Notify Every Truck Program Named Project of the Year

The innovaive pilot program, NET (Notify Every Truck), overseen by the TRIMARC Traffic Operations Center in Louisville received the 2012 Project of the Year Award last week at the annual meeting of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Midwest in Columbus, Ohio.

ITS Midwest is a combined-state chapter of ITS America, and includes Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. The ITS Midwesy Awards Program highlights the major accomplishments of the chapter's public and private sector members. The chosen Project of the Year award is based on merit and significance of the project to its ITS Community.

The NET program is designed to alert dispatchers, drivers, and commercial motor vehicle owners of major events on interstate highways or parkways throughout the state of Kentucky.  NET defines a “major event” as any directional total closure lasting longer than two hours.

The program began in 2008 as a collaborative effort between TRIMARC, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, the Kentucky Motor Transport Association, trucking company owners, the Towing and Recovery Association of Kentucky, environmental clean-up companies, and several local and state police agencies. 

NET is designed to ensure that incident information gets to the decision makers. Dispatchers are alerted when an Interstate Highway is closed so that decisions can be made to mitigate the effects of the closure.  With timely information, truck routes can be altered or rest stops changed to avoid delay. The TRIMARC Traffic Operations Center monitors the closure, updates the incident as necessary, and then re-notifies participants when the highway is cleared.  Valuable time, fuel, and pollutants are saved, secondary accidents are reduced, and responder safety is enhanced.

Participants sign up to receive text and/or email messages by completing a simple process at the program’s website: www.notifyeverytruck.com.  The only costs to participants are charges that may be incurred from their internet provider for service. 

 

Initially confined to the Louisville area, the program quickly garnered enthusiastic interest from commercial carriers (as well as state and federal agencies) and the area was extended to cover Kentucky segments of I-64, I-65 and I-71.  In 2012, the addition of a new server reduced the time required to cycle through the notification process and the program was expanded to cover all interstates and parkways in Kentucky.  When requested by the Kentucky State Traffic Operations Center, NET also sends out notifications regarding major incidents in Indiana and Tennessee.  To date, 259 Alerts have been issued.