Deliverable 3.3: Business Needs Identified by the Focus Groups of the Restricted Use Technology Study

The Transportation Applications of Restricted Use Technology (TARUT) Study is a joint effort between the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Altarum Institute to investigate the use of information derived from restricted-use technologies and data to support the mission and activities of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) and to estimate the potential usefulness of these technologies during one or more pilot studies. To determine the primary business needs of MDOT as they relate to restricted use technology, Altarum designed a multi-stage focus group process to identify critical transportation system issues that might be addressed by restricted use technology and to detail the technical requirements that such technology must achieve to meet MDOT’s business needs. The plan for this focus group process was detailed in Deliverable 3.2 of the TARUT Study and approved by MDOT prior to the start of actual focus group meetings. On February 7, 2006, at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing, Michigan, Altarum and MDOT held the first focus group meeting (dubbed the Focus Group Kickoff Meeting), and this was followed up by second round of focus group meetings held in March 2006, with one supplemental meeting held in April 2006. This report, Deliverable 3.3 of the TARUT Study, primarily serves to present the synthesized results of the Focus Group Kickoff Meeting—i.e., to document the business needs that restricted use technology might achieve in terms of promising pilot studies that, if implemented, would test the ability of restricted use technology to meet MDOT’s mandates technically and economically. Furthermore, this report also presents preliminary analysis and synthesis of the second round focus group meetings, especially describing further refinement of the pilots that emerged from the Kickoff Meeting. This report is organized into two major sections. The first describes the conduct of the two rounds of focus groups that have been held and thus is process oriented. The second presents and discusses the results of the Kickoff Meeting, along with preliminary results from the second round meetings. In addition, this report also contains a Conclusions section and numerous appendices that present the actual templates and forms used in conduct of the focus groups and summaries of the raw results produced by both the Kickoff and second round meetings. The full, raw output of both rounds of focus groups held so far will be provided to MDOT in two separate documents. The focus groups addressed the following topics, respectively: asset management, ITS and traffic operations, environmental applications, traffic congestion and safety, and security.