Project 1.2
Deploy Limited CARS Study Application for Wisconsin

This project was completed on March 21, 2005.

The purpose of this project was to allow Wisconsin State Patrol staff in District 6 to study the inputting of road condition, construction, incident, and special event information into a Condition Acquisition Reporting System (CARS) along the I-94 corridor near the Minnesota/Wisconsin border to Osseo, Wisconsin and to assess the results.

As part of this North/West Passage Project, Wisconsin State Police agreed to conduct a trial of CARS for incident and travel condition management. The intent of this trial was not to evaluate a particular software or approach towards condition reporting, but rather to give State Patrol dispatchers an idea of the level of effort that would be required to enter events into a condition reporting system. Further, it was envisioned that State Patrol dispatchers would have an opportunity to see the value in entering this data in one central location as opposed to responding to multiple requests for information.

After the four weeks of trial use, the discussion focused more on 'how' would the Wisconsin DOT and the Wisconsin State Patrol select a vendor or system for deployment. Therefore, the project seems to have alleviated fears about the time demands of such a system, and demonstrated the value that will be achieved when such a system is operational within the state.

Related Links

• Project re-cap and lessons learned (PDF, 260K)
• Summary of meetings (PDF, 32K)
• Work Team