Volpe Center: Transportation Strategic Plans

III. Successful Partnerships: Bridging the Weather and Transportation Communities

"Some are weather-wise, some are otherwise." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Poor Richard's Almanac

Reflecting its enormous impact on transportation, weather-related projects have recently emerged as some of the more successful examples of PPPs. Led by Sam Williamson, Federal Coordinator for Meteorology, symposium participants learned about the Foretell and ATWIS partnership projects from Peter Davies (Foretell) and Leon Osborne (University of North Dakota Regional Weather Information Center). These two traveler information systems have capitalized on recent advances in weather technology modernization, combining it with a growing market for accurate and highly localized road weather information. Similarly, aviation weather programs, publicly entrenched for a longer time, have also benefited from partnerships such as the Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) as presented by Bob Hallowell of MIT/Lincoln Laboratory.

Benefits of Weather Partnerships to the Transportation Community

These innovative partnerships and others like them promise to increase the safety and efficiency of traffic on U.S. highways, intercity rail, urban transit systems, coastal shipping routes, airways, and pipeline networks. Even within the meteorological arena, however, the once clear boundaries between the public and private sectors have become increasingly blurred and, in some cases, overlap. Partnerships have become a necessary method for achieving mutual objectives of both the meteorological and transportation communities.

The profusion and miniaturization of technology has enabled private participation on a scale almost unimaginable in the not too distant past. At stake is the enormous stream of weather data now collected and controlled by the Federal government, and the social implications of those data for basic research, preventing loss of life and injuries, property damage, and economic efficiency. With its growing consumption of these data, the transportation community has a personal stake in the outcomes of ongoing policy debates. Moreover, commenting on structural changes now underway on the meteorological scene, Robert M. White recently concluded that:

"...The relations between the government and the private sector in the acquisition of weather, hydrological and climate observation, the provision weather service, and the conduct of research and technology development in the United States have been evolving in ways that foreshadow new kinds of interaction between the two. The changes.arise from many causes.rapidly expanding profitable opportunities in the provision of weather and climate information on the part of the private sector.growing interest and concern on the part of the general public in both catastrophic, disruptive, and benign weather conditions and projected climate changes.emerging capabilities in computer, communication and visualization technology to take meteorological information to meet the needs of specific users. The commercial aspects of weather and climate service have steadily grown in scope and profitability, in step with improvements in forecast accuracy and timeliness."²⁶

Galvanizing ITS Advances with Weather: Foretell, CARS, and RATIS

Peter Davies, President of Castle Rock Consultants (CRC) acquainted participants with three closely related PPPs in which CRC plays a major role. Two of these are Foretell, and the Condition and Acquisition Reporting System (CARS), both ongoing endeavors located in the Midwest. Newest among CRC's initiatives is the incipient Rural Advanced Traveler Information System (RATIS) of northern New England. PPPs are, in the context articulated by Davies, effective and convenient mechanisms for dealing with the high cost of technologies. State and local governments, in need of specialized services to meet an emergent need or to remedy an existing market failure, can turn to private sector expertise in addition to cooperative agreements for resource sharing with neighboring states and jurisdictions.

"PPPs are .effective and
convenient mechanisms for
dealing with high costs of
technologies."