In partnership with the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN), led by the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI), Trans-Plan has developed a digital road asset management toolkit.
TORONTO, January 19, 2021 – Trans-Plan, a Toronto-based transportation engineering & planning company, has successfully launched its asset management toolkit AssetCity through a partnership with the City of Niagara Falls and the support of AVIN. As provincial regulations (O.Reg. 588/1: Asset Management Planning for Municipal Infrastructure) place new requirements on municipalities to manage their road assets, the AssetCity toolkit was built to make compliance easier and more efficient. Since the City of Niagara Falls began using AssetCity to manage their road sign inventory, they report significant improvements in internal communications, inventory management and productivity.
AssetCity Signs provides an end-to-end toolkit for a municipality to manage its sign inventory. In a city the size of Niagara Falls, population 120,000, there are more than 20,000 individual signs. With AssetCity Signs, road crews can photograph the sign, instantly GPS its location and condition, identify dangerous conditions such as faded or defaced signs, relay that to office staff, schedule upgrades, and project replacement timetables and budget costs. Critically, signs provide motorists and pedestrians with information on speed limits, turning regulations, parking limitations, and street names, among a myriad of other important usage data.
Analysis of AssetCity Signs implementation in the City of Niagara Falls has made a measurable impact in just six months. Internal reporting shows that there has been a 30% decrease in staff time spent on office paperwork, freeing them to attend to other important tasks. Road crews report that using AssetCity signs on an iPad gives them the template they need for recording field data without paper and pen that gets lost or misread. As a department, they achieve 100% confidence in risk, dropping their liability to virtually zero.
Trans-Plan’s CEO Shadi Hagag is confident that this project will lead to developing other successful software innovations in the transportation engineering sector. “It’s really surprising how slow this sector has been to embrace the advantages of AI and SaaS. Right now, we are developing a new project with OCE that will use drone technology to provide intelligence that feeds right into AssetCity to manage traffic flow and reduce collisions.”
Through AVIN, Trans-Plan received $98,112 in support from Ontario, with a further $118,202 in industry contribution, for a total project value of $216,314.
About Trans-Plan: Trans-Plan is an established transportation engineering firm dedicated to making cities smarter by improving efficient mobility and safe access for all users of urban and rural roadways, including private and commercial vehicles, public transit, cyclists, and pedestrians. The company is a specialist operation: small, niched and mighty, wholly Canadian owned, established in 2009. AssetCity is the toolkit that Trans-Plan developed for municipal and regional governments for safety and risk management. It is a knowledge-driven collection of customized modules that integrates all aspects of road asset infrastructure management: inventory, compliance, maintenance, replacement, acquisition and future projections. The company also provides specialized services including traffic studies, transportation safety studies, noise and vibration impact studies, and air quality, based on expertise serving more than 500 clients.
visit www.trans-plan.ca and http://assetcity.ca
About AVIN:
The Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN) is a Government of Ontario program, led by the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI), designed to reinforce Ontario’s position as a North American leader in transportation technology and infrastructure systems. Through resources such as research and development (R&D) support, talent development, technology acceleration, business and technical support, and demonstration grounds, AVIN provides a competitive advantage to Ontario-based CAV companies.
