| This thesis presents the methodology and the results of an evaluation of the Gateway Guide Program in St. Louis, focusing on the media tie-in or the public and private partnership in traffic information dissemination. One purpose of Gateway Guide is to act as a unified traffic management and communications center to different agencies such as Motorist Assist/Emergency Response, emergency services (police, fire, ambulance, HAZMAT, etc...), MoDOT maintenance, radio, and television as well as to the field ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) devices such as CCTV's (closed-circuit televisions). Gateway Guide is MoDOT's program to reduce traffic congestion and improve roadway safety and efficiency through the use of advanced technology including an improved communications network. Two ways of assessing the benefits of this partnership are to survey the people from the media companies that utilize the technology and services provided by Gateway Guide and also to perform a quantitative study of the improvement in traffic information.; A survey of radio and television traffic reporters and producers reveals that a majority agree that Gateway Guide has improved traffic media information in St. Louis. The survey also shows that Gateway Guide had a significant impact on TV because of the traffic camera feeds. For the quantitative study, traffic reports were downloaded from Gateway Guide and non-Gateway Guide websites for 31 days from October 2002 to December 2002. The two independent sources were compared against each other to discern differences in initial, final and clearance reporting times of an incident, number of information and time updates, average information update frequency and number of incidents reported in the two reports. The results show significant improvements in the incident information that is disseminated in cooperation with Gateway Guide. |
