Since writing my last blog entry about the Illinois Dept of Transporation using Bing Maps for reporting ARRA funded projects, it has come to my attention that the Texas DoT has exapnded their use of Bing Maps to also provide tracking of projects planned for the agency's 2010 fiscal year, some stimulus funded, others from more traditional sources such as bonds.
The application can be found here. When you visit the site, you are given the option to search by TxDOT district or by Texas county. Once you have specified your search, a results page similar to the below is displayed with data coming from an XML table. If you take a look at the legend, you can see that projects are identified by project type--where the funding is coming from--and project benefit--where it has impact on the State and its citizens--with the colored circle idicating the extent of the impact. By Clicking on the hyperlinked project number, you can see project details. This includes project milestones, budget, to date costs, and even a point of contact for the project. Talk about transparency of operations! Nice!
But of course if I am writing about it, you know there is Bing Maps in there. From the detailed summary, you can click on "Show Project Location" and it puts a dot on a map, which is helpful. But throughout this application there are links to view a Pavement Conditions Map which does exactly what its name promises, it reports on pavement conditions as seen in the map below. Green indicates "good" pavement conditions, yellow indicates fair, and red is for poor pavement conditions. The geometry being visualized is from an ESRI shapefile, of course, but as a single linear overlay to increase performance.
Lastly, TxDOT has also added an application to identify the 100 most congested roadways on the Texas highway system with, naturally, Bing Maps on the front end. You can click on each road segment to display information about the congestion issue for that particular segment athat includes cost-as-a-result-of-delay analysis. For many of the roads, this includes a 20 year projection of costs if nothing were to be done. Meanwhile, this page also features an option to view congestion management plans by roadway. So to my friends in Texas, the next time you are stuck in traffic on one of these roads, pull out your mobile, hit the website and feel a little relief by reading up on what the State intends to do about that particular road!
Great applications from the great State of Texas. Yeeeehaww!
Who loves Bing Maps even more than me? Departments of Transporation, that's who!
-=Virtual Jerry
another success for Bing Maps!
