ATRI & FHWA Receive ITE Award for Technology Research Innovation

ARLINGTON, Va. (Map) - ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) awarded its annual 2008 ITS Management & Operations Award jointly to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for designing and developing a national research tool that monitors freight performance on North American highways using wireless truck position data.

The award was presented to ATRI and FHWA by ITE International president Alfred Guebert on August 19th at the 2008 ITE Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California. More than 2000 attendees participated in the event.

The "Freight Performance Measures" (FPM) initiative, which was sponsored, designed and tested by ATRI and FHWA over a period of five years, uses wireless trucking industry position data to calculate changes in travel times and speeds on more than 200,000 miles of roadway. It can also be used to identify system reliability, freight bottlenecks and truck parking issues.

Jeffrey Short, Senior Research Associate and FPM Project Manager for ATRI, described the award "as an extremely important acknowledgment of the FPM research by a very prestigious group of practitioners. Recognizing that so many ITE members may also be beneficiaries of FPM, it provides strong validation of our efforts."

Crystal Jones, FHWA's project manager for FPM, was present to receive the award on behalf of the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Freight Operations. Ms. Jones has spent more than four years providing critical guidance and oversight to the FPM research program. To date, the FPM system has been reviewed and/or tested by more than 30 agencies representing state DOTs, metropolitan planning organizations and academic institutions.

ATRI is the trucking industry's 501(c)(3) not-for-profit research organization. It is engaged in critical research relating to freight transportation's essential role in maintaining a safe, secure and efficient transportation system.