Maryland State Highway Administration’s Motor Carrier Division (MCD) within the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) is responsible for issuing the oversize/overweight (OS/OW) permits that ensure the safe travel of permitted loads across the state. The USD 2.3 million agreement for permitting and routing implementation encompasses GIS, routing, and bridge load analysis, an upgraded Web interface, and city and county road additions. Conservative estimates predict that the new system will save carriers USD 24.6 million annually, assuming a one-hour saving at an average hourly load expense of USD 200, on the 123,000 permits issued yearly.
Although it was an unusual practice for Maryland State Highway Administration (MDSHA) to rely upon a hosted environment from an outside vendor, MDSHA saw value in a cloud implementation and worked very closely with Bentley to expand and move an on-premises solution to Microsoft Azure. As a result, Bentley and MDSHA were able to complete the project several times faster than if Maryland State Highway Administration (MDSHA) had undertaken a traditional on-premises upgrade. Maryland State Highway has entered into a Success Plan with Bentley for the ongoing support and operation of the hosted service.
Through the cloud service, MDSHA provides cross-state capability regardless of jurisdiction, while giving each agency total responsibility and flexibility to manage its assets. The solution provides safer travel for the general public, reduced costs for the hauling community, increased efficiency, the potential to realize staff savings, plus reduced maintenance costs and operational expenses for government agencies directly attributable to ensuring OS/OW loads will not do undue harm.
Bentley’s SUPERLOAD provides the foundation for MDSHA’s entire OS/OW permitting, routing, and analysis solution. MDSHA also uses LARS Bridge to create detailed structural models of the state and Maryland Transportation Authority bridges structures, which are then loaded into the SUPERLOAD application for real-time bridge analysis. MDSHA uses InspectTech to continually maintain the bridge inventory and inspection information, ensuring that the over and under and horizontal and vertical bridge clearances are accurately verified for each permit vehicle.
The solution provides an easy-to-use system with a single point of contact for all billing and invoices, eliminating the need for companies to hold multiple bonds to cover the city and state. It reduces the time spent on bridge analysis and permit issuance, enabling users to fully review and automatically issue permits, which can help achieve automated system issuance rates in excess of 80 percent.
Tina Sanders, technical support manager, Motor Carrier Division, Maryland State Highway Administration, said, “Our new Bentley Maryland One System allows carriers anywhere in the world to use any device and browser to apply for OS/OW permits 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and have them routed, analyzed, and automatically system issued up to configurable thresholds. Maryland State Highway Administration’s Motor Carrier Division is confident that all clearances are checked, every bridge crossed over is structurally analyzed, and all temporary conditions are considered.”