I’ve been blessed with a lengthy career in our industry—and with that duration has come the opportunity to actively participate in the birth and growth of many of today’s practices. None has been more significant to me personally than transportation systems management and operations (TSMO). The massive cultural shift that took place (and is still taking place) across our practice to more proactively think about operations when planning, designing, building, operating, and maintaining our transportation network has been a backdrop to almost every job I’ve held.
TSMO is a practice that is not unique to any particular country or region; rather it is generally needed across any transportation system. The toolbox of solutions, technologies, and philosophies is broad ranging—and continues to evolve as we get more experience (and more importantly share those experiences with others).
As our society becomes more dependent on mobility—and people are more in tune with real-time conditions—it’s critical that we as transportation professionals give TSMO the attention, time, resources, and frankly the admiration that it so truly deserves.
If you’ve read my monthly columns, you know that safety is a key theme in many of them—I’m fed up with the societal acceptance that killing one million people on
our global transportation network continues to be viewed by so many as the “price of mobility.” You’ve also heard me preach on many occasions that there is no single or simple solution to this problem, and that we must attack it from multiple angles.
TSMO is one of those attack vectors. We save lives simply by integrating sound operational principles at all stages of the transportation cycle. This summer in North America, we are hosting the world’s largest sports tournament—the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Millions of visitors will descend upon 16 different cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Thanks to our acceptance of TSMO and sound operations principles, these cities and countries have been actively considering key solutions, technologies, and philosophies as part of their preparedness.
The National Operations Center of Excellence—a collaboration between ITE, AASHTO, ITS America, and FHWA—has held multiple webinars, peer exchanges, and publications devoted to the FIFA World Cup games and has engaged practitioners from many of those 16 cities to share best practices. You can learn a lot from simply visiting their website at www.transportationops.org. While the World Cup games are a shining example of why we need to maintain an operational focus at every stage of the planning and engineering process—the best practices employed can (and should) be scaled to fit just about any situation, including institutional coordination and governance; technology, data, and infrastructure modernization; safety and incident management; and much more.
Whether you’re a small municipality hosting a grand parade—or a global organization planning a large multinational sporting competition—the need for planning and preparation will be mission critical. And if practiced with TSMO principles as the centerpiece you’ve positioned yourself with an opportunity to succeed. And success in this case can simply be defined as safe, efficient, and effective mobility!