Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in the US has secured a five-year contract to develop a new advanced transportation management system (ATMS) in New England.

In addition to the ATMS, the $4.1m contract will see SwRI develop a data hub, as well as a traveller information system (ITS), which will upgrade the highway information infrastructure in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.

The new single-platform ATMS will deliver coordinated real-time traffic, safety and weather information to motorists, and will allow collaboration among the states’ departments of transportation for quick relay of information.

"Texas and Florida have agreed to share the software that we developed with other government entities throughout the United States, so we are able to provide a solution to northern New England at greatly reduced costs."

The system will replace the existing technology with the latest ActiveITS software, which SwRI developed for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDoT) SunGuide and Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT) Lonestar traffic management systems, along with additional software.

SwRI’s intelligent systems programme director Robert Heller said that advanced traffic management systems have been shown to reduce secondary collisions, mitigate congestion and, most importantly, save lives.

"Texas and Florida have agreed to share the software that we developed with other government entities throughout the United States, so we are able to provide a solution to northern New England at greatly reduced costs," Heller said.

The SwRI-developed, cloud-based ATMS system is designed to enable regional collaboration on incident response and data-sharing of accidents, construction, weather and traffic flow information.

SwRI intelligent systems department director Steven Dellenback said: "This comprehensive, coordinated ATMS will benefit drivers in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine with real-time, up-to-the-minute information on road conditions and will help police and fire departments and highway crews respond more quickly to traffic accidents."

Design of the new system is currently underway and is expected to go live in late 2015.