20th Anniversary Perspective: BJ Tomiko, Senior Partner / Director of Technical Support

William "BJ" Tomiko

Looking back on my 21 years with MS2 (technically predating the company itself), the one thing that stands out to me is our consistent and steady growth over time. It seems like almost every year we added 1-2 new State DOTs, a handful of smaller agencies, a new employee, and a batch of new features to the system. There have been some growth spurts here and there, but generally speaking, it’s been very steady growth as I look back over my years. The expanding capabilities and size of the software in particular are quite striking to me since I wrote a lot of the original core features of TCDS all those years ago. It’s extremely gratifying to see what the system has become, how useful it is to our clients, and to have been along for the ride through this continual expansion.

 

While most aspects of the company and the software have increased linearly, the database continues to grow exponentially. Each new client adds their historic datasets while all existing clients also add an extra year of data to the stack. So, over the years we have evolved our software to better process datasets of these sizes and serve them up to the internet. It’s almost funny to think back on how the database worked in the beginning compared to how it works now. Techniques that worked fine on those original small datasets wouldn’t stand a chance at managing the literal billions of vehicles we’re processing now. The evolution of the software to handle the expanding needs of our users is another one of those constants I’ve experienced.

 

I look forward to seeing where the next 20 years take MS2. What new trends in traffic will we adapt to? What new counting technologies will we utilize? Will cars start driving themselves? For an industry that has been fairly steady in the past, it’s interesting to see the large state of flux looming on the horizon. The entire world is changing, it’s an exciting time to be alive, and MS2 is ready as ever to take on the challenge.