Former WA Governor Gregoire recognizes the Virtual Coordination Center project at Mobility Innovation Center’s Ready to Roll event

October 20, 2022

By Hannah Webster Heublein, Center for Collaborative Systems for Security, Safety and Regional Resilience

On October 13, 2022, HCDE Professor and Chair Julie Kientz and former Washington State Governor and Challenge Seattle CEO Christine Gregoire spoke at an event hosted by CoMotion’s Mobility Innovation Center (MIC) to celebrate the Virtual Coordination Center for Multimodal Corridor Management (VCC) project.

Mark Haselkorn presenting the VCC dashboard to a room of people

HCDE Professor and project manager Mark Haselkorn and WSDOT project director Travis Phelps demonstrate the various features of the VCC.

Led by HCDE Professor Mark Haselkorn and Travis Phelps of the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), the VCC project enables regional transportation partners to share a cloud-based, common working environment that supports coordinated mobility within Seattle’s I-5 corridor. This project is partially funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) under their Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment (ATCMTD) program.

The Ready to Roll event marked the completion of the model deployment of the VCC and its readiness for the upcoming year of evaluation. Amid a sea of smiling faces, Bart Treece of the Mobility Innovation Center led the proceedings which included a demonstration of the new environment and several congratulatory speeches, including by WSDOT Assistant Secretary of Urban Mobility & Access Julie Meredith; King County Metro General Manager Terry White; and SDOT Deputy Director for Maintenance Operations Rodney Maxie. Attendees included members of WSDOT, Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), Seattle Police Department (SPD), King County Metro (KCMT), Washington State Patrol (WSP), University of Washington, Pariveda Solutions, and other past project collaborators.

Julie Kientz presenting in front of the room

HCDE Professor and Chair Julie Kientz addresses the attendees, highlighting the importance of collaboration for the project and the wider community.

Christine Gregoire presenting in front of the room

Former Governor and Challenge Seattle CEO Christine Gregoire addresses the attendees, reflecting on the project from its inception to now.

Additional VCC partners include Seattle Fire Department, Sound Transit, Port of Seattle, Northwest Seaport Alliance, Amazon Web Services, INRIX, Microsoft, ReadyOp, Schema, Siemens, ThoughtExchange, WSP USA, and more.