KC Scout Shout!

KC Scout Manager Randy Johnson and Incident Management Coordinator Marcus Slaughter alongside with Amanda Horner of Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) have developed a Regional Traffic Incident Management (TIM) Committee. This committee tackle s traffic incident management at a regional level and aims to create effective bi-state, multi-agency participation in order to advance traffic incident management.  Johnson says that the first step in creating this committee was to determine what the needs were in the local response community and the KC Scout/MARC Implementation team determined that those needs included: Create a dialogue for better inter-agency exercising of coordination, communication, and cooperation. Offer opportunities for inter-agency training and exercises that promote teamwork. Create a tool or plan for developing common operational strategies. Cultivate a better understanding of other agencies and their responsibilities ...

Recently, KC Scout participated in the 21st Annual ITS Heartland Conference at the Overland Park Convention Center. ITS Heartland is a five-state Chapter of ITS America consisting of Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma Departments of Transportation. The three day event was held November 8-10 and was hosted by KDOT.   "This conference is designed to facilitate information sharing for Intelligent Transportation Systems projects and activities and to showcase ITS applications within its five member states," explains KC Scout Special Projects Coordinator Nancy Powell.  According to Powell, input also includes the latest news from the National Chapter, FHWA, University Transportation Researchers, and ITS product vendors. This year KC Scout was selected to present in several sessions at the conference. Every year member states are invited to submit abstracts for the event. A committee determines which ones will comprise the three days of breakout sessions, panel disc...