Caltrans District 12 Toll Roads, Deployment of a Regional Communications System

This paper presents the innovations, design and implementation challenges of a highly robust regional communications system deployed in support of the toll roads in Orange County, California. The authors also present some of the institutional challenges associated with the project. They focus on the steps taken from the system planning stage to the deployment of this regional communications system, under the jurisdiction of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) District 12, which encompasses four toll roads, three freeways, a comprehensive fiber optic network, seven field hubs, over 350 ITS field devices, and a co-located Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and Transportation Management Center (TMC). The packet-based communications network consists of multiple levels of physical plant and equipment redundancy, a system security, use of Layer 2 and Layer 3 routing protocols , integration with a Caltrans statewide ATMS control system, a network of IP video encoders and decoders, and the integration with a new state-of-the-art video matrix switch. The system is designed to enable future expansion to include an information sharing network. This new communications system has the ability to enable Caltrans to share video and other data with participating agencies within the County, providing the necessary bandwidth and management features that support minimal operator intervention. The authors conclude that, while the actual planning and deployment had its set of challenges and issues, the system has proven itself in terms of enabling departments to communicate with each other and accomplish the goals and objectives of the project.