MS2 Blog

Thursday, April 14, 2016

GIS-T - All Things Geospatial in Transportation

MS2 attended the recent Geospatial Information Systems for Transportation (GIS-T) Symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina. As a vendor, we saw lots of our friends, software users and prospective clients. We learned that annual HPMS data reporting is consuming the time of data monitoring professionals and planners in DOT GIS departments around the country. We also learned that ESRI's Roads and Highways software is increasingly popular with DOT... [Read More]

Friday, April 1, 2016

MS2's New Explainer Video

It's April 1, but this is no trick. MS2 has a new "explainer" video on our YouTube channel. An explainer video is just that - it's used by companies to introduce a new website or a product or to answer the questions "who are you?" and "what do you do?" In this case, we do this in 1-minute, 12-seconds. Creating a good explainer video isn't as easy as editing video clips of your cat hopping around your furniture at home. We had to create/e... [Read More]

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Indiana MPOs Gather to Discuss Transportation Planning

Transportation planners and engineers from MPOs around the state of Indiana gathered for a two-day conference at the Horizon Convention Center in Muncie, Indiana in October 2015. Representatives from the state Department of Transportation (INDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) were also in attendance to focus on how Indiana MPOs can help redefine transportation to create healthier, active communities. Greg Katter, PE, INDOT Act... [Read More]

Monday, December 21, 2015

Kern COG (California) Receives Prestigious USDOT Best Practices Certification

The USDOT (specifically the FTA and FHWA) recently reviewed and evaluated Kern COG’s transportation planning process. The intent of the certification review was to focus on the agency’s compliance with certain aspects of MAP-21 and strategic FTA and FHWA initiatives. As a result of the review, the FTA and FHWA jointly certified that the metropolitan planning process performed by Kern COG substantially meets requirements. The review resulted ... [Read More]

Friday, October 16, 2015

Las Vegas: Planning, Modeling and Traffic Data

Transportation planners from all over the country will gather in Las Vegas next week for the annual Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO) conference. Attendees are eager to share stories, listen to presentations from their peers and industry professionals, and to experience the fun of being in Las Vegas. Over 240 planners, engineers and vendors have so far signed up for the conference. The agenda includes break-out sess... [Read More]

Friday, October 9, 2015

Experts Add Value at MS2’s DOT User Conference

MS2 held a Department of Transportation User Conference in Columbus, Ohio earlier this month. Users of MS2’s Transportation Data Management System (TDMS) came from as far as Arizona, Texas, Vermont, Montana, Ohio, Massachusetts and Washington, DC. MS2’s technical reviews and the social aspects of the conference was enjoyed by all. But the most value was provided by experts from The Ohio State University (OSU), ESRI and FHWA. An after dinner pr... [Read More]

Friday, August 28, 2015

Traffic Crash Database Aids Engineers in Crash Countermeasures

MS2’s Traffic Crash Location System (TCLS) is software that maps, manages and analyzes vehicle crash data. Our clients are city and county traffic engineers who need a better way to analyze thousands of vehicle crashes in their jurisdictions – and then determine solutions to reduce or eliminate future crashes. Example of MS2’s traffic crash location system user interface MS2’s TCLS maps vehicle crashes on an interactive Google map. Using ... [Read More]

Friday, July 31, 2015

MS2 Manages 1-Billion WIM Vehicle Records

An example of a WIM data table in MS2’s traffic count database system. Today, MS2 reached a data management milestone – processing and storing over 1,000,000,000 individual WIM (weigh-in-motion) vehicle records. WIM data is captured by sensors in pavement along state roads. State DOTs use the data to design pavement and bridges and to enforce weight limits. As software engineers, this is exciting due the size of the database. Big data! ... [Read More]

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Ann Arbor's Fake City Designed For Real Traffic Studies

An article from AutoBlog from July 20, 2015... A fake city rising from the middle of a Midwestern college campus is more than a proving ground for autonomous and connected car technology expected to revolutionize American roads. It's a lynchpin in Michigan's strategy to stay economically relevant and prevent automotive technology jobs from being poached by Silicon Valley...Read more here:

Friday, February 27, 2015

A Traffic Jam of Engineers?

Like many successful software and engineering firms, MS2 is out looking for new traffic engineers and software programmers to join our staff. We've added two new bright young people to our programming side from the University of Michigan recently. But we are still looking for traffic engineers to join us and assist with project management tasks. The shot above shows the madhouse of engineers (all sorts from civil to mechanical to compute... [Read More]