formerly took days to put on the map now requires only minutes. Another improvement is the timeliness of the information. The printed maps were updated once a month during the construction season (April - December). With the new system, updates are published 4 times daily. Another benefit with the new system is that short duration construction projects (1-3 days) can also be entered and made available to the public. Benefits Studies have shown that in the Chicago area the cost of wasted time and burned gasoline is $4.6 billion a year. A 1999 Chicago study showed that an average cost of $570 per person, 34 hours, and 50 extra gallons of gasoline was the cost of traffic delays. This system will help reduce these costs by allowing motorists to make intelligent decisions about how they travel on Illinois roads. Besides the time and money savings, this application makes the road construction data available to everyone with Internet access. With the old system, only 2,800 copies of the maps were produced each month. Considering the population of Illinois and surrounding states, this is a very small percentage when compared to the number of people who now have access to the road construction information. In addition to the general public, all businesses using roads in Illinois now have access to this information. This application helps businesses by minimizing the disruption caused by road construction projects. In a time where energy costs are increasing, this will mean a direct savings to the people driving on Illinois roadways. One intangible benefit is an increase in the quality-of-life for the general public. Allowing the public to plan trips that avoid construction areas gives people more time at their destination to enjoy their off-work hours. The long-term benefit of this application will be a better informed public and less frustration with infrastructure improvements. Motorists and truck drivers can decide the best way to travel on the Illinois highway system.

7 Return on investment The main return on investment for this application is intangible. The cost of traffic delays for Illinois motorists is billions of dollars each year, with a large amount of this due to road construction. There is no way to estimate how much this application can save the State of Illinois and its citizens; however, the potential savings can be considerable. The cost of producing the maps each month was: Materials and Printing cost = $ 1,000 Labor cost = $ Total Monthly Cost = $ 1,600 Nine Months X Total Yearly Cost = $14,400 The one-time development cost for the new application was approximately $50,000. The hardware and software cost was approximately $25,000. The hardware and GIS software purchased for this application will be used for future GIS Internet applications, as well. This will reduce the cost of these future applications. Hardware/Software The hardware for this application is: An NT workstation for entering and updating the road construction information into GIS. A dual processor NT server to distribute the GIS application. The software for this application is: ArcView for entering and updating the GIS data MicroSoft's Internet Information Server ArcIMS for publishing the GIS data on the Internet Servlet Exec 3.0