Modernizing Transportation Operations: Smarter Tolling and Beyond
Greg Mack
Assistant Director of IT and Toll Systems, CTRMA
Uday Katira
Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting
Central Texas, which includes the City of Austin, is one of the fastest growing regions in the country. Enterprise technology companies are expanding their presence and an entrepreneurial spirit thrives in the region.
Rapid growth brings new transportation challenges and opportunities, and the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA) is on the front lines of navigating this change. CTRMA is an independent government agency focused on improving the transportation system in Williamson and Travis counties. Its mission is to implement multi-modal transportation solutions that reduce congestion and create transportation choices that enhance the quality of life and economic vitality for the community.
CTRMA plans to keep pace with expansion through the region’s next-generation highway strategy - a key part of which includes tolling. This approach allows projects to be built more quickly than under the traditional gas-tax-funded, pay-as-you-go system, because toll projects receive full funding commitments prior to construction start.
Like many transportation authorities that include toll roads, CTRMA is looking for opportunities to improve overall management efficiency and user experience. The organization embarked on an initiative to create an in-house data platform and associated routing and systems interfaces to support full transaction management. The authority wanted an internally managed data platform capable of consuming, transacting, and managing the agency’s toll transaction process, while also supplementing additional business functions and scaling in conjunction with agency operations. The solution would also create a foundation for expanded analytics capabilities, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to support innovative new programs. CTRMA selected Deloitte Consulting and Google Cloud for this important mission.
The project is scheduled to go live in the second half of 2022, allowing CTRMA to control data capture, processing, invoicing, and critical analysis on a single platform. With Google Cloud, the agency will also have the power to scale the solution cost effectively and predictability to act as a service provider for smaller agencies and organizations.
Extending the boundaries of what’s possible, on the highways and beyond
Toll transaction processing solutions are highly beneficial in supplementing the back-office functions of the tolling agency by supporting transaction aggregation, product and discount management, billing and invoice management, data exchange and pricing analytics.
The complex end-to-end workflow includes capturing the transaction, identifying the payer, pricing the transaction, and processing payment. To manage this entire process efficiently, CTRMA looked to Deloitte and Google Cloud to deliver a fully managed and server-less solution, high-volume data processing, real-time analytics on streaming data, built-in machine learning and GIS capabilities, and a high-speed in-memory business intelligence engine.
As part of the modernization initiative, Deloitte is also using Google Cloud’s Apigee API Management, which will enable CTRMA to design, secure, analyze, and scale APIs with visibility and control across the complete API lifecycle. Together, Deloitte and Google Cloud are helping government organizations extend the boundaries of what is possible – on the highways and beyond.
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