Seattle Department of Transportation: dotMaps helps city visualize success
About Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT)
The mission of the Seattle Department of Transportation is to manage Seattle’s transportation system, offering affordable access to places and opportunities to both citizens and visitors.
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About SADA
SADA is a Google Cloud Premier Partner, providing business and technology consulting, migration, and application development services that transform organizations with cloud-based solutions.
Hundreds of projects accelerated and millions of dollars saved with better coordination using dotMaps powered by Google Cloud.
Google Cloud results
- Saved $21 million through better coordination on SADA’s dotMaps application, powered by Google Cloud
- Accelerated time to completion of major construction projects
- Improved citizens’ experience by providing real-time insights into city projects impacting their mobility
- Maximized usefulness of public assets by coordinating with other agencies
Saving $21 million—and counting—using SADA’s dotMaps
One of the largest construction zones in the country, Seattle is in the midst of a growth spurt. But managing this construction without undue disruption to the city’s transportation infrastructure—and people’s ability to get around the city—has been challenging.
“Not only is dotMaps a great tool for coordinating construction projects, it’s an extremely easy way to keep the public informed.”
—Heather Marx, Director of Downtown Mobility, Seattle Department of TransportationThe city is embracing technology to meet this challenge. dotMaps is a map-based coordination solution for public agencies that enables users to gain visual insight into citywide projects. Using dotMaps, developed by SADA and powered by Google Cloud, Seattle can now manage construction projects to reduce impact on infrastructure—and accelerate completion of those projects in a cost-effective way.
The primary mission of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is to deliver and manage the public assets that support transportation within the city, and its director of downtown mobility, Heather Marx, is at the epicenter of Seattle’s construction boom. As Marx says, “Not only is dotMaps a great tool for coordinating construction projects, it’s an extremely easy way to keep the public informed.” Today, Marx is responsible for bringing together all five regional transportation partners—King County Metro Transit, light-rail operator Sound Transit, the Port of Seattle, the Washington State Department of Transportation, and SDOT—to ensure that SDOT’s efforts to improve transportation come together in the right order, at the right time, with the right execution.
These partners use the dotMaps tool to help commuters use the various regional transportation systems efficiently, particularly during the most congested periods of the day. And they’ve had many successes. Over the past several years, the rate of commuters driving alone has decreased, with more than 66% of commuters now choosing to walk, carpool, bicycle, or telecommute to work, as reported by SDOT. Back in 2015, Seattle’s traffic was deemed the seventh worst in the nation. By 2020, it isn’t anywhere near the top of the list.
Finding a better way to manage Seattle’s transportation operations in real time—at scale
Prior to 2017, there had been no organized attempt to coordinate the many concurrent construction projects underway at any given moment.
At that time, SDOT hired Marx to establish a new project coordination office and bring the situation under control. The goal was to ensure that construction projects—both public and private—would cause as little disruption as possible to city transportation assets, such as roads and sidewalks.
By getting construction project managers to coordinate activities such as street closures and trench digging, the overall impact on time, costs, and the environment could be minimized.
“Instead of a telecom company digging a trench for its conduit, and a cable business digging a trench for its conduit, they could share the trench,” says Marx. “Doing this would save costs, it would be good for the planet, and it would also get done a lot faster.”
The project coordination office first attempted to use a homegrown program to track planned projects and display their locations on a digital map, but it wasn’t particularly user friendly, and SDOT employees didn’t adopt it. Yet the mapping function was deemed so critical that Marx was awarded funding to procure a better solution and, as she recalls, “it was very, very clear from the beginning that dotMaps was the best in class.”
dotMaps fulfilled all the key requirements: it worked on mobile devices, so employees could access it from anywhere; it had a simple, clean, easy-to-use interface; and it seamlessly integrated with SDOT’s existing street network database.
SADA, a business and technology consulting firm, then customized the dotMaps application for SDOT, working closely with the SDOT team to address its unique integration and training requirements.
The implementation was “lightning fast,” says Marx. SADA had the solution up and running in under six months and trained roughly 250 users over the first two days of the launch. For a public-sector contract, the time to value was quite exceptional, and SADA continues to support SDOT on a weekly basis. “You don’t always get what you want at the speed you want it,” says Marx, “but SADA really delivered.”
“A project that was going to cost $200,000 only cost $100,000, so there are more funds to expand the network or otherwise improve infrastructure. That’s good for everyone.”
—Heather Marx, Director of Downtown Mobility, Seattle Department of TransportationRealizing $7 million in savings in the first year
According to SDOT, they realized $7 million in savings in the first year alone, and have saved over $21 million to date—and counting—thanks to the dotMaps application. Additionally, commuters are saving time and money by adjusting their travel plans in the event of road closures, and partner companies are saving on costs through improved project coordination and resource sharing. Before implementing dotMaps, SDOT was able to coordinate projects on just 3% of city streets. Today, it has 100% visibility and control, according to SDOT.
Using a Google Maps Platform integration and Google Cloud, dotMaps uses core infrastructure capabilities, data analytics, and machine learning to help municipalities like Seattle better manage their public rights of way. dotMaps also accesses Google’s growing public dataset, which draws on data from more than a billion monthly contributing users, to enhance its predictive analytics and reporting.
Today, in Seattle’s University District, a regional fiber provider and a national telecom company are sharing trenching to install infrastructure under the same permit—even the same traffic control plan. The two firms have saved more than $100,000—allowing them to shift and invest in other capital projects.
“A project that was going to cost $200,000 only cost $100,000, so there are more funds to expand the network or otherwise improve infrastructure. That’s good for everyone,” says Marx.
Building value, good will, and safety for Seattle’s major utilities and communities
Beyond substantial savings and ease of use, perhaps the biggest benefits dotMaps delivers to the greater Seattle region is enhanced interagency collaboration, time savings, and knowledge sharing. SDOT works closely with a broad range of agencies and utilities, including the city’s water, wastewater, and solid-waste manager, Seattle Public Utilities; Seattle City Light, its municipal electric utility; and Puget Sound Energy, its natural gas provider. dotMaps allows them all to coordinate their plans to excavate or close streets to align with SDOT’s own infrastructure-building and maintenance plans.
But its use of dotMaps goes well beyond planning construction projects—it also builds good will in the community. SDOT uses dotMaps to help plan for events like marathons and parades, so organizers can avoid major construction sites. There’s a function in dotMaps for filmmakers to notify the city of places and times they intend to shoot. SDOT also uses dotMaps to respect the traditions of the many cultures of their diverse community. For example, in its large Southeast Asian community, wedding ceremonies can involve horse riding and processions. SDOT makes sure that these events are marked in dotMaps.
“This is our way of ensuring we encourage the cultural richness and equity in our community,” says Marx, who also mentions that they tried to do some of these things before deploying dotMaps, but “not nearly as well.” “SDOT helps us ensure that Seattle remains Seattle in the midst of all this growth,” says Marx.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, dotMaps has become an essential tool to help SDOT seamlessly transition to shifting needs, and keep public health and safety its top priority. dotMaps is used to screen locations for testing sites, curbside pickup zones, and Stay Healthy Street closures—a city program that closed 20 miles of streets to traffic so residents can exercise and bike on them.
“dotMaps has proven to be an invaluable tool for Seattle residents and visitors as well as for the city itself.”
—Heather Marx, Director of Downtown Mobility, Seattle Department of TransportationOver-delivering on user expectations
dotMaps also helps SDOT invest wisely. In 2015, SDOT won an almost billion-dollar transportation levy from the citizens of Seattle. The “Levy to Move Seattle” initiative was to repave more than 200 miles of city streets by 2024.
“We knew that the public … was not going to appreciate seeing freshly paved streets with utility projects happening right in the middle of them,” says Marx. “That’s bad for the traveling public, it’s terrible for the planet. dotMaps helped us solve that, and many other challenges that followed.”
There was another bonus, too. Initially, SDOT thought dotMaps would be used for future planning—to coordinate projects that were scheduled within one to five years. But as Marx and her team began using the tool, they realized it would also be a valuable tool for communicating with the public, as a way of documenting street closures and traffic diversions involved in current construction projects.
SDOT project data is pushed out to Google Maps and other map service providers, giving citizens a graphical interface that enables them to see where the road closures are and receive daily, weekly, or monthly notifications of new construction projects. Or they can use the app to quickly plot the best route for their commute.
According to SDOT, there are now over 100 unique weekly active users that use the system to plan their commutes, run errands, and keep abreast of the latest construction projects in their neighborhoods.
“dotMaps has proven to be an invaluable tool for Seattle residents and visitors as well as for the city itself,” says Marx.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT)
The mission of the Seattle Department of Transportation is to manage Seattle’s transportation system, offering affordable access to places and opportunities to both citizens and visitors.
About SADA
SADA is a Google Cloud Premier Partner, providing business and technology consulting, migration, and application development services that transform organizations with cloud-based solutions.