Two-Way Street

Aaron is the former editor of ProjectsAtWork.com

  ProjectsAtWork  

The 511 project needs national consistency but local flexibility. How do you build a bridge to consensus?

In designating 511 as the national travel information number, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that states should have flexibility in deploying 511, while the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), through a broadly represented national coalition, should provide guidance on how a nationwide system will look. No small project management task, considering that each state or region has different technical capabilities, institutional barriers and demographic and geographic issues.

So, as transportation agencies like the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in  San Francisco implement 511 on a regional level, a vision of how the number will operate as a nationwide system is also emerging. After all, 511 is intended to consolidate hundreds of local phone numbers, but it could create greater confusion if callers encounter vastly different systems moving from state to state.

"As a traveler, I want the way I get information in  Washington, D.C., to be similar to the way I get it in Chicago, San Francisco or anywhere else," says Pete Costello, director of infrastructure and operations for ITS America in Washington, a nonprofit transit group.

To that end,…

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