MS2 Blog

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]

Monday, February 16, 2015

Reporter Maps Minnesota’s Road Network

We were impressed by the analytical effort shown recently by St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press reporter David Montgomery. Since that state’s legislature is debating a multi-billion dollar tax and fee program aimed at improving the state’s roads, Montgomery decided a public education effort on the state road network – and who pays for maintenace – was needed. So he wrote this story showing 11 maps his team developed hoping to educate both le... [Read More]

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Why Ants Handle Traffic Better Than You Do

We had to chuckle when we heard this story about how humans can learn about traffic congestion from ant behavior. Go here to both read the story and listen to it as reported on National Public Radio.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

New 2015 TRB Conference Venue is a Winner

MS2's booth at the 2015 TRB Conference The Transportation Research Board's (TRB) annual Washington, DC conference had been held at the Marriott Wardman for many years. While the hotel was always nice attendees were forced to take shuttle buses to two other local hotels to attend various conference sessions. And all the exhibits were jammed into two halls in the basement of the Wardman. Everything was somewhat inconvenient. The conference had ... [Read More]

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

MS2 Makes Traffic Count Data Reporting Easy

A key interest of traffic engineers is how to efficiently export traffic count data and create reports once the data has been collected.  Since there are many different needs and uses for traffic count data, MS2’s traffic count database system (TCDS) makes it easy for engineers and planners to create reports easily and efficiently. Once a user logs into the application, a “Report Center” button appears above the numeric record indicator. ... [Read More]