Kansas City Scout presented the 1st Annual Kansas City ITS Symposium on Wednesday May 7, 2008, held at the Sylvester Powell Community Center in Mission, Kansas. “The purpose of the symposium is to bring Kansas City area Intelligent Transportation System professionals together to gain valuable information, share past experiences to build on lessons learned and increase collaboration on future initiatives”, according to E. Jason Sims, Manager Kansas City Scout, whose brainchild it was to host the symposium.

The symposium was sponsored by Citilog, Delcan, HNTB, Iteris, Network Integration Services, Olsson Associates, Telvent, 3rd Dimension Inc, Traffic.com, Transcore, and Vanus consultant firms who are all leaders in the intelligent transportation industry. The free event boasted nationally renown ITS guest speakers Gordon Paesani of Delcan and Paul Olson of the Federal Highway Administration, the function was well received with more than 100 local and regional ITS professionals in attendance.

The symposium consisted of 3 sessions and focused on key topics in intelligent transportation such as Ramp Metering, Incident and Corridor Management as well Traffic Signal Management. The event was interesting and provided an avenue for those in ITS to network and collaborate on important issue facing the ITS community. The symposium was a success by any standard and Kansas City Scout is looking forward and making preparations for next year’s event to be even better than this year.

In a creative move to make Kansas City Scout better than before, Scout’s Traffic Management Center got a makeover which was completed in February 2008. The center originally had a hutch design on the back portion on each of the workstations, which did not allocate much space for the operators’ work areas. Additionally the hutch obstructed the view of the video wall which sometimes made it difficult for operators to see all of the monitors.

The remodel entailed having the hutches removed which opened up the workstations with more room and allowed better visibility of the lower tiers of the center and the bottom row of the video wall. Kansas City Scout strives to be a world-class transportation system and the makeover of the traffic management center moves Scout forward in achieving this goal.

Kansas City Scout deployed 7 new cameras on Interstate 470 and 71 Highway to enhance coverage in south Kansas City. The two new cameras on 71 Highway are located at Hickman Mills Drive and Harry Truman Drive, these new cameras help fill in the visual gap between Red Bridge Road and Main Street on the Scout system.

An additional 5 cameras were deployed on Interstate 470. The first camera is just east of the Three Trails Crossing, at Blue Ridge Blvd. A second camera is strategically placed at James A. Reed Road. The other three cameras are located at the 470/350/50 interchange, Douglas Road and at Colbern Road, with a view of the 291/470 interchange.