Olathe Traffic Management Center Partners tour KC Scout, Jan. 31

-

On Friday, January 31, KC Scout hosted Rylee Sanchez, ATMS Technician I, and Cody Harris, ATMS Operations Supervisor, from the Olathe Traffic Management Center.  This stemmed from a KC2026 Transportation working meeting with Kelly Alvarez, Traffic System Operator, Randy Johnson, KC Scout Manager, and Noel Forrester, Traffic Operations Manager. Noel had expressed interest in having his team tour KC Scout and learn about our operations.

We’ve coordinated with their operations before but typically only for major incidents in their region. During the tour of KC Scout, Rylee and Cody learned about Scout’s history, our staffing structure, operational flow, innovations, and challenges in TIM efforts. Additionally, James Banhart, Scout AM Shift Supervisor, provided a demonstration of Scout’s ATMS which Rylee and Cody expressed genuine interest in since they also use an ATMS with their operations. Rylee and Cody provided an overview of what Olathe Traffic Management Center does including coordination with Olathe Public Works for incident response (such as a sign knock down), signal timing efforts for city corridors, and the upcoming I-35 and Santa Fe Corridor Project.

Scout has been invited to tour the Olathe TMC which we’ll arrange later this spring or early summer. An additional tour of KC Scout has been arranged for the rest of Olathe’s traffic department personnel (about 28 people) to visit which has been tentatively scheduled for October 8, 2025.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Neil Kornis – Scout Senior TMC Operator and Eyes on the Road

-
Image
One April 25, KC Scout was hit with a cyberattack that shut down all cameras and communication to the roadways. Without their normal resources, the Scout team quickly pivoted to using alternative means to continue providing traffic incident management services. Without cameras, the TMC relied on getting accurate lane closure information from first responders including KHP MAV and MoDOT Emergency Response. After further coordination efforts, it was decided that KHP Scout Senior TMC Operator Neil Kornis would assist with KHP MAV in the field for the further facilitation between KC Scout and KHP. “The opportunity to sit alongside with a MAV and witness them doing their job while also discussing how we could do a better job as a team couldn’t be passed up,” Kornis said. During this time, not only did Kornis act as another point of communication between Scout and MAV, but he also used this time to evaluate ways the teams could improve.  “I used the time to put myself in the MAV’s shoes ...
Read more

Facing Adversity and Preserving

-
Image
On Thursday, April 25 th in a matter of an instant, everything changed for KC Scout. When Scout employees walked into what they thought would be a regular workday, they instead were told to suddenly shut down everything, because they had just been hit with a cyberattack. That day, and for many days to come, were filled with meetings after meetings, scrambling to figure out the best way to go about this situation that no one had ever experienced before. Although the team already had a crisis plan set in place for many of their major critical incidents, they had never been trained on anything to this scale.  Throughout this time employees faced many challenges, but one of the biggest challenges they faced was simply determining which of their many tasks took priority over the others. This was difficult, because KC Scout serves two DOTs with 9 different functional teams and a number of other departments stepped in to help.  This is when Assistant Safety and Emergency Management D...
Read more

Kansas City Employee Presented Safety Award

-
Image
At the April 3 Missouri Highways & Transportation Commission meeting, Chief Safety & Operations Officer Becky Allmeroth presented Kansas City District Emergency Response Operator  Kenneth Cassway with a meritorious safety award. On Feb. 11, at just past 3:30 a.m., Kansas City Missouri Police Department dispatchers alerted officers of a wrong-way vehicle that was traveling eastbound in the westbound lanes of Interstate 70 at Brooklyn Avenue. Cassway heard the police radio and entered I-70 from Sterling Road and U.S. Route 40 to locate the wrong-way vehicle. In the area of I-70 and Pittman Road, Cassway observed the wrong-way vehicle coming toward his MoDOT truck. He used the truck and the JAWS debris removal tool to stop and pin the wrong-way vehicle between his vehicle and the concrete median barrier. Cassway and the wrong-way driver were not injured, and no damage was made to his MoDOT truck.
Read more